Late Night with Conan O'Brien is an American television talk show broadcast by NBC. The show is the second installment of the Late Night franchise originally established by David Letterman. Hosted by Conan O'Brien,Late Night With Conan O'Brien; February 20, 2009 it aired from September 13, 1993, to February 20, 2009, replacing Late Night with David Letterman and was replaced by Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. The show featured varied comedic material, celebrity interviews, and musical and comedy performances. Late Night aired weeknights at 12:37 am Eastern/11:37 pm Central in the United States. From 1993 until 2000, Andy Richter served as O'Brien's sidekick; following his departure, O'Brien was the show's sole featured performer. The show's house musical act was The Max Weinberg 7 and led by E Street Band drummer Max Weinberg.
In 2004, as part of a deal to secure a new contract, NBC announced that O'Brien would leave Late Night in 2009 to succeed Jay Leno as the host of The Tonight Show. Jimmy Fallon began hosting his version of Late Night on March 2, 2009.
History Replacing David Letterman Upon Johnny Carson's May 1991 announcement of his 30-year hosting tenure on The Tonight Show ending in a year, NBC released a statement that Jay Leno (Carson's guest-host since 1987) would become Carson's replacement, not David Letterman. Though revealed two weeks after Carson's retirement announcement, the decision to go with Leno rather than Letterman had reportedly already been made for a long time, primarily by two of the top executives in NBC's Entertainment division: its president Warren Littlefield and his close collaborator John Agoglia. NBC later said that Letterman's high ratings for Late Night were the reason they kept him where he was. Letterman was bitterly disappointed and angry at not having been given The Tonight Show job; and, at Carson's advice, he left NBC after eleven years on Late Night. CBS signed Letterman to host his own show opposite The Tonight Show. Letterman moved his show to CBS virtually unchanged, taking most of the staff, skits, and comedy formats with him. However, NBC owned the rights to the Late Night name, forcing Letterman to rename his show Late Show with David Letterman.
Keeping the Late Night name, NBC set about building a whole new show in the 12:30 a.m. time slot, from which the network had been making some $20 million to $30 million a year towards the end of Letterman's tenure. NBC brought in Saturday Night Live executive producer Lorne Michaels to produce the new show, including selecting its host. After auditioning some lower-profile comedians, such as Jon Stewart, Drew Carey, and Paul Provenza, Michaels and the network started going after more established names like SNL star Dana Carvey and The Larry Sanders Show star Garry Shandling. Both eventually declined, with NBC reportedly making several approaches to Shandling.
Months into the process, Michaels auditioned Conan O'Brien, a then unknown Simpsons writer who had formerly written for Saturday Night Live. Reportedly, Michaels had originally considered hiring O'Brien as a producer for the new show, however, O'Brien then persuaded Michaels to give him a shot at being the host. Despite having "about 40 seconds"The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, May 29, 2009. of television-performance experience as an occasional extra on Saturday Night Live sketches and briefly appearing in comedy bits on The Wilton North Report, O'Brien auditioned for the show on April 13, 1993. His guests were Jason Alexander and Mimi Rogers; the audition took place on the set of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. NBC offered the show to O'Brien on April 26, and O'Brien made his first meaningful television appearance later that day when Leno introduced him on Tonight. In 2009, on the final episode of his 16-year run, O'Brien stated that he "owed his career to Lorne Michaels".
Debut O'Brien's Late Night debuted on September 13, 1993, with Andy Richter chosen as O'Brien's sidekick. The premiere episode featured John Goodman, who received a "First Guest" medal for his appearance, Drew Barrymore, and Tony Randall with cameos from George Wendt and Bob Costas. The episode featured a cold open of O'Brien's walk to the studio with constant reminders that he was expected to live up to Letterman. Tom Brokaw makes a cameo, welcoming O'Brien to NBC but, doing as those on O'Brien's walk had done, warning him that he had "better be as good as Letterman, or else...", before menacingly crushing saltine crackers in front of O'Brien, appearing to be representative of the fate that awaited the new host if he failed to meet expectations. After seeming to be unaffected by the comments, O'Brien arrives at his dressing room and cheerfully prepares to hang himself. However, a warning that the show is about to start causes him to abandon his plans.
The show's first musical guest was English rock band Radiohead, who performed during the second episode. American singer-songwriter Jonathan Richman was the show's second musical guest.
O'Brien's inexperience was apparent, and the show was generally considered mediocre by critics in terms of hosting. The Chicago Sun-Times Lon Grankhe called O'Brien "nervous, unprepared and generally geeky", and Tom Shales wrote "As for O'Brien, the young man is a living collage of annoying nervous habits. He giggles and titters, jiggles about and fiddles with his cuffs. He has dark, beady little eyes like a rabbit. He's one of the whitest white men ever." (O'Brien wrote for The New York Times a satirical review of the first episode the day it aired titled "O'Brien Flops!", in which he told readers "Frankly, I was not impressed".) The originality and quality of the comedy, however, led by original head writer Robert Smigel, was widely praised. Although O'Brien benefited by comparison from the quick critical and commercial failure of the fellow new late-night The Chevy Chase Show, NBC only offered short-term contracts, 13 weeks at a time and once for six weeks, as widely reported by the press at the time."The Battle for Late Night" A&E Network, April 27, 2010. O'Brien was reportedly almost fired at least once in this period, but NBC had no one to replace him. According to Smigel, "We were basically canceled at Conan, and then they changed their minds in August of '94, gave us a reprieve."Heisler, Steve Interview – Dana Carvey and Robert Smigel The A.V. Club (June 15, 2009). Retrieved on 5-09-10.
In an unusual form of advertising, Conan O'Brien's credits in The Simpsons "Treehouse of Horror IV" episode, originally aired on October 28, 1993 (and produced before O'Brien left the Simpsons writing staff to host Late Night), reference his new role as host of Late Night, including one credit that lists "Watch My Show" as his "middle" name. (All Simpsons "Treehouse of Horror" episodes credit the voice cast and crew under Halloween-associated nicknames, some being faux middle names in quotation marks.)
According to O'Brien, NBC network executive Warren Littlefield told him, with regard to Andy Richter, he'd "never succeed until I 'got rid of that big fat dildo.' That was the tone of the conversations between us and the network." It was widely expected that the host of Talk Soup, Greg Kinnear would take over the role, but Kinnear turned down the opportunity. (Kinnear would instead become host of Late Nights then-lead-out program, Later, in February 1994, remaining there for two years before deciding to pursue an acting career.) Stars like Tom Hanks agreed to appear on Late Night, which boosted audience awareness.
Even Letterman, who admired O'Brien's comic sensibility, appeared as a guest to register his support. According to O'Brien, Letterman's appearance was the catalyst that turned the show around. At first, the show's staff believed that Letterman's request to appear on the show was a prank, because, as O'Brien put it, Letterman "never goes on anyone else's show". Yet Letterman's show of support led others to start believing in O'Brien and, 22 years later when Letterman retired, O'Brien expressed his gratitude and stated that he owed his own late night career to Letterman.
In its first six months on the air, the show averaged 1.7 million viewers (1.8 rating) followed by slight improvements through the spring of 1994. By July and August of 1994, bumped by its college student core demographic being home on vacation, the average viewership stabilized at almost 1.9 million (2.0 rating). Also in August, NBC announced its decision to renew O'Brien's Late Night without specifying a time commitment for the renewal, only highlighting the network's "commitment to the success of the show as long as it demonstrated ratings improvement and creative growth".
One NBC affiliate, KPRC-TV in Houston, dropped Late Night with Conan O'Brien in September 1994 due to low ratings and replaced it with the syndicated Jenny Jones Show. KPRC reinstated O'Brien's Late Night in the fall of 1996, but scheduled it to air as late as 2:40 a.m.; over the next eight years, the station, in addition to The Jenny Jones Show, had aired various other first-run syndicated programs (Extra, Access Hollywood, Ricki Lake, Montel Williams and Inside Edition) and a rebroadcast of its 10:00 p.m. newscast between Leno and O'Brien after it reinstated Late Night. Houston became the subject of a 1997 skit (via classic remote piece) in which O'Brien made impromptu stops at Houston's central bus terminal and the Astrodome to watch an episode of his own show with Houstonians. In response to emails sent by O'Brien's fans following the skit regarding its graveyard placement, KPRC moved the show to 12:35 a.m. in 1998; it would eventually move Late Night to its network-assigned timeslot, immediately following The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, in 2004.
O'Brien's performance style improved through experience, and he began to receive more favorable reviews and ratings the following year. With the ratings gradually improving over the course of two years, Late Night reached a new level of critical and commercial success in 1996; Tom Shales wrote an article entitled "The Late Night Dawning of Conan", and O'Brien received his first Emmy nomination for writing, which he received every year until 2011.
1996–2000
In 2000, Richter left Late Night on good terms, to pursue his acting career, a move that emotionally affected O'Brien, as evidenced by Richter's last show. The show's comedy bits and banter had usually depended on O'Brien's interaction with Richter. O'Brien's wacky non-sequitur comedy became more pronounced as he played all of his comedy and commentary directly to the audience and Max Weinberg instead of towards Richter.
2001–2009