Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien share an intriguing connection, and it’s not simply because they’re both famed talk show hosts. In 2010, they were engaged in a highly publicized dispute involving NBC’s The Tonight Show. The situation brought negative publicity to the network at the time and, since everything went down, some have been under the impression that O’Brien and Leno aren’t on good terms. So over a decade after the late-night TV drama, where does their relationship stand? Well, an insider dropped some alleged details on the matter.
Conan O’Brien, who’d been the host of Late Night since 1993, was ultimately named Jay Leno’s Tonight Show successor and formally took up the position in 2009. All in all, reviews of O’Brien’s turn at the big desk were mostly positive. At the same time, execs sought to keep Leno in the fold and did so by giving him an eponymous talk show that aired after TTS. Because neither show received strong ratings out of the gate, the powers that be sought to fix that by bumping Leno up to 11:35 p.m. ET and O’Brien back to 12:05 a.m. ET. The latter was displeased with that move and, ultimately, he and his staff reached a settlement to depart the program in 2010. O’Brien would move to TBS, while Leno would be reinstated as the Tonight Show host.
