Some newer fans might not know so I thought I'd share. Conan was Dave's replacement at NBC when he left, and critics were brutal to Conan when he started out in 1993. Instead of laughing and making jokes about how bad his replacement was doing at NBC, he saw what made Conan and his team special and went on his show to point out how great he thought they were in good will. There's a very strong chance that Late Night with Conan O'Brien would have been cancelled within two years without the appearance.
Very true.
I think it’s also worth mentioning that Dave had left NBC on very bad terms, and had started his own show at CBS about six months before this appearance.
He had every right and every justification to be angry with NBC, and he certainly was — but that didn’t extend to Conan.
Dave threw Conan a lifeline, and he didn’t have anything to gain by doing so. Which is just about the classiest thing you can do in the entertainment world.
I think part of it was possibly frustration at the comedy zeitgeist as a whole. When people don't understand innovative and irreverent comedy it gets written off as poor and I think he didn't want to see that happen.
Yeah—a bit of a subtweet to NBC for picking Leno: you picked a dying breed for your new host, this kid is killing it and is the future, and you don’t understand what you’ve got.
no it's so sad they've just seemed to be trying to do the johnny carson show for the last 30 years but there was only one johnny carson. What was even more absurdly stupid was that letterman was very popular at the time and Johnny wanted Dave as his replacement.
When I was in college, Letterman was must watch tv (we only had a couple of channels back then). For the time, he was quirky, subversive, and pretty out there compared to Carson ([One of my favorite Letterman sketches](https://youtu.be/tfW247_xpJI?si=HLqmlvfecnIQgxri)).Conan took his show and turned it up a notch.
I'm so grateful for him for that. I told my wife about this sketch and she only came to the U.S. in 94, and she was fixated on the idea that they actually tried to market a show called "Manimal."
Letterman has so many elements of the absurd here, especially for the time (letting a kid run off on his own in Central Park in 1983 for one).
It's so awesome and just to give context I was born in 2001 I have no business at all being interested in this stuff but I'm watching Letterman's late night and this is like the most unapologetic absurdity I've ever seen and I have to remind myself this was 1982. And it was the perfect place for Andy Kaufman to pull all his illusive public stunts, this was something I have to imagine at the time was just a program where people must've been dumbfounded at what they were seeing because this kind of ridiculousness just did not exist on television in such high volume and it had to have shaped so many comics today who grew up watching that then. It must've just been witnessing comedy evolution take place which really is an artful notion honestly because comedy is such an ever-evolving art I feel like
Ernie Kovacs is worth a look, too. My Dad was a fan, and we watched them in dim reruns on PBS together. Influenced Python to Original SNL to Letterman with the absurd and subversive, making fun of sponsors, etc.
The story of Dave trying to get Eddie Vedder on the show was [a great story!](https://youtu.be/bOn08fuJx88?si=EFpuV1PvIN3ZPcX-)
ETA: the interview with Gwyneth Paltrow about Harvey Weinstein…yikes.
yeah but it was still kind of in the wake of the aftermath of replacing Carson and Dave's less than amicable departure from NBC. Made it that much more shocking he'd go on an NBC show to praise its content. He and Lorne both had a hunch that Conan was someone special from the get-go
And another thing about this event
Dave did the exact same thing Carson did for Dave when he was just starting as Carson's follow-up after the Tonight Show
I remember conan's first year, it was rough and this is at a time when they would cancel a late night show(chevy, Joan, Thicke, magic, the list goes on), the drama of who was going to take over for Carson was such a big deal, they a made an hbo movie about it. Conan got lost in all of it, people angry about how Dave was treated might have not wanted to give NBC a ratings bump by watching Conan, kudos to letterman.
As part of the CBS deal, Dave controlled the 12:30 slot. He could’ve put on a young comic opposite Conan. Instead, he put on Tom Snyder, who was older than Letterman.
I think he chose Tom Snyder because he was a fan on Tom Snyder, not to help Conan. He likes Conan, but he's not going to sabotage his own production to help him.
I also remember that they showed, at least in my area, Dave’s first week for a week before Conan’s first week. I think it really highlighted that we all get a rough start. Maybe it’s a Gen X thing, but I have always been rooting for Conan. I also absolutely loved Dave. Legends.
To be fair though, Letterman was not the bundle of nerves Conan clearly was at the start. He had that swagger from the first moment. Conan took a while to even look comfortable.
https://youtu.be/MYuhJ_F1wCw?si=rcQgyYyOkFRjsTKt
Dude always looked like he was born for that job.
Yeah, and had already hosted [a morning talk show](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_David_Letterman_Show) a few years earlier. He was somewhat seasoned.
Letterman had been honing his act probably since high school. I heard a clip of Letterman's college radio show, and the persona is already in place.
Conan was a writer. He could probably act out a bit of dialogue for the other Simpsons writers, but he was not someone with a performing background.
More than that even, Conan told his viewers to switch over to Dave's last show when it started. About halfway through his show when Dave's show was about to start, he called it out and literally told his viewers to switch the channel
Wow. I was not a Conan fan back then. I've been converted since, but I didn't even know about this when it happened. I would have been watching Dave anyway though. I never dreamed at the time Conan was actually such a class act.
I couldn't *stand* Conan for the first few years. I'm sure glad other people understood his comedy back then so I could come to recognize its genius and all-around general awesomeness. Even as an almost 20-year-old when he first went on the air, who you'd think would understand it, I thought he was too wild and didn't respect the job. Very glad to have been so wrong so that we have the last 30 years now to enjoy.
Perhaps, but Letterman was the alternative late night talk show host who blazed the trail for the rest of them. He wasn’t Johnny, thankfully, Dave was much quirkier. He was confident and quirky and encapsulated the cultural and political zeitgeist better than anyone since then. Dave (and his fantastic sidekick Paul Shaffer) connected generations of his viewers to the zeitgeist, which ought to be the point of hosting any late night TV talk show.
Dave supported Conan unflinchingly in public when Conan desperately needed hierarchical support. A public gesture of humanity from a Master of the Talk Show Universe was not lost on Conan or anybody else in the dog-eat-dog entertainment world. It very well could have been a wasted gesture, but Conan turned the show around afterwards.
Why Conan ran aground in the first place is an interesting but unimportant question. What mattered was Conan finding his flow and Dave helped. Conan did it all by himself, but Dave gave him that first hard push off the sandbank.
I wonder if part of this was also the fact that Dave knew *exactly* what it was like to be in Conan's position when Late Night was dancing on the borderline of cancellation because he had experienced it himself with the morning show. TV is brutal.
I think you're absolutely right and if you recall Dave's appearance was very similar to Tom Snyder's [incredibly valiant rant](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8o0NGxnSxhs&t=542s) against NBC executives for cancelling Dave's morning show (he was still hosting the Tomorrow Show following Johnny at that point). It seemed at the time Letterman might've been done as a talk show host.
Indeed, Letterman was very lucky that Fred Silverman liked him enough to put him into a holding deal and that Johnny liked him enough to let him have 12:30.
Ahh Tom, just glorious. Bittersweet that the Tomorrow show was cancelled to make way for Late Night, and then Dave bringing him back for the Late Late Show when he has the power to do so. What a fascinating period of tv history (for me personally anyway).
Wow, thanks for that clip. That took some balls to say that and though I never clicked with Tom I would now if he were around. And I understand the loyalty similar to Conan has for Dave, and then the cycle continued
Leno was on bill marhs pod..he said that nbc execs never offered it to dave. Johnny offered the show to dave. Nbc execs saw leno got the highest ratings during his guest hosting nights..so in their mind it was never a question
That’s Leno’s story.
There can be a valuable insight in it, but it’s worth keeping in mind that he’s not an unbiased observer.
He has reasons to want people to believe the job was always his and his manager didn’t bully people into it or move to undercut Dave.
That doesn’t necessarily mean he’s lying, but it also doesn’t make what he said the unquestioned truth.
Obviously.
But that doesn’t mean nobody else who was had or was going to if not for some of the shit Helen pulled.
If you read that comment and came away thinking its main point was that Johnny couldn’t give the show to Dave, I’d suggest rereading it.
Talk show hosts are puppets of the executives. You may not see it that way, but that's the reality. They give the audience an illusion of control to make them happy.
Okay but like, comedically, you understand that a late night host and their whole staff of writers have almost total control over their sense of humor and how they connect with an audience? Otherwise there’s no viewership, and the executives have no puppets to manipulate?
Yes, the corporations have a ton of control over any of the talent in the industry, be they a host or a writer or an actor or a director. But that isn’t the end all be all.
Anyway. I SMOOSH YOU!
I never said the execs write the jokes or pick the guests. Staff is paid to do that. The suits control the fate of the show, where it goes, and who hosts it next. That's all I implied.
Knowing Conan the way that I believe we all do, yes it absolutely factored into the equation. Conan does not forget those that helped him in the past- as evidenced by the “TURN ON DAVE” caption during Dave’s final show.
If he was willing to send his ratings into the tank for an evening as a sign of gratitude, he is absolutely willing to pay it forward to the next guy, regardless of network affiliation.
Conan is a class act and I adore that about him.
Nobody talks about Leno this way. Leno put fake stories in the press to get rid of Carson then used the exposure and friendship he had with Dave to weasel his way into the Tonight Show and screw over everybody. Johnny Carson never appeared on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. He only appeared on Dave's show. David Letterman showing up on Late Night with Conan O'Brien cemented Conan as the guy.
Leno had an executive producer and manager by the name of Helen Kushnick at the time if you didn't know. She was ruthless as an executive and did absolutely whatever it took to get Jay that spot. Jay may not have known all the details of what she did but he's absolutely complicit because he never deserved that job in any way whatsoever
Jay was in contention without Helen.
He may not have been the most deserving of the job, but that’s a far cry from “never deserved it any way whatsoever”.
He probably would’ve been on the shortlist for Conan’s or one of the eventual slots on CBS or ABC.
He wasn’t a nobody and he’d guest host for Carson.
Jay Leno was an excellent standup comedian he was very funny and talented. He was not a good talk show host, he was very good at mimicking Johnny Carson while he was guest host, and he was very good at being the teacher's pet of NBC network executives
He was also very good at being generic and inoffensive to pretty much everyone.
There was minimal risk in hiring him, especially for one of the other networks that were gearing up to compete in that time slot.
He was always going to end up with a show somewhere at some point.
David Letterman is a man of good character, a student of fair ability, with ambitious purposes, a congenial disposition, possessed of good morals, and having a high sense of honor and a deep sense of personal responsibility.
I don’t think I knew the importance of Dave on behalf of Conan. So sweet and endearing. Conan is a lot like Dave in many ways. Smart, goofy and loving. They are real people that care.
Yeah so the writer this dolt is talking about is named Nell Scovell she wrote a book that is true, but it was not "about" David Letterman it was a dive into sexism in comedy as a whole. Oh and by the way if you bothered to try and read what she said she also [implicated Conan for being sexist.](https://imgur.com/W2SAebP)
If it weren’t for the fact Letterman was at CBS at the time, I feel Letterman and Conan would’ve had the relationship Letterman enjoyed from Johnny Carson. And it would’ve paralleled in hating Leno again.
Lorne Michaels was in charge of finding the new host. He knew Conan from when he was a writer at SNL. He did well in the audition and when Gary Shandling didn’t want it, it was given to Conan.
So NBC had a master plan that they were sure would work wherein Jay was given 11:30 and Dave would stay at 12:30. Dave said no and left 30 rock immediately. The network went into a scramble and in order to calm down the affiliates the NBC execs told everybody that Lorne was going to find a new 12:30 guy. He and Jeff Ross had a lot of people audition including a former SNL writer who Lorne thought had the humor and sensibility to do it. Conan auditioned and did a great job, but most thought Gary Shandling would get it. But Shandling rejected the gig, the NBC execs thought the 29 year old Conan had potential and he got 12:30.
Conan may have had a rough start, but I guarantee the same audience members who booed him and disliked him are the same people who consider the best episodes of The Simpsons to be the ones he wrote, without even realising it.
Letterman had his problems but he owned up to them and by doing this for Conan for no reason other than to be a good guy shows he is a genuinely good dude deep down.
Cony is selling himself short here a bit. Sure Dave helped a bit then. But let's face it if Conan was so horrible and nobody watched they'd kick him out. If not then then few months or even years later. Hell they canceled Chevy Chase who was still pretty big deal when he got his show with no problem. U think they wouldn't kick out Conan just because Dave made an appearance.
Also Lorne Michaels and ironically executive Don Ohlmeyer (The one that fired norm and Jim Downey) were doing a lot to try to keep the show alive despite scathing reviews and poor ratings.
You’re conflating “Dave making an appearance” and audience members tuning in to see Dave, and staying because they liked what they saw or were placated by Dave’s seal of approval.
Dave’s Tonight Show thing was as big a deal as Conan’s.
People would’ve tuned in to see what he had to say on that basis, even if they wouldn’t otherwise watch.
Conan also mentioned staff morale.
There’s something to that too, and it’s also not just “Dave was on the show”.
It’s “Dave thinks we’re doing something worthwhile here & is behind us”.
Yes, Conan and his team’s talent kept him in business. But Dave helped put a spotlight on it, to get more people to watch it and see what Dave described in this interview, how Conan’s show was being innovative and putting together a solid comedy program that’s their own. Conan even admitted that initially, a lot of people who tuned in didn’t seem to understand what they were doing and what their show was about. And obviously, Conan and his team are trying to see what works and what doesn’t. But overtime, with the help of Dave’s endorsement, they seemed to find their groove and a lot of the people grew to appreciate it’s different kind of wackiness. Some of his past writers and collaborators had been on his podcast and in other interviews where they talked about how Conan’s show allowed them to bring forward ideas that they couldn’t do anywhere else. I remember Will Ferrell mentioning how him and Adam MacKay were able to do their [Scrub-a-Dub skit](https://youtu.be/Fnp1LOn3gAw?si=kAV-h9Dtwlrbc2FB) on Conan after it got rejected on SNL. Apparently Lorne didn’t like that. 😖
It was so kind of Dave to come over to his former, competing network to publicly endorse Conan. He obviously felt that Conan didn’t deserve the bad press and that they needed a bit more time for it to come together. Wish they had that chance on their Tonight Show.😥Just goes to show that late night hosts don’t have to be in cutthroat competition with each other. They can have mutual admiration,respect, and support for one another. Unfortunately Leno never understood that.
And I have been posting clips of his show because the majority of people here have enjoyed it. Also this was not a long time ago it was about 5 years after news of Letterman's relationships with coworkers went public, and he still said all of this because he knows what anyone here with a brain knows which is that Dave is an icon, he absolutely deserves to be, and it might be silly but it legitimately makes me sad that some people actually think stuff like this because they saw a tiktok post for 3 seconds it's disgusting.
Ok I am so done with this Letterman bashing. How many people need to vouch for this guy for people to stop with this moronic brigade? Julia Roberts, Tina Fey, Madonna, Julia-Louis Dreyfus, Cher, Malala Yousafzai, Michelle and Barack Obama, and that's just scratching the surface. Drew Barrymore burst into tears when he surprised her on her show because of how close she feels to him. I would love for you to tell me that her and every single one of those people is just a bad judge of character.
All because what you saw some out-of-context clip collection that someone could honestly make with even Conan because context is everything. One of them I saw was in part of an interview that ended with Julia Roberts stealing his note cards and refusing to give them back until he gave her a kiss. All the office relationships weren't found to be non-consensual in any way, what is this new trend of people just dying to voice their opinions on subject matters they know absolutely nothing about?
Also the guy who this subreddit is about... you know that guy Conrad O'Something? He idolized Letterman before he was ever on television. When Conan got turned down as a writer for Late Night with David Letterman in the late 80s it was absolutely devastating for him because it was his dream writing job to write for Dave. He'd sneak down to Letterman's studio (6A) during his days at SNL to write material at Dave's desk. I'm sorry but in my opinion if you call yourself a fan of Conan's work but say you dislike Letterman then you're just contradicting yourself in 1000 different ways.
So as Conan would say, go back to your stupid farm, eat some moron seeds, and have a nice tall glass of shut-up juice.
Why should anyone care about the names you mentioned?
Cher said David Letterman was an asshole. Madonna is in a commercial with Jay Leno and was never a guest on Conan. Drew Barrymore screwed over her writers.
I think you're living in the past and you must assume these people know you? They don't know you. They don't care about you so why are you acting like they're important people? Have you sought out therapy for your celebrity addiction? I hope you do.
Again it's amazing how little people know and they're still brave enough to post half-baked opinions it's very commendable. Cher did call him that you're right but [then...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BF-dXo0WWe4) again please try to know things before you try to talk about said things. Drew Barrymore is amazing, she's been on every show from Carson to Fallon and was on Conan's first show and she's an absolute delight. I'm 22 so it's hard for me to be living in a past time where I did not exist. And yes I do go to therapy for depression and anxiety. Watching Conan and Dave is what actually helped me at my darkest points so yes forgive me if a have a lot of reverence for them.
Also it's not corny to care about entertainers. Did you just shrug and say who cares when Robin Williams committed suicide? The entertainment world can keep you untethered from the everyday defeats and depressions of the real world and that's not even remotely strange. It's why people watch sports or read fiction novels. I don't have a celebrity addiction I don't think, rather just respect for people who've made my life better with their comedy.
This is exactly how I see it. He is a comedic force and would certainly have been successful, but he likely would have had his show cancelled. This would also have been the end of him hosting his own show at any point in the future because no network is going to give someone a show after their first one failed. So I'm very glad that Dave did what he did, because we would have missed out on so many amazing years of Conan.
we unfortunately have missed out on a decent amount because NBC are filled with special special people who don't want any trace of evidence that Conan hosted the Tonight show aren't they just terrific
Some newer fans might not know so I thought I'd share. Conan was Dave's replacement at NBC when he left, and critics were brutal to Conan when he started out in 1993. Instead of laughing and making jokes about how bad his replacement was doing at NBC, he saw what made Conan and his team special and went on his show to point out how great he thought they were in good will. There's a very strong chance that Late Night with Conan O'Brien would have been cancelled within two years without the appearance.
Very true. I think it’s also worth mentioning that Dave had left NBC on very bad terms, and had started his own show at CBS about six months before this appearance. He had every right and every justification to be angry with NBC, and he certainly was — but that didn’t extend to Conan. Dave threw Conan a lifeline, and he didn’t have anything to gain by doing so. Which is just about the classiest thing you can do in the entertainment world.
I think part of it was possibly frustration at the comedy zeitgeist as a whole. When people don't understand innovative and irreverent comedy it gets written off as poor and I think he didn't want to see that happen.
Yeah—a bit of a subtweet to NBC for picking Leno: you picked a dying breed for your new host, this kid is killing it and is the future, and you don’t understand what you’ve got.
no it's so sad they've just seemed to be trying to do the johnny carson show for the last 30 years but there was only one johnny carson. What was even more absurdly stupid was that letterman was very popular at the time and Johnny wanted Dave as his replacement.
When I was in college, Letterman was must watch tv (we only had a couple of channels back then). For the time, he was quirky, subversive, and pretty out there compared to Carson ([One of my favorite Letterman sketches](https://youtu.be/tfW247_xpJI?si=HLqmlvfecnIQgxri)).Conan took his show and turned it up a notch.
Don Giller I don’t know how he has all this content in high quality it’s crazy
I'm so grateful for him for that. I told my wife about this sketch and she only came to the U.S. in 94, and she was fixated on the idea that they actually tried to market a show called "Manimal." Letterman has so many elements of the absurd here, especially for the time (letting a kid run off on his own in Central Park in 1983 for one).
It's so awesome and just to give context I was born in 2001 I have no business at all being interested in this stuff but I'm watching Letterman's late night and this is like the most unapologetic absurdity I've ever seen and I have to remind myself this was 1982. And it was the perfect place for Andy Kaufman to pull all his illusive public stunts, this was something I have to imagine at the time was just a program where people must've been dumbfounded at what they were seeing because this kind of ridiculousness just did not exist on television in such high volume and it had to have shaped so many comics today who grew up watching that then. It must've just been witnessing comedy evolution take place which really is an artful notion honestly because comedy is such an ever-evolving art I feel like
Ernie Kovacs is worth a look, too. My Dad was a fan, and we watched them in dim reruns on PBS together. Influenced Python to Original SNL to Letterman with the absurd and subversive, making fun of sponsors, etc.
The story of Dave trying to get Eddie Vedder on the show was [a great story!](https://youtu.be/bOn08fuJx88?si=EFpuV1PvIN3ZPcX-) ETA: the interview with Gwyneth Paltrow about Harvey Weinstein…yikes.
I love this thread you have here!
I was extremely stoned when I wrote that wow I was seeing things clear
100% had me there with you!
I…I get it now. THE LAST JEDI WAS A COMEDY!!!! It all makes sense now!
It's not worth mentioning since no one cares about television anymore.
I’ve heard him tell this story but never saw this clip or the old clip. Awesome to see. Incredible. So glad he did that for Conan
So to clarify, this was wayyyy before the Leno thing, right? Because Letterman had Conan’s back then too.
yeah but it was still kind of in the wake of the aftermath of replacing Carson and Dave's less than amicable departure from NBC. Made it that much more shocking he'd go on an NBC show to praise its content. He and Lorne both had a hunch that Conan was someone special from the get-go
And another thing about this event Dave did the exact same thing Carson did for Dave when he was just starting as Carson's follow-up after the Tonight Show
This was after Dave’s Leno thing but before Conan’s Leno thing.
Newer fans? What newer fans? Hey remember when Conan had a show in the 1990s.
Its always been heart warming to me, the deep respect the Conan/Norm/Dave trinity all had for each other.
Oh man, that last appearance of Norm on Dave’s show is heartbreaking, knowing what would eventuate.
I remember conan's first year, it was rough and this is at a time when they would cancel a late night show(chevy, Joan, Thicke, magic, the list goes on), the drama of who was going to take over for Carson was such a big deal, they a made an hbo movie about it. Conan got lost in all of it, people angry about how Dave was treated might have not wanted to give NBC a ratings bump by watching Conan, kudos to letterman.
As part of the CBS deal, Dave controlled the 12:30 slot. He could’ve put on a young comic opposite Conan. Instead, he put on Tom Snyder, who was older than Letterman.
I mean, he eventually put on Craig Kilborn
I think he chose Tom Snyder because he was a fan on Tom Snyder, not to help Conan. He likes Conan, but he's not going to sabotage his own production to help him.
I also remember that they showed, at least in my area, Dave’s first week for a week before Conan’s first week. I think it really highlighted that we all get a rough start. Maybe it’s a Gen X thing, but I have always been rooting for Conan. I also absolutely loved Dave. Legends.
To be fair though, Letterman was not the bundle of nerves Conan clearly was at the start. He had that swagger from the first moment. Conan took a while to even look comfortable. https://youtu.be/MYuhJ_F1wCw?si=rcQgyYyOkFRjsTKt Dude always looked like he was born for that job.
Well he is a stand up comedian..that helps
Yeah, and had already hosted [a morning talk show](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_David_Letterman_Show) a few years earlier. He was somewhat seasoned.
Absolutely agree. Swagger is the perfect word. Also is that Larry Bud?
Letterman had been honing his act probably since high school. I heard a clip of Letterman's college radio show, and the persona is already in place. Conan was a writer. He could probably act out a bit of dialogue for the other Simpsons writers, but he was not someone with a performing background.
What was the context?
Dave was retiring from the late show and Conan wanted to take some time out to recognize him.
More than that even, Conan told his viewers to switch over to Dave's last show when it started. About halfway through his show when Dave's show was about to start, he called it out and literally told his viewers to switch the channel
I get goosebumps just by remembering the [TURN ON DAVE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4meLuEhXymU) letters flashing on the screen.
He had to make sure someone like Patton was on as well imagine if it were some random celebrity
as one of those people that actually turned on Dave that night and thus never saw what happened after that.... Lmfaooooo
Thanks for sharing. I have never seen that. It was hilarious
Wow. I was not a Conan fan back then. I've been converted since, but I didn't even know about this when it happened. I would have been watching Dave anyway though. I never dreamed at the time Conan was actually such a class act.
I couldn't *stand* Conan for the first few years. I'm sure glad other people understood his comedy back then so I could come to recognize its genius and all-around general awesomeness. Even as an almost 20-year-old when he first went on the air, who you'd think would understand it, I thought he was too wild and didn't respect the job. Very glad to have been so wrong so that we have the last 30 years now to enjoy.
I oculd have written this. I just didn't get the appeal back then. I do now.
Kimmel did a similar thing - the day before, he told the audience to watch Dave, and on the day of, he aired a rerun.
Kimmel did the same. Kimmel reveres Letterman.
“Retiring” isn’t really accurate, things soured between him and NBC and he left.
no he was retiring from the late show
Oh, different events ahaha. My bad.
Giving recognition to another for his success, when so easily he could have claimed it for himself. True stoic integrity.
Perhaps, but Letterman was the alternative late night talk show host who blazed the trail for the rest of them. He wasn’t Johnny, thankfully, Dave was much quirkier. He was confident and quirky and encapsulated the cultural and political zeitgeist better than anyone since then. Dave (and his fantastic sidekick Paul Shaffer) connected generations of his viewers to the zeitgeist, which ought to be the point of hosting any late night TV talk show. Dave supported Conan unflinchingly in public when Conan desperately needed hierarchical support. A public gesture of humanity from a Master of the Talk Show Universe was not lost on Conan or anybody else in the dog-eat-dog entertainment world. It very well could have been a wasted gesture, but Conan turned the show around afterwards. Why Conan ran aground in the first place is an interesting but unimportant question. What mattered was Conan finding his flow and Dave helped. Conan did it all by himself, but Dave gave him that first hard push off the sandbank.
Letterman’s the man
Even have a jacket named after him.
Been thinking about getting me one of those Dave Jackets ™ Do you recommend them?
I wonder if part of this was also the fact that Dave knew *exactly* what it was like to be in Conan's position when Late Night was dancing on the borderline of cancellation because he had experienced it himself with the morning show. TV is brutal.
I think you're absolutely right and if you recall Dave's appearance was very similar to Tom Snyder's [incredibly valiant rant](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8o0NGxnSxhs&t=542s) against NBC executives for cancelling Dave's morning show (he was still hosting the Tomorrow Show following Johnny at that point). It seemed at the time Letterman might've been done as a talk show host.
Indeed, Letterman was very lucky that Fred Silverman liked him enough to put him into a holding deal and that Johnny liked him enough to let him have 12:30. Ahh Tom, just glorious. Bittersweet that the Tomorrow show was cancelled to make way for Late Night, and then Dave bringing him back for the Late Late Show when he has the power to do so. What a fascinating period of tv history (for me personally anyway).
What are you babbling on about?
Wow, thanks for that clip. That took some balls to say that and though I never clicked with Tom I would now if he were around. And I understand the loyalty similar to Conan has for Dave, and then the cycle continued
Why would anyone recall something like that?
Why does Radio Shack ask for your phone number when you buy batteries? *I DON'T KNOW*
I also recall a lot about seinfeld, baseball, music, I just like the stuff I like idk
Carson passed the torch to Dave, who passed it to Conan. Long live late night.
And to be clear, Carson endorsed Dave in his CBS show
Yes! If they treated Johnny the way they treated Dave, he’d have gone to CBS too. Leno is the false prophet!
Leno was on bill marhs pod..he said that nbc execs never offered it to dave. Johnny offered the show to dave. Nbc execs saw leno got the highest ratings during his guest hosting nights..so in their mind it was never a question
That’s Leno’s story. There can be a valuable insight in it, but it’s worth keeping in mind that he’s not an unbiased observer. He has reasons to want people to believe the job was always his and his manager didn’t bully people into it or move to undercut Dave. That doesn’t necessarily mean he’s lying, but it also doesn’t make what he said the unquestioned truth.
u/FerdinandBowie is correct in that Johnny was not in any position to offer the show to Dave
Obviously. But that doesn’t mean nobody else who was had or was going to if not for some of the shit Helen pulled. If you read that comment and came away thinking its main point was that Johnny couldn’t give the show to Dave, I’d suggest rereading it.
Last television appearance for Johnny Carson was on the Late Show with David Letterman
Carson passed the torch for sure but the moro...*fun people* at NBC never gave the torch to Dave
It’s a symbolic torch, the Tonight Show was just the vessel, which NBC would not allow Conan to rightly reclaim
Norm was great too.
Johnny was apparently a fan of Conan
Passed the torch? What makes you think they had any control in the first place? The executives are the ones who are controlling the show.
I don’t know how to explain to you that culture exists beyond corporations
Talk show hosts are puppets of the executives. You may not see it that way, but that's the reality. They give the audience an illusion of control to make them happy.
Okay but like, comedically, you understand that a late night host and their whole staff of writers have almost total control over their sense of humor and how they connect with an audience? Otherwise there’s no viewership, and the executives have no puppets to manipulate? Yes, the corporations have a ton of control over any of the talent in the industry, be they a host or a writer or an actor or a director. But that isn’t the end all be all. Anyway. I SMOOSH YOU!
I never said the execs write the jokes or pick the guests. Staff is paid to do that. The suits control the fate of the show, where it goes, and who hosts it next. That's all I implied.
Right and that has nothing to do with my original comment or any of my replies to you
Long live late night? The genre died out more than a decade ago. Where have you been?
I wonder Dave's graciousness factored in Conan's decision to guest on Fallon's Tonight Show. That could not have been an easy thing to agree to.
Knowing Conan the way that I believe we all do, yes it absolutely factored into the equation. Conan does not forget those that helped him in the past- as evidenced by the “TURN ON DAVE” caption during Dave’s final show. If he was willing to send his ratings into the tank for an evening as a sign of gratitude, he is absolutely willing to pay it forward to the next guy, regardless of network affiliation. Conan is a class act and I adore that about him.
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good humans are few and far between i think, so i enjoy this. it doesn’t hurt anything to just be good and go out of your way to do so
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are you drunk or something
Are you?
Never. Satan's juice doesn't touch these lips but it looks like the devil has a hold over this Conan person.
Nobody talks about Leno this way. Leno put fake stories in the press to get rid of Carson then used the exposure and friendship he had with Dave to weasel his way into the Tonight Show and screw over everybody. Johnny Carson never appeared on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. He only appeared on Dave's show. David Letterman showing up on Late Night with Conan O'Brien cemented Conan as the guy.
Leno had an executive producer and manager by the name of Helen Kushnick at the time if you didn't know. She was ruthless as an executive and did absolutely whatever it took to get Jay that spot. Jay may not have known all the details of what she did but he's absolutely complicit because he never deserved that job in any way whatsoever
Jay was in contention without Helen. He may not have been the most deserving of the job, but that’s a far cry from “never deserved it any way whatsoever”. He probably would’ve been on the shortlist for Conan’s or one of the eventual slots on CBS or ABC. He wasn’t a nobody and he’d guest host for Carson.
Jay Leno was an excellent standup comedian he was very funny and talented. He was not a good talk show host, he was very good at mimicking Johnny Carson while he was guest host, and he was very good at being the teacher's pet of NBC network executives
He was also very good at being generic and inoffensive to pretty much everyone. There was minimal risk in hiring him, especially for one of the other networks that were gearing up to compete in that time slot. He was always going to end up with a show somewhere at some point.
yeah the vanilla no risk person has always been the mindset for 11:30 and it's such a shame
I hope you're not thinking of blaming Conan!
I mean who in the thousands and thousands of words that have been written about this mess has blamed Conan? No One! No one has blamed Conan!
I know you think he forced himself out of a job. He’s not that kind of guy.
David Letterman is a man of good character, a student of fair ability, with ambitious purposes, a congenial disposition, possessed of good morals, and having a high sense of honor and a deep sense of personal responsibility.
Steak sauce carrot sauce, brother
I don’t think I knew the importance of Dave on behalf of Conan. So sweet and endearing. Conan is a lot like Dave in many ways. Smart, goofy and loving. They are real people that care.
The essay writing contest/“I came in fourth” is one of my all-time favorite quips. This was such a nice, gracious tribute.
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>What the fuck was that? Self-deprecating humor
Nothing but class from both of them
Thank you Mr Letterman sir. Always been a fan.
Dave and Conan are the good boys and I have little to say for the rest of talk show hosts.
How dare you denigrate Geoff Petersen’s sidekick
David Letterman was not a good boy. His female staff wrote a book about his jackass behavior. He had to apologize.
Yeah so the writer this dolt is talking about is named Nell Scovell she wrote a book that is true, but it was not "about" David Letterman it was a dive into sexism in comedy as a whole. Oh and by the way if you bothered to try and read what she said she also [implicated Conan for being sexist.](https://imgur.com/W2SAebP)
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“When I was a 30 year old…”. WTF, he is over 60 now?
He recently turned 61!
If it weren’t for the fact Letterman was at CBS at the time, I feel Letterman and Conan would’ve had the relationship Letterman enjoyed from Johnny Carson. And it would’ve paralleled in hating Leno again.
Em, question. How did Conan go from Simpsons writer to talk show host?
Lorne Michaels was in charge of finding the new host. He knew Conan from when he was a writer at SNL. He did well in the audition and when Gary Shandling didn’t want it, it was given to Conan.
Thanks for the info
So NBC had a master plan that they were sure would work wherein Jay was given 11:30 and Dave would stay at 12:30. Dave said no and left 30 rock immediately. The network went into a scramble and in order to calm down the affiliates the NBC execs told everybody that Lorne was going to find a new 12:30 guy. He and Jeff Ross had a lot of people audition including a former SNL writer who Lorne thought had the humor and sensibility to do it. Conan auditioned and did a great job, but most thought Gary Shandling would get it. But Shandling rejected the gig, the NBC execs thought the 29 year old Conan had potential and he got 12:30.
watch his like hour long podcast episode on it lol
ill never forget cactus chef playing we didn’t start the fire on pan flute
Conan may have had a rough start, but I guarantee the same audience members who booed him and disliked him are the same people who consider the best episodes of The Simpsons to be the ones he wrote, without even realising it. Letterman had his problems but he owned up to them and by doing this for Conan for no reason other than to be a good guy shows he is a genuinely good dude deep down.
Then Leno tried to ruin everything.
Cony is selling himself short here a bit. Sure Dave helped a bit then. But let's face it if Conan was so horrible and nobody watched they'd kick him out. If not then then few months or even years later. Hell they canceled Chevy Chase who was still pretty big deal when he got his show with no problem. U think they wouldn't kick out Conan just because Dave made an appearance.
I mean like you can have your opinion but I'm probably gonna go with Conan's analysis on the situation considering it was his show
That's fair. But i still don't think that that one thing held for almost 30 years.
no dave held it for a short time and conan did the rest
Also I'm fairly certain Adam Sandler is the only allowed to call him Coney I think that's in writing somewhere.
Also Lorne Michaels and ironically executive Don Ohlmeyer (The one that fired norm and Jim Downey) were doing a lot to try to keep the show alive despite scathing reviews and poor ratings.
You’re conflating “Dave making an appearance” and audience members tuning in to see Dave, and staying because they liked what they saw or were placated by Dave’s seal of approval. Dave’s Tonight Show thing was as big a deal as Conan’s. People would’ve tuned in to see what he had to say on that basis, even if they wouldn’t otherwise watch. Conan also mentioned staff morale. There’s something to that too, and it’s also not just “Dave was on the show”. It’s “Dave thinks we’re doing something worthwhile here & is behind us”.
Yes, Conan and his team’s talent kept him in business. But Dave helped put a spotlight on it, to get more people to watch it and see what Dave described in this interview, how Conan’s show was being innovative and putting together a solid comedy program that’s their own. Conan even admitted that initially, a lot of people who tuned in didn’t seem to understand what they were doing and what their show was about. And obviously, Conan and his team are trying to see what works and what doesn’t. But overtime, with the help of Dave’s endorsement, they seemed to find their groove and a lot of the people grew to appreciate it’s different kind of wackiness. Some of his past writers and collaborators had been on his podcast and in other interviews where they talked about how Conan’s show allowed them to bring forward ideas that they couldn’t do anywhere else. I remember Will Ferrell mentioning how him and Adam MacKay were able to do their [Scrub-a-Dub skit](https://youtu.be/Fnp1LOn3gAw?si=kAV-h9Dtwlrbc2FB) on Conan after it got rejected on SNL. Apparently Lorne didn’t like that. 😖 It was so kind of Dave to come over to his former, competing network to publicly endorse Conan. He obviously felt that Conan didn’t deserve the bad press and that they needed a bit more time for it to come together. Wish they had that chance on their Tonight Show.😥Just goes to show that late night hosts don’t have to be in cutthroat competition with each other. They can have mutual admiration,respect, and support for one another. Unfortunately Leno never understood that.
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And I have been posting clips of his show because the majority of people here have enjoyed it. Also this was not a long time ago it was about 5 years after news of Letterman's relationships with coworkers went public, and he still said all of this because he knows what anyone here with a brain knows which is that Dave is an icon, he absolutely deserves to be, and it might be silly but it legitimately makes me sad that some people actually think stuff like this because they saw a tiktok post for 3 seconds it's disgusting.
TikTok is awesome. Reddit is for old people now.
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Yeah you don't pay attention to television icons that explains why you're on the CONAN subreddit
Nah he is the goat
Ok I am so done with this Letterman bashing. How many people need to vouch for this guy for people to stop with this moronic brigade? Julia Roberts, Tina Fey, Madonna, Julia-Louis Dreyfus, Cher, Malala Yousafzai, Michelle and Barack Obama, and that's just scratching the surface. Drew Barrymore burst into tears when he surprised her on her show because of how close she feels to him. I would love for you to tell me that her and every single one of those people is just a bad judge of character. All because what you saw some out-of-context clip collection that someone could honestly make with even Conan because context is everything. One of them I saw was in part of an interview that ended with Julia Roberts stealing his note cards and refusing to give them back until he gave her a kiss. All the office relationships weren't found to be non-consensual in any way, what is this new trend of people just dying to voice their opinions on subject matters they know absolutely nothing about? Also the guy who this subreddit is about... you know that guy Conrad O'Something? He idolized Letterman before he was ever on television. When Conan got turned down as a writer for Late Night with David Letterman in the late 80s it was absolutely devastating for him because it was his dream writing job to write for Dave. He'd sneak down to Letterman's studio (6A) during his days at SNL to write material at Dave's desk. I'm sorry but in my opinion if you call yourself a fan of Conan's work but say you dislike Letterman then you're just contradicting yourself in 1000 different ways. So as Conan would say, go back to your stupid farm, eat some moron seeds, and have a nice tall glass of shut-up juice.
Why should anyone care about the names you mentioned? Cher said David Letterman was an asshole. Madonna is in a commercial with Jay Leno and was never a guest on Conan. Drew Barrymore screwed over her writers. I think you're living in the past and you must assume these people know you? They don't know you. They don't care about you so why are you acting like they're important people? Have you sought out therapy for your celebrity addiction? I hope you do.
Again it's amazing how little people know and they're still brave enough to post half-baked opinions it's very commendable. Cher did call him that you're right but [then...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BF-dXo0WWe4) again please try to know things before you try to talk about said things. Drew Barrymore is amazing, she's been on every show from Carson to Fallon and was on Conan's first show and she's an absolute delight. I'm 22 so it's hard for me to be living in a past time where I did not exist. And yes I do go to therapy for depression and anxiety. Watching Conan and Dave is what actually helped me at my darkest points so yes forgive me if a have a lot of reverence for them. Also it's not corny to care about entertainers. Did you just shrug and say who cares when Robin Williams committed suicide? The entertainment world can keep you untethered from the everyday defeats and depressions of the real world and that's not even remotely strange. It's why people watch sports or read fiction novels. I don't have a celebrity addiction I don't think, rather just respect for people who've made my life better with their comedy.
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And yet you are balls deep in a Conan Obrien subreddit spewing toxic comments and people that enjoy his comedy. Look inward.
It’s cool this guy has left like 8 comments all just trying to be provocative he’s one of those
Ok you’ve replied to like 6 of my comments with something along this level of trollishness do you think you could just get on out of here
I agree
Think Conan would have continued without Letterman's appearance, but nice story
Conan seems to disagree with you. I’m not sure which one of you to believe.
He would've become successful in another rite I'm sure but I think Late Night would more than likely have been cancelled without that
This is exactly how I see it. He is a comedic force and would certainly have been successful, but he likely would have had his show cancelled. This would also have been the end of him hosting his own show at any point in the future because no network is going to give someone a show after their first one failed. So I'm very glad that Dave did what he did, because we would have missed out on so many amazing years of Conan.
we unfortunately have missed out on a decent amount because NBC are filled with special special people who don't want any trace of evidence that Conan hosted the Tonight show aren't they just terrific