Gosh, I don’t know what’s happening to me.
I find myself requiring more and more sleep. It wasn’t all that long ago that I could successfully
burn the candle at both ends, getting by with 4 or 5 hours of sleep. These days, I’ve got to have
7 hours or I tend to be out of sync the following day.
Of course, I’ve got to cut myself a little bit of slack because I find myself also
getting up a bit earlier (5 a.m., if you must know) in order to make my days more productive.
Early in my previous telecom career, I was called upon more
than once to pull some 36 hour shifts. It was no problem. Granted, I was seeing double
by the end of that day and a half stretch, at least I could pull it off without too much trouble. All I
required was a good night’s sleep and I could do it all over again.
That was then.
This is now and I just flat can’t do those kinds of acts of super-human
endurance any longer without requiring days of recuperation. Shoot! About a year ago
I had to come to the conclusion that staying up to watch any of the late shows was, a) killing me the next day and, 2) really
wasn’t worth the lack of sleep.
Oh,
sure, I could DVR the shows and watch them at my earliest convenience. However, I found that I quickly
maxed out the hard drive with stuff recorded from the eleventy-twelve channels that my beloved cable company belches to my
home. Like many of the magazines that I purchase and remain not completely read, I have countless of hours
of TV resting in my cable boxes cranium, crying out to be watched.
What’s your point, Randy? I’m glad that you
asked!
As I write this, there’s
a bit of a dust up surrounding Conan, Jay Leno and NBC. While I do have an opinion about the matter that
is based on what I’ve read, I won’t weigh in as to who’s right or wrong. What I will
relay is an observation as to what this PR battle may actually have revealed.
I think that the root cause of the battle is ratings (you’re think, “Duh,
Randy!” but stay with me here. Why are the ratings tanking? While network brass
might be to blame, I think that it boils down to the shift in the viewing habits of a major part of the demographic that has
historically floated the late night show’s boat: the Baby Boomers.
If my sagging, dragging carcass is serving a demographic
barometer of late night ratings, then, perhaps, the CBS and NBC might ought to pay a little closer attention to what
we’re up to and why our viewing habits are changing.
I think Leno was just a bit ahead of his time, he may have been on to something
with the earlier time slot but was just a couple of years ahead of his time.
All of that said, I still say Johnny Carson rocks!
