We also see Conan balking at a lucrative writing career on The Simpsons because he wants to be a performer. As a young Saturday Night Live writer, Conan sneaks into Letterman’s Late Night studio and sits in his hero’s chair, imagining himself as Dave’s heir. Carter supplies some key contextual scenes.

The book is remarkably good given that America already watched the whole thing play out on YouTube. But he adds reams of blind quotes about all the key players and compelling stories of grasping TV executives. It’s true that in 394 pages, Carter doesn’t much alter the narrative as we know it, which is that Conan got royally screwed. This is like Hillary Clinton becoming secretary of State in the Obama administration, except 1,000 times worse.Īs Conan says with eerie premonition, “I just think that guy is going to hurt me.” Except NBC just moved Jay to 10 p.m., a treacherous 95 minutes ahead of Conan’s show, meaning they were still side-by-side on the same channel. Theoretically, this meant Jay Leno was out of a job. In 2009, Conan O’Brien took over NBC’s The Tonight Show. Carter embeds in the talk-show world as naturally as Dexter Filkins does with Bravo Company.Ĭan you just remind me of the basics again? I was watching Chelsea Lately. 'What does Jay have on you?' Conan asked, his voice still low, his tone still even.Yes, and it’s Bill Carter, the New York Times media reporter who wrote The Late Shift (1994), the seminal book about late-night angst. That this now seemed like a late-night pileup - three shows with monologues lined up end to end - was the implication no one had really addressed.įinally Conan did have something he really wanted to say, something that had almost burned a hole in his chest. The NBC guys didn't really have an answer for that other than what Conan had already been doing: his own monologue. When they replied that it seemed likely he would have only one guest, Conan said, 'OK.

'At 11:35 Jay's going to come out and do twenty jokes. 'So at least now, Jay does his show, but there's the break of the news, and that's kind of the reset button,' Conan said to Gaspin and Graboff. “The one thought Conan had on the spot about the half hour at 11:35 was that it would likely exacerbate the problem he already had with Leno.

The war for late night by bill carter