What happened betweened Jay Leno and Conan?
Looong story. I'll try to keep it as short as possible:
Several years ago, Leno was kind of given a forced retirement date from the
Tonight Show by NBC. He seemed to have accepted it, and went on air announcing it and "passing the torch" to his future successor, Conan O'Brien (who was currently hosting the show after his). Cut to years later, Leno had Conan on as the guest for his last show and basically told him he couldn't be leaving the show in better hands, wished him the best of luck, and all that jazz, while Jimmy Fallon took over Conan's old show. But apparently, Leno wasn't ready to leave, so he threatened NBC that he was gonna start a competitive show on another network. NBC in all their wisdom, decided to cancel all their 10PM shows for EVERY NIGHT of the week (including the amazing
Southland), putting
hundreds of people out of a job, and give Leno a new talk show at 10PM before Conan's
Tonight Show. Leno's show BOMBED hard in the ratings, making it a terrible lead-in for Conan's show, so the
Tonight Show's ratings dropped (though not as horribly has Leno's show), and Leno had the gall to blame the new
Tonight Show's disappointing ratings on Conan, when Leno's
Tonight Show actually had much stronger lead-ins, and didn't even get good ratings in HIS first year as host, either. NBC canceled Leno's show, but couldn't just let Leno go because his contract was waaay more expensive than Conan's, so they instead gave Conan, who had been the picture of grace during this whole ordeal, an ultimatum - let Leno have his old timeslot back with a new show and move the
Tonight Show (AND poor Jimmy Fallon and Carson Daly's shows) to an even later timeslot than they already had, or leave. Conan didn't want to do that to Jimmy, Carson, OR the institution of
The Tonight Show (which had been at that timeslot for decades), so he left after only hosting his self-proclaimed dream gig
, for 9 months. And then paid his entire staff's salaries out of his own pocket until finding them all a new gig at TBS. Jay Leno resumed as host of the
Tonight Show.
Phew. Does that about cover it guys? Did I leave anything out? And this isn't the first time Leno has acted such a *****e to take over the
Tonight Show, btw - just look up Leno vs. Letterman for Round 1.
