Page 3 - Point Jay News Today

Have conversations with jay leno about the five-year plan for conan obrien to take over "the tonight show." and i would sense he was hurt by the decision. >> you ever sleep in the hospital? i spent 24 hours. i had a horrible drome. i couldnt believe. i felt like i was suffocating. then i woke up and realized, oh, conan was holding a pillow over my face. hey, hey! >> five years goes by pretty quickly. and we got that moment, and we said oh shit, because the fact is jay was still doing incredibly ...

>> i still think in a world of audience fragmentation, "the tonight show" is the gold standard. its always been a critical piece of the nbc brand. >> we have smart bombs and dumb reporters. >> jay stepped in there, dug himself out of that hole. thats amazing because the pie has been cut up so much. >> we did four more years, and then we had come to the end of our run. >> thank you, everybody. i dont like good-byes. nbc does. i dont care. i dont -- i dont care. >> as sad as it was that it ended, ...

What do we do? >> we were hearing that abc was offering jay leno the 11 spot. >> have you thought about the abc thing, about whether you want to come over here and more importantly, what will become of me? >> i thought, well, you know what? i would rather follow an hour of "tonight show" than half hour of "nightline." and five years or whatever when jay was done, i would move into the 11:30 slot. >> i said nbc, would you release me from my contract? they said no, we want to keep you here. okay. ...

>> be authentic and authentically weird. >> weve got a lot to do tonight. a whole big world of fix. >> lets leave there it. >> no, dont leave it there! why would you leave there it? there is a terrible place to leave it. ♪ . harvard didnt have a facebook. now were at $1,000 people. >> the government is now on threat level orange. >> we must find terror wherever it hides. >> this is a time when the country is grappling with a post-9/11 world. >> thank you very much. welcome to "the tonight sh...

>> i think the longer we just sit here, the more uncomfortable it will make jay. >> if you lose a television show, theres a part of you that feels rejected by america. and now jay leno! >> thank you very much. it is good to be home. good to be home. good to be home, kev. im jay leno. im your host, at least for a while. >> when we went back at 11:30, there was nothing, oh yea, about it. it was just march on.

Emotional moment. i love jay. he is such a kind person. i never saw jay treat anyone p poorly. what i was going to say is he just knew i would do anything to protect him. >> weve been friends for 40 years, and hes about to do his last good-bye. and im sitting there, and he reached over and grabbed my hand for a second and said, im really glad you were here. and thats as emotional as jay gets. >> in closing, i want to quote johnny carson, who was the greatest guy to ever do this job. and he said,...

I asked jay what does he think about all this. >> and they came to me and said we dont want to lose conan obrien. okay, what does that mean? >> i laid out this five-year plan to him. i think he understood what we were trying to get at. and there was nobody in my time at nbc who was ever more of a team player than jaylen leno. >> you know, this show is like a dynasty. you hold it and hand it off to the next person. i dont want to see the fighting and the back and forth in the press. so here it is...

Cheerleader. were going help everyone out there, try to for the next hour take our mind off things. >> here is a strange thing in "the wall street journal" today. toys r us has announced they might sell their toy division. so we was toys, is that their new name? >> we started out by doing jokes that were completely nonpolitical, nonseptember 11th. and then you started to be able the make jokes about the tangential things. there was the taliban. >> things are not looking good for the taliban. tod...

>> and we all just looked at each other like, this makes no sense. >> basically what youre doing is offering someone a 2 liter bottle of pepsi just before you offer them a 2 liter bottle of coke. and in this analogy, im the coke because thats the better drink. >> when the nbc said to jay, you know what? conans going to take over your job in five years, thats when you say, okay, fine, no hard feelings. you call abc, you call fox. you try to get my job. you leave. you dont, you dont -- ill be in t...

I think it was my way of acknowledging the inherent silliness of the situation. but i also laid out exactly what had happened, how i felt about it. and thats when the shit hit the fan. >> conan obrien told nbc and the wider world today he no longer wants to host "the tonight show" if the show is to air in any other time slot. >> in the end conan was just too hurt and wouldnt do it. so we decided moving jay back into 11:30 was the right call. >> heres jimmy kimmel! >> you know, i came from a back...