When Johnny announced his retirement, Leno had already been secretly signed a year earlier as Carson's replacement and neither Carson nor Letterman knew about it. Carson purposely made the "dick move" announcement because NBC showed him very little support when Leno's manager planted the story that NBC wanted Johnny…

Carson had that deal for almost 20 years.

The difference is, Leno had nothing to do with Conan getting Late Night. Carson and Letterman (on the other hand) were responsible for Leno becoming Carson's guest host and basically Leno's career.

Where Leno was edgy and great was as a guest on Letterman. Go look at those clips. They were one of the best comedy teams of the 80's. It's too bad that the Tonight Show had to break them up. Leno on his own was about as dull as he is now except with better honed jokes. Letterman brought the best out of him!

The problem with Jaywalking is that the people purposely acted dumb and gave dumb answers because they knew it would get them on TV.

Are you serious? Leno has maybe 2 good jokes out of the 30 he tells in a monologue plus you can see him reading every line of his cue cards and then he steps on almost every punchline. Letterman tells fewer jokes in a monologue but they are more direct with a higher percentage of hits.

You need to read Bill Carter's "The Late Shift," but Leno got the job because of his appearances on Letterman. Leno's career was in a decline when Letterman featured him a a regular guest. Leno worked for Carson Productions and only had a holding contract with NBC. Letterman had in his Late Night contract that he got…

Lazy was Leno's Headlines. Non-lazy was Letterman's Small Town News. Leno just presented the typos as the punch lines and that's it. Letterman's Small Town News punch lines were not the typos but the extra jokes Letterman added about those typos!

Letterman started out in radio and TV then did stand up. He hated it but was great! He killed on Carson and was asked back faster then any other stand up and asked to guest host faster than any other guest. Leno just didn't click on Carson and really didn't click until hr started guesting on Letterman.

Leno was brilliant. WAS!

I think you hit the nail on the head. Letterman is a broadcaster and should be naturally more comfortable in a studio. When he first started at the Ed, his show was like one of his primetime specials or his trips to other cities like Chicago every night. Every night was an event but that started to wear thin after 2…

Wow, you were wrong on that prediction. But I thought you were right.

Which is probably why Letterman quit doing it for a while. Letterman has always had a lot of respect for Conan.

Ironically, Ferguson's executive producer (Peter Lassally) was also Carson's executive producer! Yeah, I think NBC broke Conan but I still enjoy his show.