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So he gave Jay some counsel, listened patiently as Leno laid the blame for the decision at Ludwin’s door, and told him that was silly because surely Jay realized a move of this magnitude could not emanate from Rick Ludwin’s pay grade.

One thing he did not discuss with Jay, but which staggered him when he finally got convincing evidence that it was true, was the fact that Jay had won a pay-and-play commitment. Michaels continued to be baffled by the implications of that deal and what role it actually played in the way the drama eventually unfolded.

Mostly based on what he’d gleaned from his conversation with Zucker, but also from what his representatives continued to tell him, Conan believed that Jay’s pay-and-play contract had been impossibly forbidding for NBC. Polone suggested that the network had looked at the cost of extricating itself from the deal and blanched: It could ultimately have cost as much as $100 million to pay Jay off. Whatever the price, it had to be a consideration in the decision to retain him and let Conan hit the street.

Without taking a public stand on the matter, NBC’s executives begged to differ. They apparently decided it was necessary to clarify that their decision was based on programming and not financial considerations—especially after Conan went public in a 60 Minutes interview seeming to endorse the suggestion that NBC was on the hook with Jay for about $150 million. (Though Conan himself did not bring up the figure, the reporter, Steve Kroft, did, citing other reports.)

NBC argued that Jay’s deal for ten p.m., while admittedly unusual, did not constitute a burden so onerous that the network could not countenance trying to pay him off. NBC’s legal department stressed that the entertainment side was free to make the smartest decision, with no regard to contract implications. The reason, they said, was that the pay-and-play would have become relevant only in a situation where the talent demanded the right to stay on the air or pressed to sue for liquidated damages based on the impact a cancelation might have on a career. Neither case would likely have ever applied to Jay Leno, NBC argued, because suing would mean a bitter, drawn-out fight during which he wouldn’t be on television telling jokes. And would Jay really want to stay on the air in a show the affiliates were abandoning, guaranteeing failure?

The easy answer was that Jay and his lawyer didn’t have to think much about either prospect, because NBC had come to them promising to slide Jay right back into late night, thus satisfying his need to keep telling jokes on television.

Had NBC decided Conan truly was the future and bid Jay a fond fare-thee-well, resolving his contract would have been a relatively standard procedure, according to the NBC legal department’s analysis. Not that it would have been cheap—certainly it would have cost more than paying off Conan. But that was principally because Jay’s salary was more than double Conan’s, they explained.

One NBC executive did concede that NBC had signed a bad contract with Jay Leno, but insisted that the deal had not determined the network’s decision. Had Conan been tearing it up at 11:35, NBC would have stepped up and done what it had to. The advice given to Zucker and the others in New York had been simple, the executive said: Jay would not be able to get an injunction, even though it was a pay-and-play deal. Ultimately it would still come down to writing Jay a check. Yes, the check would have to be slightly bigger because of the unusual promises in the contract, but, in the end, NBC was going to have to write a guy a check—one guy or the other.

Kevin Reilly had begun Fox’s courtship of Conan O’Brien even before Conan was fully settled out at NBC; he used the customary back channel: Jeff Ross.

From his days at NBC Entertainment, Reilly had developed a warm relationship with Ross, concluding, as so many others did, that Jeff was a totally appealing guy with no artifice in him, no bullshit, as straight a shooter as you were likely to find in Hollywood.

Reilly was dead serious.