Jay Leno moves from his canceled variety show at 10pm back to his role as host of the Tonight Show at 11:35pm on March 1st, so naturally NBC found it necessary to shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars in royalties to have a Beatles song score the Public Service Announcement of the change. A clever Youtuber however has flipped the sentiment of the ad to make it a bash on Leno.
The original ad features the Beatles’ “Get Back,” at a point in the lyrics that say “get back to where you once belonged” which I guess is their way of saying the whole ‘Conan O’Brien as host’ thing was a big mistake and that Jay should have never been pushed out in the first place.
UPDATE: I’m leaving the embed here even though it’s expired cuz… wtf? that’s weird that a network would let a commercial for themselves expire on their own video distribution website. Hulu videos and whatnot, I understand expiring – but a commercial for the Tonight Show? really? you don’t wanna just leave that up for posterity and another excuse to show people a preroll commercial? whatever dude…
While I think Leno is getting smeared to hell over this debacle, I can’t deny that this Leno-bashing remix of the above promo is diabolically clever. It’s the same ad, slowed down for an unsettling effect and the audio replaced with Radiohead’s “Creep”, ending in the lyrics “I don’t belong here”.
Ouch + Zing = Win.