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Meanwhile, though the internal anxiety about the impending shift to Conan was only increasing, Rick Ludwin and Nick Bernstein, the two executives closest to NBC’s late-night lineup, never lost faith. Bernstein, in his early thirties, had watched Conan with a fan’s fervor beginning in high school. He supported The Tonight Show shift in a circle-of-life kind of way, though he deeply respected and admired Leno. For his part, Ludwin found the second-guessing of the move to Conan all too familiar, reminiscent of the last-minute hedging that went on in the nineties when NBC almost threw over Leno for Letterman. If the network had listened to some strident voices back then, Ludwin concluded, Jay would never have survived to be the dominant force he became. So Ludwin argued forcefully for sticking by the decision that had been so thoughtfully worked out.

Besides, Ludwin didn’t have any overall reservations about the content of Conan’s 12:35 show. To Ludwin, Conan had long since proved how inventive and creative he could be—and of course how damn smart he was. He knew that Conan considered everything carefully. The last thing that made sense to Ludwin was to try to force something on a host that he believed he wouldn’t execute well, which could easily lead to a performance without conviction.

Ludwin patiently countered the Conan doubters whenever the discussion drifted toward a suggestion that NBC not go through with the shift, though he knew he didn’t convince all of them. As one top NBC executive described the sentiment being expressed privately inside some offices in New York and Burbank, “I don’t know how with anyone still successful you can be creating a situation where there would be a finite end to that success. I mean, Barbara Walters stays on the air until she’s eighty. You gotta pay Conan off. But Jeff had that relationship with Conan and Jeff Ross.”

Zucker shrugged off all the under-the-breath questions about whether Conan should be paid off. His stance was simple: He’d made a commitment to O’Brien and he was going to stand by it. With any ousting-Conan option off the table, Zucker was left standing in the middle of his confluence. He decided to go with the flow; he pulled out the ten o’clock solution, ready at last to lay it at Jay’s feet.

Despite all the on-air jokes about running off to ABC and his serious private comments about how wounded he felt by NBC’s decision to point him toward the door, Jay Leno recoiled from what he saw as the potential consequences of a change of professional address.

As usual, he had a ready line for it: “The czar you have is always better than the czar you’re going to get.” A new place meant new camera operators, new pages, new everything. Worse, he foresaw an ugly scenario taking shape, with his long relationships at NBC turning hostile the moment he announced he was moving on. “Then the mysterious sandbag falls on your head,” he said. “I’m Italian. I know how this works.”

Jay elaborated: “Suddenly little stories appear in the papers: ‘The arrogant Mr. Leno refused to . . .’ Or ‘Jay took a private jet to go to . . .’ And you’re like, where did this come from?” Staff members who might have felt slighted by some little incident that had taken place fifteen years earlier would suddenly be out there peddling nasty stories. “You get fragged. Your own troops are shooting at you—that’s the worst thing.”

While he remained unhappy with what NBC had done, Jay never directed that unhappiness toward Conan. Conan might well become his competitor if he was forced to join ABC, but Jay had long argued that the late-night comics should all get along in spite of their competitiveness. It was all just show business. He wasn’t about to nullify that position now by making it openly personal with Conan, which was a primary reason why he turned down one extremely provocative offer.

Word got to him from the Letterman camp that a true television event could be set up after he ended his Tonight Show run: They invited Jay to come on the