One other point on Bill Carter's new book, The War for Late Night: When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy: In his 2006 book, Desperate Networks, Carter covered the part of the story where NBC Exec Jeff Zucker engineers the delayed departure of Jay Leno and the installation of Conan O'Brien as host of The Tonight Show. It's a very different account there, one in which Leno is given a new contract in 2004 that will keep him at that job through the end of 2009…then a few months after that, Zucker approaches Leno about the possibility of making that the last contract. Jay is given the choice of handing the show over to Conan after that and he agrees.
In the book released last week, Leno knows when he gets the 2004 contract that it's his last and he's pissed about it but he doesn't have any choice. Not the same thing at all. Presumably, Carter learned more when he researched the latest chapter of this whole tawdry drama.