Here from the days when you were legally not allowed to have a talk show without bringing on Tony Randall as a guest is the entire first episode (minus commercials) of Late Night with Conan O'Brien. It aired 9/13/93 and in addition to Tony, his guests were John Goodman and Drew Barrymore.
I thought it was a decent start and that he got much better in a hurry. Apparently, folks were running through the halls of NBC declaring him a disaster and he was getting "renewed" (if you can call it that) for two weeks at a time, doing shows with the constant possibility of pending cancellation. It was and still is a great success story of the television industry that he not only survived but succeeded.
Reportedly, the entire run of that series will soon be available online and I'm looking forward to revisiting many episodes in his first ten years. I lost my interest in the show later on when it seemed to be less about good, clever writing and more about the ad-libbing abilities of its host. But there were plenty of years there when it was as innovative as anything anyone (even Dave) had done at that hour. Here's how it all started…