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But as far as Zucker was concerned, there was less excuse for the second issue: missteps in guest bookings. Zucker, of course, had a great deal of accrued experience from running Today, where bookings were the lifeblood of the program (and the ratings). While each show had its own booking staff that made most of the calls, landing the biggest names often required the intervention of a star like a Katie Couric (or a star producer, like Jeff Zucker). Even close to ten years past his Today tenure, if there was one thing Zucker knew as well as or better than anybody else in the business, it was how to book for numbers. And he thought Conan and his team weren’t doing it.

To what extent that was purely Zucker’s view as opposed to how much he was being influenced by what was being murmured in his ear wasn’t totally clear to those on whom Jeff unloaded this opinion. Others at NBC were already aware that Dick Ebersol, the man whose judgment Zucker was most apt to rely on and trust, had tipped over entirely to the negative side about Conan. Ebersol’s reservations—and unhappiness at how Conan had reacted to his voluntary consultant role—had hardened, within days of the premiere.

As the shows piled up, Ebersol’s critique grew only more pointed. The focus group tape late in the first week was funny, but it almost seemed designed to offend older viewers—however many were left by that point. The music performances in the last act of the show seemed calculated to encourage the nonhip to hit the road. Even Pearl Jam, which seemed like a booking coup on Conan’s first night, had irritated Ebersol. He knew the group had many great songs, but what they played (“Get Some”) seemed to Dick—admittedly, at sixty-two, not the precise target audience for that brand of rock—to push past entertainment and toward a test of how much hearing loss a human could comfortably suffer. Alienating music acts were not going to help drive Tonight audiences into Jimmy Fallon either, Ebersol, who was already most impressed with Fallon’s early efforts, concluded.

Dick’s concerns actually started at the very top of the show—with Andy. Conan had managed just fine, it seemed to Dick, after Richter left the Late Night show in 2000. That Conan had decided to bring him back when he was starting up Tonight boggled Ebersol’s mind. He could not conceive of a thing Andy brought to the show, other than serving as a baby blanket for Conan. The interaction between Conan and Andy made Ebersol wince. During the monologue Conan would hit a joke, and Andy—off camera, to Conan’s right, audibly mic’d—would occasionally respond with a comeback, almost every one of which cracked Conan up. (Indeed, one star of another late-night show was in awe of Richter because “he scored every time he opened his mouth.”)

Andy didn’t crack up Ebersol. Worse, Dick thought the nightly remarks from Andy, which Conan would then respond to, had the effect of a bouncer shooing would-be attendees away. Their exchanges played to Dick like two guys having a conversation the audience wasn’t a part of, with Conan glancing off camera for a significant portion of his monologue, checking Andy’s reaction. Every second he was doing that, he wasn’t talking directly to the people lying in their beds with the TV on.

But more than anything else, what had raised Ebersol’s finely attuned late-night hackles was precisely what had alarmed Zucker: the booking issue. Here was Conan, assuming control of the biggest platform in show business, and in his second week—on only his ninth Tonight Show—his lead guest was, incredibly, Norm MacDonald. The onetime SNL player had not, as far as Ebersol knew, had a prominent show-business job in years. Ebersol thought the show might as well have booked Norm Crosby.

Of course, for Conan’s true fans, the MacDonald booking was cause for real excitement. He had always been one of O’Brien’s signature guests, and he always seemed to delight Conan. (And that night, he killed Conan again,