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"FacebookPinterest\n\n Last year at this time, everything seemed to be set in late-night stone. Leno had moved his brand of middling variety show to the 10 p.m. slot. Conan finally took his place at 11:30. David Letterman would remain the irascible late-night presence, slightly above the fray, passing judgment on whomever he pleased. And there was also that guy on ABC. Then everything changed. (News flash: Jay Leno is a weenie.) And you know who was the only man to emerge with his honor (and balls) intact? Jimmy Kimmel, the new king of late night.\n\n As has been noted\u2014loudly and unavoidably\u2014this was an eventful year in the world of Late Night. The debacle of Jay Leno at 10 p.m. The resulting public ecution of Conan O'Brien by NBC. The outraged tweeters and twentysomethings of Team Coco. The giddy cackling of David Letterman on CBS and the spectacle of a sad-sack, self-pitying Conan finally opening up about the whole thing on 60 Minutes. It was great television, arguably the best television of the year. But it left everyone involved, well, debased. Everyone except Jimmy Kimmel. Whether it was plastering on a fake chin and doing his show as \"Jay Leno,\" annihilating Leno on his own soon-to-be-canceled show two days later (Jay: \"Ever order anything off TV?\" Jimmy: \"Like NBC ordered your show off TV?\"), or upbraiding Letterman for a Super Bowl commercial the CBS star had shot with the newly re-minted Tonight Show host, Kimmel emerged as the conscience of the hoary late-night format. Now that TV at eleven thirty had calmed somewhat, Kimmel took time after a taping to hold forth on the Great Talk Show Madness of 2010.\n\n\u00B7\u00B7\u00B7\n\n So you're a Man of the Year.\n\n What happened, Conan wouldn't do the interview?\n\n Honestly? We felt like you handled this whole mess the best.\n\n Thank you. Conan's nightmare has worked out extremely well for me. [laughs]\n\n There was a time a couple of years ago when ABC was in discussions with Leno, and you two were talking about being on the same network, right?\n\n Well, ABC was speaking to him about it.\n\n And you guys must have had conversations.\n\n We did. When I was useful to Jay, we had many conversations.\n\n Were you open to working something out with him at ABC? That guy does bring big ratings, even if it's not the same audience. \n\n I was open to the idea of it, but there were many things that had to be worked out first. ABC came to me and said, \"This is what we're doing; we want to be sure you're okay with it.\" I didn't say, \"Yeah, I'll follow Jay,\" but I didn't say I wouldn't. It was scary and kind of exciting. We didn't know what was going to happen.\n\n Was your contract up?\n\n My contract wasn't up, but had Jay Leno come to ABC, my contract would've been up for grabs.\n\n So you have time-slot protection? If they bumped you out of eleven thirty, you could leave?\n\n Yeah, exactly. I had exactly the thing Conan didn't have, and you should have seen my contract when I signed. It was ridiculously terrible. I don't know how he didn't get that. He should kill his lawyers.\n\n Okay, so it's a couple of years later. Jay's about to push Conan off the air. And you decided to go on your show dressed up as Jay Leno. How'd you come up with that?\n\n It came to me at about two o'clock in the morning. I was in bed and I thought, Oh, this would be funny. So I sent an e-mail to everyone saying \"Tomorrow night I'm doing the show as Leno. We have to get a chin and all that stuff.\" It turned out to be a funny thing to do\u2014my bandleader, Cleto [Esco\u00ADbedo], was particularly great in the role of Cackling Kevin.\n\n Did Leno call?\n\n Oh yeah. The next day\u2014and I knew Jay was going to call\u2014and I was like, \"Oh God. Should I tell him I'm not here and call later? No\u2014then I'm going to suffer all day.\" So I took the call.\n\n And?\n\n He said it was funny.\n\n Do you think he meant it?\n\n No. I don't think he means anything he says.\n\n What happened next?\n\n I said, \"Well, thank you, I'm glad you thought it was funny,\" and we had a little chat, and that was the end of it. An hour later, they called and asked me to do his show the next day. I was shocked. But I thought if he was going to be a good sport about it, then I should, too. Then I got on the phone with the segment producer, and the questions they were going to ask had nothing to do with what was going on [in late night]. It was just typical dumb stuff.\n\nMy memory of those nightly satellite-interview segments is that they were always driven by that kind of thing. \"What's your favorite junk food?\"\n\n That is correct. There were a lot of questions like that. And as we talked, I slowly realized the goal [of having me on] was to minimize the damage I'd done and show the audience: Jimmy and Jay are buddies. I hadn't talked to Jay forever before that call. I talked to him a lot when he was thinking about coming to ABC, and when he took the job at NBC, I never heard from him again. So I decided I wasn't going to be the jerk that went along with Jay's scripted comedy bit. I was going to talk about it one way or another. So I felt we'd reached a compromise; Jay would talk about his things, and I would talk about mine. It worked out, I guess. [laughs]\n\n Watching it again, there's definitely this split second after he asks you about the best prank you'd ever pulled, where I could almost see you stop and think, \"He just handed it to me on a platter.\" And then you laid into him. I think you said something about promising a guy your job in five years and then just stealing it back. What's going through your head in a moment like that, humiliating someone on his own show?\n\n It's very uncomfortable. You know what went on in my head? How disappointed Howard Stern would be with me if I didn't take the opportunity to take it to Jay. But I honestly thought he'd mix it up more than he did. I thought it was going to be good television and that we'd get into it a little bit, but he stayed on the track that he was on, and I kept bringing it back, bringing the train back to the track he was tied to. [laughs]\n\n Did you hear from him after?\n\n No. The only comments I've heard him make were to Oprah.\n\n What'd he say?\n\n He said I sucker punched him.\n\n But anybody who knows your work had to know what was coming.\n\n [laughs] Well, I don't think they knew me very well. Everyone around here knew what I was going to do, what I must do. I don't know. It was definitely a mistake on their part\u2014clearly a mistake no matter how they want to spin it. I'm sure if they could go back in time, it would not go like that.\n\n You had no choice, really. Leno at ten was terrible television.\n\n Well, you can say that. I don't necessarily agree it was terrible. You can say Pizza Hut is terrible pizza, but they also sell more pizzas than anybody else. That's Jay's goal. The truth is, we have this idea that late night is about creativity and being cool, but that's not our job. Our job is to get as many people watching the commercials in between our show. That's the reality of it. We all think we're pretty smart\u2014Letterman and Conan and me\u2014and Jay ultimately is the one that really is trying to do his job.\n\n Were you talking to Dave at the time? There was just this palpable glee from both of you as this fiasco was going on.\n\n I wasn't gleeful. I know it sounds dumb to feel sorry for someone who got $40 million for getting fired, but I do think it was a shitty thing that happened to Conan. He is obviously a nice person, a genuine person, who believed it when Jay said, \"If anybody is going to replace me, I'm glad it's you.\" The fact of the matter is that five years before all this happened, NBC came to Jay and said, \"In five years we want to move Conan to eleven thirty. Will you go along with that?\" And Jay said yes. He didn't say no or I don't know. He said yes. That's where he should have said, \"No, I'm not okay with that,\" and as a result, Conan would've been free to explore other options.\n\n Conan would've been on Fox.\n\n Conan could've been on Fox; he could've come to ABC. ABC was definitely interested at the time. That's the part people seem to forget. Jay is a very bright guy and knew one of two things would happen\u2014either his show at ten would do well, which was unlikely, or it would do badly and his lead-in would hurt The Tonight Show. Then, there he'd be, still under contract to NBC, saying, \"Things were going great when I was in charge.\" I tell you, the moment I heard about this ten o'clock deal, I thought that's exactly what he's up to. I knew immediately he had The Tonight Show in his head, that he'd take that show back.\n\n You know what I've never understood? The big deal over The Tonight Show. When I grew up, The Tonight Show didn't really mean anything. To people my age, it's always been \"He was on Letterman.\" Or Leno. Or Conan. Not, \"He was on The Tonight Show.\" When this whole thing was going on, I kept thinking Conan was chasing something that doesn't even exist anymore.\n\n Maybe. Maybe. If you want to use a sports analogy, The Tonight Show would be playing for a team like the Dodgers\u2014a classic baseball franchise. Just because they aren't having a great year, in the right hands they could have a great year. I think Conan probably said, \"I would like to restore quality to The Tonight Show,\" and The Tonight Show is the holy grail of talk shows. It's what Dave Letterman wanted. It's obviously what Jay Leno wanted. I can't blame him for wanting that.\n\n I loved when you went on Letterman and took it to him for helping Leno out with that Oprah Super Bowl commercial. Those lines\u2014\"We had him! We were drowning him! And you threw him a lifesaver!\"\u2014became a Team Coco mantra.\n\n I felt like that, honestly. When I saw the commercial, I was so disappointed. I said, \"No, no, this is not the plan!\" But it was a great promo that got a lot of people talking. For that reason, it was probably a really smart thing to do. I also like that Dave made Jay fly out to New York to do it, and Jay had to wear a disguise so no one knew. Dave had to be so full of glee when he made that telephone call. The only thing that would've made it better is if it was a prank, if he did it purely to fuck with Jay.\n\n I heard they asked Conan to be in that commercial and he said no.\n\n I heard that, too.\n\n I don't blame him.\n\n I don't blame him, either. That's serious for him. It's not a joke.\n\n So at the end of the day, are there any lessons to be learned from this?\n\n The lesson is, it pays to be sneaky. [laughs] I think that's the main thing I learned. That, and don't trust Jay Leno."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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