I'm too busy this evening to take in tonight's episode of The Story of Late Night on CNN but I'm not in a great hurry. I did break to watch John Oliver and he was excellent…better, I thought, than he's been in a while.
The CNN series is trying to cover too many topics in too little time and I don't think it's humanly possible to really explain some of these things — like why Jay got The Tonight Show or how Dave's reps tried to get him fired or that whole mess with Conan — in six hours, let alone a fragment of one hour out of six. It's safe and snug on my TiVo and I'll get around to watching it when I have the time.
But right now, I'm going to link you to a piece by my longtime pal Paul Harris, who was the first person in mainstream media to break the news that someone named Conan O'Brien would be taking over the 12:35 slot on NBC from David Letterman. The story you are about to read is true.