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At one time, NBC’s The Tonight Show was the dominant force in late night television.
For over fifty years, millions of viewers watched from their beds as celebrities sat on a couch and chatted with a friendly host from a television stage in Hollywood.
Americans fell asleep to The Tonight Show, and talked about it the next day with friends, classmates or co-workers.
In June of last year, Conan O’Brien, star of Late Night With Conan O’Brien, became the fifth man to host The Tonight Show, succeeding Jay Leno, who’d held the job since 1992. A former Simpsons and Saturday Night Live writer, O’Brien had polished his appeal to college age viewers on Late Night, with the help of self deprecating humor and inventive comedy bits featuring Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, a bear that practiced lots of “self love,” and gimmick episodes like the one filmed in clay animation.
Only a few months into his tenure, Jay Leno and NBC began to have a major case of seller’s remorse. The complicated details would require much more space than I have on this page, and other publications have explained it all before, better than I can.
The end result was Leno asked for Tonight back, and NBC gave it to him, pushing O’Brien from his job after only seven months (although Leno said he was asked to take over the show only after NBC decided to fire O’Brien conveniently forgets his announcement in November of last year that he’d be open to retaking his old position, long before this mess started).
The fact that O’Brien knew for much of his last month on the air that his tenure was coming to a close, helped him to create some of the most entertaining shows he’d ever done.
In one monologue, he told the audience, “You can do anything you want in life, unless Jay Leno wants to do it, too.”
Another segment had O’Brien and Andy Richter, his Tonight Show sidekick, having a shootout with NBC executives in order to get to work.
While Conan played the situation for laughs, competing late night stars Jimmy Kimmel and Letterman voiced their support.
Kimmel even performed an episode of his own show dressed up like Leno, copying his mannerisms and spewing flat jokes.
Leno played the innocent victim caught in the crossfire, acting confused and hurt by the negative public reaction, as well as industry comics.
“Please don’t blame Conan,” Leno said, as if all of America was marching toward O’Brien’s castle with torches and pitchforks.
“Nobody’s blaming Conan,” Letterman countered on his own show. “A lot of people think Conan pushed himself out of a job, but he’s not that kind of guy. He’d never do that to himself.”
Leno’s return to Tonight was made official with the airing of commercials depicting him driving a sports car up the Pacific Coast Highway in Los Angeles, smugly staring at the camera as the voice over declared him “back where he belongs.”
O’Brien negotiated a massive severance package for himself and his staff (who relocated with him from New York) and has disappeared from any television appearances (part of his severance deal with NBC keeps him off the air in all capacities until November).
Earlier this month, O’Brien began a thirty-city comedy tour called “The Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television Tour.”
Just before the first show in Eugene, Oregon, O’Brien announced a deal with the TBS cable network for a talk show beginning in November.
The projected time slot of 11 p.m. was already taken by George Lopez, who personally called O’Brien, assuring him he would have no problem bumping his own program to midnight.
When O’Brien’s new show debuts in November, he will have been off the air for almost ten months.
There is some concern whether his popularity will sustain with such a long lay off. But TBS isn’t in direct competition with NBC; cable viewership is always lower than network.
Perhaps O’Brien isn’t really interested in beating Jay Leno-just being able to perform for his loyal fan base is enough.