Conan had taken over as The Tonight Show’s host on June 6, 2009 and the spectacular debacle played out in January 2010 when NBC announced that it intended to move Jay Leno from primetime to late-night spot of 11:35 pm and consecutively move O’Brien to 12:05 am with an hour long show. Conan’s contract stipulated that he could be shifted to a 12:05 slot without any penalty.
Conan O’Brien stated that he was not given any prior notice of the shift and that NBC had offered him the choice of either moving to the 12:05 am slot or to leave the show. He later issued a press release on January 12 saying that he would not continue if The Tonight Show is moved to the 12:05 time. He also commented that The Tonight Show, which has been the greatest franchise in the history of broadcasting, would be seriously damaged if moved just to accommodate another comedy program. His comments received wide support from his viewers who made a martyr out of him.
Jay Leno especially faced heat from critics who pulled out and cited a recording of a 2004 Tonight Show where Leno said that he would let Conan O’Brien take over the Tonight Show without any incident. Leno even received heat from Conan as well as other NBC talk show host Jimmy Kimmel for the fiasco where Jimmy was quoted on his show saying, "Listen Jay, Conan and I have children, all you have to take care of is cars. I mean, we have lives to lead here, you've got $US800 million. For God's sake, leave our shows alone."
Conan went to the lengths of posting a sales ad on Craigslist for a “barely used late-night talk show” and also joked that young people should be inspired to believe they can "do anything you want in life - unless Jay Leno wants to do it, too"
When things got to a level of ‘too hot to handle’ it was announced on January 21 that Conan had reached a deal with the network where he would be exiting The Tonight Show with $45 million out of which $12 million were set aside for his staff who had moved from New York to Los Angeles with him after he quit the Late Night Show.
However, by the time the deal was reached, the whole incident had already turned into a full scale PR disaster for NBC, Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien. When they will be able to recover from this damage, critics agree, cannot be said.
