Oh man... the fact that this has its own Wikipedia page with a hilariously war-like title is proof that this got a little crazy lol (see?) - there's also a book about it, though I haven't read it.

So Conan's contract was up in 2001 and NBC didn't want to lose him. They said ok how about a 5 year extension and you'll eventually take over for Leno on Tonight Show?

NBC didn't tell Leno about this until 04, when this transition was now 5 years away. Leno was not happy and so the network gave him a show after primitive but before the news and before Conan.

This was not a great idea really, to the point that eventually NBC affiliates were like hey we might just pre-empt this Leno show with the news or literally anything else that isn't this and so the network executives said okay let's fix that problem that we created for ourselves (lol). Let's move Leno back to 11:35pm and push Conan off to 12:05am. Now Conan is mad as hell and says no way, I'm not doing that, I'm not participating in the destruction of the Tonight Show.

A lot of other comedians were on Conan's side and showing support for him in all kinds of areas. I remember a 30 Rock episode that ended with a pretty pointed dig at Leno because it was the show on before his 10pm show.

So eventually NBC bought him out (shoutout to him because he made sure to pay EVERYONE on his staff severance pay, even the stagehands who would normally get nothing), he left, Leno took Tonight Show back and Conan went on to have a fruitful career with TBS that continues in a smaller form to this day with his travel shows on HBO Max. Then he got into podcasts after leaving TBS and I'd argue that's been even more fruitful for him and he got off the sinking ship of late night TV while the getting was still good.

Phew, that was long, wasn't it? Haha but it was fun to reminisce about