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That kind of manager, as Michaels saw it, would have been in there talking to the guys in hairnets—and everybody else—at NBC, finding out what was really going on, getting the information he needed to warn his client that he faced serious trouble. From at least October on, Michaels believed, a Bernie kind of manager would have been asking the necessary questions: Are we OK? What do we need to do?

It was of no use simply to make the argument that Conan was superior to Jay, had paid his dues, and deserved the job more. In television, Michaels knew from deep experience, in the contest of numbers versus taste, it was no contest. To allow the situation to get caught up in “They misled me” or “I was lied to” or “They did the wrong thing and I’m doing the right thing” had the effect of turning it toxic.

There was no way that Bernie Brillstein would have allowed that to happen, Michaels knew. Instead, he would have been right there agreeing with Seinfeld: Stay on the air. You’re still on NBC—stay on and figure it out. Your position might not be idyllic, but complaining that “they’ve deceived me and they betrayed me” could result only in martyrdom. And, as Lorne pointed out, underscoring his and Brillstein’s (and Seinfeld’s) frame of reference, “Jews do not celebrate martyrdom.”

Conan also had a raft of fervent supporters online, and many in the press, who feted his show as a gem that NBC had treated as if it were a chewed-over olive pit. In one delicious twist for him, Conan’s Tonight Show was nominated for an Emmy (he lost again to Jon Stewart, who won for an astounding eighth straight year), while Jay was totally shut out. And of course, the stand Conan took to walk rather than be downgraded was widely celebrated as courageous and justified.

Among others in the comedy business, Conan had enormous support. His old friend and summer roommate Jeff Garlin linked the outcome to character issues—as in, Conan had character and Jay didn’t: “Jay should have had the character to say, ‘No, I said I was leaving and I’m going to stand by what I said. Instead he pretended like it never happened,”Garlin said.

Like some others, though, Garlin was not convinced Conan had found his rhythm yet on The Tonight Show—or at least not until his last two cant-miss weeks of shows. “Conan is extraordinarily talented,” Garlin observed. “He’s totally different. He should play up those things.” Instead, on Tonight, Garlin argued, Conan was trying to be both outrageous and mainstream. “You can’t be both things. He didn’t have enough time. He was three-quarters of the way there.”

Even Garlin conceded that NBC was probably right in believing that Jay would have beaten Conan in the ratings if he had left to go to ABC rather than move to ten p.m. But Garlin insisted that that proved nothing: Jay already beat Letterman with regularity, “and you can’t tell me that The Tonight Show with Leno is funnier than Late Show with Letterman.” Jay’s dominance, Garlin said, went back to the taste vs. numbers debate. “The people that Jay appeals to are not comedy fans,” Garlin argued. “It’s just the general public. Letterman and Conan appeal to people who are comedy fans. It’s like comparing John Coltrane to Kenny G. One of Kenny G’s albums probably sold more than all of John Coltrane’s library. But you can’t tell me for a second that Kenny G is better than John Coltrane.”

NBC didn’t care if Conan O’Brien was funnier, just as in 1992 it had not cared if David Letterman was funnier, though many of those in the position to make that decision had little doubt that he was. What NBC did care about was, yes, those album sales—or ad sales, in this case. Jeff Zucker had never claimed that Jay Leno was funnier than Conan; nor had Jeff Gaspin. In a business of quantification, how was a comparison like that even relevant? Nobody counted laughs and sold them to advertisers.

But for all the top executives’ efforts to walk away from the wretched experience and move on to the next item on the network agenda, something about Conan