“Oh so he did stay 5 years?” - WTF HOW STONED ARE YOU BILL? 😢

I love that bill talks out of his butt with such authority, only to find out he knew nothing at all. Sums up my entire opinion on him as a person, its just nice and concide in this one clip.

The most fascinating part of this video to me is "Why does it sound like it's Bill Maher's first time hearing this story??" Does he sincerely not know the Conan/Leno drama?

You can tell jimmy knows a lot and what actually happened but doesnt want to explain it because you can explain certain logic to people that are completely missing it

You gotta love Bill speaking about the situation with total confidence...and then being repeatedly surprised about key details 🤨 He keeps accusing Jimmy of hating Jay, but fails to recognize his point of view is skewed by his fondness of Jay.

Really glad Bill was so prepared for this conversation.

Jimmy taking conans side here makes me respect him more

A good rule of thumb reinforced here: It's probably not a good idea to interview someone when you're stoned.

This is the most real I’ve EVER seen Kimmel, man I think I like this version of him 1000% more than the tv version.

Conan’s interview with Letterman after all the drama settles is great. Conan didn’t deserve how things played out. I blame Conan for my Insomnia since the 90’s, lol.

"Nobody is blaming Conan" 🤣

I love when Bill just goes off into a strawman argument and the uses it as fact.

Another problem for Conan's Tonight Show: if your lead-in is another late night talk show, then your late night talk show playing immediately afterwards at night becomes redundant. Putting Jay before Conan obviously was going to poison Conan's chances for success. I mean, the whole deal was shady.

older conan and craig ferguson are miles ahead of todays late night

For a guy who appears to have all the answers Bill seems genuinely surprised at many things here 😂

I agree with Jimmy about it being diabolical. Jay promised on air to give the show to Conan and announced it publicly many times. I've watched his interviews about it and I listened to him very closely and ultimately he didn't want to give up his show, and he believed that he was the only one who could do it. He did the same thing to Letterman when it was implicitly understood that Dave was to get the show after Johnny Carson retired- it's literally on record that Jay hid in a closet to spy on the network to figure out how to get the Tonight Show- that's how badly he wanted it! He lied to the public and to Conan under a bad faith promise and then turned around and quietly sabotaged him while trying to play the nice guy; Mr. "I don't want any drama" and yet drama somehow keeps following him. He knew exactly what he was doing to Conan. Conan uprooted his entire staff and his family from NY to move to LA to do the Tonight show after Jay's bad faith promise to the WORLD that Conan would get his show. Jay never had any intention of giving up his show, and that's why Jimmy is absolutely spot on here- diabolical is the word!

I love how this show is supposed to be 2 chill guys smoking pot, but it ends up just Bill getting stoned by himself lol

I like that Jimmy has always had Conan’s back

Conan was so great on the late show. He got everyone on his staff paid and you could tell he is a kind hearted guy who puts others first

This goes deeper than that. I was working for a local station back then. Conan Tonight show ratings were off the chart all summer until Jay Leno started the 10 o'clock. Issue was that now majority of people watched Jay Leno at 10 and shut their TVs off. The ratings for the 11 o'clock news were nearly cut in half for us.

Bill so stoned he can't follow what Jimmy is telling him.

Out of all the late night shows Conan was always my favorite. He was definitely the funniest out of all the late night shows.

Bill not understanding dignity, honor, professionalism, and respect is very on character for him. I wouldn’t expect anything less of him.

This is why doing interviews stoned isn’t always for the best

"oh he did stay 5 years?" how is bill talking so much about something he clearly knows nothing about

Gee, Bill, imagine that you might not have the whole story for maybe a millisecond.

I'd say that Jay has done even better after he left the show.

I like hearing Jimmy talking straight, instead of hearing him talk in character.

The other issue that no one talks about is that in those intervening 5 years, Conan gradually altered the format of his show in order to retain as many Leno viewers as possible once he took over. Less dark/absurd sketches and less playing with the format, more packaged joke delivery systems (Celebrity Survey, etc). When Leno stayed on the air, that all became for nothing; it just made the Tonight Show less appealing to people who loved his 90s 12:30 show.

The look on Maher's face when someone tells him that he doesn't know everything is priceless. Kimmel's revelation here is like Kristal Ball reminding him that COVID caused the banks to crash briefly.

I feel bad for Leno in this situation. I mean, they came to *him* and said, "You're stepping down in five years." He didn't go to them, say he wanted to retire, and then change his mind (or even break down and come back because they threw a bunch of money at him). I DO agree with Letterman, however, that if he wanted to keep going he should have gone to ABC, CBS or whoever and negotiated a better deal for himself, rather than sticking with the people who already screwed him over. I think it's a little far-fetched to say that he schemed his way into the 10 p.m. timeslot in order to sabotage Conan. Presumably NBC offered him that in order to keep him from going to ABC (which, again, he really just should have done at that point, provided the Peacock wasn't offering him more money). I also agree with Maher, however, that it's not Leno's responsibility to do what's best for Conan. If he had just said "No" when NBC first tried to make him step down and threatened to sue the pants off them if they tried to force him out, I'd have no problem with him.

Jimmy isn’t willing to just agree with everything bill says which is weird to see

its interesting hearing jimmy speak causally and honestly rather than joking mixed with seriousness which his show has.

This show would be better if Maher wasn't high. He asks questions that have been answered repeatedly.

How is it that Bill Maher does not know this stuff? It's on the internet and everyone knows what Jay did to Conan.

Genuine Kimmel hits way harder than TV Kimmel.

bahahaha, dude kimmels voice drops a whole octave when he's ripped

Jay Leno doomed himself when he announced, on his show, that he would be passing the Tonight Show to Conan 4 years later. If he never had any intention of leaving, Jay shouldn't have made the announcement at all. I think that's the root of the issue. How good is Jay Leno's word? It's not about just helping advance Conans career at all.

Amazing how keeping your word is inconceivable to Maher.

I think the point that a lot of people miss with this Late Night drama is that these hosts were just pawns for these networks. Networks are really only concerned with ratings and profit, as they should be. But these hosts in this late night shuffle seemed to think it was personal.

You can really tell the difference between Maher and Jimmy's characters when Maher shows himself to be totally incapable of understanding Jimmy's perspective that maybe a decent person would opt not to give the shaft to their colleague for the sake of getting a couple more years on the air. Giving weight to someone else's interests in that way just seems like a totally foreign concept to Maher, whereas it seems like second nature to Jimmy.

After this, I have to go back and watch Dave responding to Jay’s “Don’t blame Conan”.

What's sad is it never mattered in the end. Talk shows are on their way out.

Bill Maher attempting to tell Jimmy Kimmell about the late night talk show happenings is… *chefs kiss*

I'll never forget Conan's Tonight Show set. Classiest set in late night. When your lead-in is the old show, how do you expect the new show to get any traction, like anything new, the first 2 years is figuring it out. Look at Colbert's Late Show, year 1-2 were very different from year 3+, he wasn't political because he was trying to distance himself from his old Report show. Now, he's mostly political. Even when they first announced Conan was getting the TS 5 years early, even as a teenager I said, that's a weird guarantee.

Bill Maher is the poster boy of "what would a heel say?"

To me the bottom line is the tv execs manipulated the situation from every conceivable angle, and it was inevitable that feelings would get hurt, and the the comedians in question would be pitted against each other and put in situations where they had little choice but to look out for themselves at the expense of the others. The whole thing is sad, as they all seem like good people to me.

Warren Littlefield and John Agolia did the same with Jay in regards to Johnny Carson. At the time, Jay was the hottest comic in town and he was already guest hosting The Tonight Show at the point so NBC gave him the show scheduled for whenever Johnny stepped down. As Warren Littlefield famously said: "we gotta make sure the future is secured"

Leno dropped hints about a possible move to ABC. I used to watch him all the time. I think around '08 I remember him mentioning it in his monologue. One day a 5 pointer hit the LA area and that night Leno joked he went over to the ABC studios to seek shelter. It was a subtle hint to address the speculation at the time.

Seems that NBC should've followed what they did in the 90s and had Jay slowly take more nights off and had guest hosts and then slowly build the selected guest host up with more air time

When Jimmy did his Top 10 with Leno right after it happened was one of the best grillings ever.

I hope Maher has on Conan and Letterman at some point.

Thanks Jimmy for spilling the tea! Business can be complicated!

Maher is really missing the beat to this whole story. It isn't about Leno looking out for Conan but he should have asked to be let out of his contract and find another channel to compete on. It was that simple. Leno knew that all he had to do was make the situation as untenable for Conan as possible and NBC would run back to him. My favorite bit was when Letterman responded by saying "Nobody is blaming Conan!" Check that video out. It still makes me laugh to this day because the simple matter was Leno could not let go and he had to f*ck it up for Conan.

I want Bill's shirt! ❤

I still say, it was up to the executives.

When he said "Fallon surging" I shuddered a little bit.

Bill made a mistake doing this episode stoned, because when the "Tonight Show debacle" was in the news, he actually made some sharp observations about the whole affair. *(From Maher's appearance on Larry King's CNN show in 2010):* *Larry King:* 'What did you make of the whole Conan vs. Leno affair?" *Bill Maher:* "I actually made a lot of it. I wanna' start off by saying I like Conan a lot. I did his show when he came out to L.A.; I had nothing to plug, and there's no greater way you can show affection for somebody than to do their show when you don't have anything to promote. But I did it to say 'welcome to L.A. and I like you." Now, I did Jay's show about 10 days ago and I got all these tweets from Conan's fans. These are the people who are so upset that Conan didn't get 'The Tonight Show," and they're saying "why'd you do Jay Leno's show? He sucks! He's this! He's that!" These people need to get a grip. They have no idea how show business works, and it's not all that different from the way life in general works. And this business about Jay Leno being selfish-" *Larry King:* 'They say he shouldn't have taken 'The Tonight Show' after only 5 months." *Bill Maher:* "Why? I saw Oprah on her show ask Jay ten different ways 'are you sorry you ruined Conan's dream?' Why is it Jay Leno's job to be concerned with Conan O'Brien's dream? When Leonardo Dicraprio gets a script does he say 'I'd really like to do this, but Jake Gyllenhaal had his heart set on it. Would I be ruining his dream?' I think we've all been in the position where we were offered something that somebody else wanted. Hey, Bob in accounting wanted that job, so should I give it to him?" "Now, the one place I would criticize Conan- and Dave Letterman for that matter- are these comments 'you can do anything you want in this world, as long as Jay Leno doesn't want to do it, too.' You're not a kid who got his ice cream knocked to the ground by Jay Leno. He beat you for something. And by the way: it's a very desirable job. You wanna be on top of the mountain? There's gonna be some others who wanna be there, too."

I once was a Kimmel fan. Something changed.

Conan was always the most talented. It's not disputable.

I think Kimmel is looking at it from Conan's point of view and showing empathy towards him, while Maher, clueless and egotistical, is just lost in his own head and not really listening to Kimmel. lol

Duh it took a while for it to suddenly dawn on me that Jimmy is who ABC replaced Bill with way back when they cancelled Politically Incorrect. I use to love that show, and I was always working late at home for my telecommute job and would make sure to set aside computer tasks that didn’t require intense concentration so I could turn on Bill and his guests and at least hear it in the background. I was so bummed out when ABC cancelled it. I guess it all worked out in the long run for Bill (who actually annoys me sometimes these days but that’s a different story).

Jaybird was once a Rolls Royce mechanic. Drove to the "Club" in repairs

It's kinda ironic. NBC has all the late night talent back then (Leno, Letterman, Conan), and in an attempt not to lose them made the worse possible decisions. - "We don't want to lose Letterman's late night ratings, so we'll replace Carson with Leno" - ends up losing Letterman and a chunk of the audience - "We don't want to lose Leno to ABC, so we'll offer him the 10pm gig", which ends up tanking Conan and they lose Conan.

Bill always does this. If you are his BFF, you cant do anything wrong. He is like this with Leno, Vedder, Sean Penn, Hefner. He defends them like crazy, and will not accept any criticism, because your are wrong automatically and a crybaby according to him.

I love it, the more stoned Bill gets and has no writers around to bolster his "intellect", he really knows nothing. Even about the industry he is a part of. It's fucking mind blowing how no one else points this out.

Conan is the best!❤

Agree with Bill Maher totally.

What I love is that first they were thinking of pushing Jimmy back for Conan, then planned on doing so for Jay, and after all the dust had settled, Jimmy ended up getting the 11:30 slot and doing respectable numbers with it. I also love that as someone who was involved in the whole fiasco in a behind-the-scenes capacity, he has very strong reasons for backing Conan in all of this.

Lol Bill made to look so dumb by Jimmy and Jimmy tried to not go into it but Bill screwed the story Jimmy had to correct him 🤣. "I don't remember" "no, no one knew about it but me" I'm flipping dead lol

That joint is greatly roled, it smokes consistent and goes out almost immediately.

This interview is the perfect example why you can’t believe a word Bill says without doing your own research first.

Bill’s like the only person in show biz that stuck up for Leno throughout the whole back and forth with him and Conan. I’m sure the fact Leno was doing Real Time all throughout that was completely unrelated.

Bill assume too much and when he is wrong he comes off petty.

I’m conflicted. A part of me agrees with Bill. Why is Jay Leno getting the bad rap for this? Why not the NBC executives for putting both of these guys in this predicament?

I am shocked that Billy cannot comprehend having Jay Leno on at 10:00 PM was a bad idea and negatively affected Conan hosting the tonight show.

This is painful to watch. It’s embarrassing how little Maher understands such a major story that played out in his own industry. Then he can’t or won’t get it when it’s explained to him.

The truth is almost always somewhere in the middle. To truly understand how NBC made a mess of the Tonight Show transition multiple times you have to go all the way back to the early 1980's. By then, Johnny Carson had become the tail that wagged the dog at NBC. The network was in total freefall and late night was all it had going for it. Carson took full advantage of this, and when he negotiated the last of his big deals at the network got everything he wanted and then some. He owned the show, he had total say over who followed him at 12:35 (which he also got the show shortened to it's now 1 hour runtime), fewer shows, the appointment of a permanent guest host (which would feed into all of this), and more time off. Carson had a very complicated relationship with the brass at NBC, and it showed. He hand picked Letterman to follow him after giving Tom Snyder, who Carson didn't particularly care for, the boot from his Tomorrow show. Letterman, like his idol Carson, never really got along with the top execs at NBC. And while Letterman was loved by Johnny, his quirky off handed brand of comedy didn't always land with audiences the way we like to think it did. He's beloved by fellow comedians and constantly citied as a major influence of many of todays top comedy talent - but so was another up and comer in the comedy world - Jay Leno. When Joan Rivers bolted her permanent guest hosting duties on The Tonight Show (and ruined a decades long friendship with Carson over it) for her own ill-fated late night show on Fox, Jay Leno would eventually be named the new permanent guest host of The Tonight Show. Watch Showtimes docuseries on The Comedy Store for some serious background - Jay Leno at one time was one of the biggest things in standup comedy - someone who just about every comic would stop everything they were doing backstage whenever he got up to do his set. Yes - Leno had Helen Kuschner - an old-school Hollywood bully right out of central casting - but she got the job done. She saw what many in the business refused to believe - that Carson was in the last few years of a career that was coming up on it's 30th year as host of The Tonight Show. She planted stories in the NY Post about NBC wanting to give Carson the boot, and this caused a tremendous amount of animosity between the Carson camp, and Jay Leno. Did Jay know everything Helen was doing? I don't think he knew everything. But at the end of the day, she was his representation, and he knew she had a killer reputation. He had blood on his hands too. Fast forward to the presentation of the NBC Fall Schedule for 1991-1992 television season. Leno is there to tell some jokes, and Carson is there unbeknownst to anyone at NBC to announce his retirement at the conclusion of his 30th anniversary as host of The Tonight Show. NBC has nothing prepared and is caught totally off-guard. What no one knew outside of the top GE executive at NBC and NBC's top two executives - Leno has already been given a deal to take over as host of The Tonight Show whenever Carson retires. On one hand - Carson had every right to be pissed, and no right at all in the same breath. For years he had been dancing back and forth with the idea of retirement and would give NBC no long term commitment as to what the future held. He was also the undisputed King Of Late Night and felt some level of respect was in order, and it probably should have been. But why didn't NBC care what Johnny thought about his replacement? I think a few things factored into their decision not to confer. Johnny kept them in the dark about his plans moving forward, so both sides were playing the same coy game. Carson obviously had faith in Leno because he had signed off on the decision to make him permanent guest host. But he also gave Dave the same type of seal of approval by keeping him in the 12:35 slot since the early 1980's. With Jay, NBC owned the Tonight Show once again. With Dave - his Worldwide Pants company would want ownership just like Carson Productions had. Jay, aside from Helen, had a solid working relationship with the execs at NBC. Dave was known for sometimes being a little too cute with the network brass and wasn't seen as as much of a team player so to speak. Leno would have no say in who followed him at 12:35, where as Dave, like Johnny, would have final say over the time slot (and eventually did at CBS). And probably fatally for Dave, as outlined brilliantly in The Late Shift by Bill Carter, Dave had no representation and had never actually made a point of asking to be Carson's successor. As many of you have commented - it's a business, and by those standards alone - Leno was the safer bet to succeed Carson. Early on, Dave beat Jay head to head once Dave made the move to 11:35 at CBS. NBC famously had second thoughts about maybe giving Dave the job. But everything changed when Hugh Grant surprisingly chose NOT to back out of a prescheduled appearance with Jay after getting popped for solicitation. Jay famously started the awkward interview off by addressing the elephant in the room head on with "what the hell were you thinking" and there was no turning back. Jay was #1 head to head, and never lost the late night ratings war again. Dave brought back Carson not-so-favorite Tom Synder for his follow-up at 12:35, and oddly enough to add even more layers to this, Conan beat Synder his entire three years on the air at CBS. Conan was more of a Letterman comedian than a Leno, and that makes what happened so much more fascinating. There was serious questions about whether or not Conan could hit it with the main stream late night audience that would tune in at 11:35, but not stay up past that. The SAME questions NBC execs had about Letterman when it came to whether or not he should replace Johnny. This is the part that doesn't get talked about enough - when NBC went to Leno to tell him they wanted to give him five more years and replace him with Conan - his initial reaction was "no" and "why". Conan was making the same power play behind the scenes that Helen had for Jay back in 1991. And just like NBC did in 1991 with Jay, they panicked about when it came to the idea of Conan leaving for another network. The late night landscape had changed a LOT since Carson signed off in May of 1992. NBC no longer had 11:35 all to itself. Before Carson left the air the only late night show that even put a dent in his viewership was Arsenio, and that was only in syndication. Jay was still on top. Jay was not ready to leave. He wasn't really given a choice. When Leno left, he left Conan with the #1 late show in the country. A few other factors that get missed, and Kimmel hits on one of them here, but it's a sword that cuts both ways. Yes - during the majority of Jay's original run as host, he had a VERY strong primetime lead in. Conan didn't. He had Jay at 10. But all the years that newcomers tried to dethrone Carson, he had NO lead in to speak of for many of those years at NBC. It wasn't until the mid-1980's that NBC struck gold in primetime and changed how networks built their schedules around blocks of similar programming. And there was still the lingering issue of Conan's style. Nobody compares to Carson, and nobody ever will. Yes, the competition was far less as there were so fewer options for viewing back then. But even with that, he was in a class all his own. Not Leno, not Letterman, or Conan or any of the guys who fill those spots today can even come close. But Leno was more widely liked by your average viewers. Letterman was up against it his entire time at CBS, he was more of an acquired taste - Conan had the same appeal. The fact that can't be disputed is that Jay returned to #1 as soon as he retook The Tonight Show. And I'll ask the question that no one who defends Letterman or Conan ever want to answer: what would they have done in the same situation? The answer, what Jay did. Letterman almost did - when NBC behind the scenes kinda offered him Jay's job. Conan, as some of you have pointed out, did the same thing to George Lopez - took his job. Not sure why that never gets discussed. Dave had one hell of a time at Leno's expense - and quite frankly while a lot of what he said was funny and made for good TV - it was sour grapes. Every comic of prominence wanted The Tonight Show when Carson retired. Only one of them got it. But it was never The Tonight Show like we all grew up knowing it - and it never will be again. Today The Tonight Show is a shell of it's former self. Fallon has done only slightly better than what Conan brought, and in the eyes of most critics falls a distant third to what Kimmel and Colbert bring to the table. The saddest cut of all, is that these guys all used to be friends - good friends at that. They all ended up scared by this I think both personally and professionally and late night will never be the same - for better or worse.

God, Bill's shirt is so "i'm 83 years old and still hip!"

jays sin was being ugly in a culture that worships beauty and youth

I think Conan was awesome in the late late show like Dave had been. His audience was was younger and stayed up later, the bits were edgier, acts were cooler/younger for that crowd. Your parents were the jay leno/Johnny Carson crowd, you were the Conan crowd. When conan moved into jays spot i had the feeling the older crowd just wasn’t gonna get him, that coupled with jays lead in being a bad idea, never really gave conan a chance at nbc. NBC didn’t want jay to go to a competitor where he most likely was gonna draw big numbers from his previous audience.

jimmy looks soooo chill.

Everyone who hates Leno couldn’t beat him in the ratings (Letterman, Conan, Kimmel, etc)

How stoned are you Bill?? 😂😂😂

Bill was Leno's biggest defender at that time and shredded both Conan and Kimmel over their immaturity. Over time, he's forgotten the facts and he's high. On Real Time, it would have been interesting.

I can’t believe how Clueless Maher is about his own business!

He did Conan dirty and we are stuck jimmy fallon, we could've have the best thing but jeez

All those late-night feuds….Carson vs Leno, Letterman vs Leno, Conan vs Leno, Kimmel vs Leno….hmmm, what’s the common denominator? Stern hates Leno, too. Interesting story from Jimmy - Leno wanted to be buddies until he didn’t need Jimmy anymore - what a shock. In life you usually get the reputation you deserve.

This was a cool interview

Two bad business decisions were made. 1. Conan should have left for ABC and took that 11:30 slot and let go of "The Tonight Show" dream. And 2. Jay should have went to ABC and took that 11:30 slot and never have re-took the "The Tonight Show." They were both *clinging* onto "The Tonight Show" which led to the demise of both Jay and Conan. Jay wasn't "diabolical." NBC was. NBC strung along Conan for years and fired Jay twice, effectively destroying both talents so that even if they moved to another network, they would no longer be a threat in ratings to "The Tonight Show."

I love that Bill sticks up for Jay and Jimmy Conan. That whole thing was a mess, should have never gone down that way. Both are good guys.

Who tf stays up that late to watch all these late night shows? Thats the real question

JK’s mind was poisoned on Leno by Howard Stern….

So clearly and decisively explained by Jimmy here. Conan was never given a fair shot after waiting five years. Leno should have walked.

Jimmy was a great soldier at ABC and glad to see his getting his props! He is the face of ABC!

4:20 Gota admit I like someone doing Jimmy like Jimmy normally does other people

I remember being so happy when I heard that Leno was going away. Then he stayed.

4:26 Kimmel admits that Leno and he are on good terms now - they made peace when Leno showed genuine concern about Kimmel's son in 2017. So at this point, any "feuds" are purely discussed for cheap publicity.

You have to admire Bill's interview tactic of making his guests look smarter by being completely inept in comparison

This says so much about Bill. He speaks with confidence about things he doesn't know/understand, has no class as far as what is ethical behavior and immediately jumps to crass jokes (did he touch you) to deflect from a weak point. Jimmy Kimmel looks solid as a rock, here. There's a reason Bill Mahr will never escape his pseudo-intellectual "exhale sharply from the nose" level of comedy. A dark corner of HBO is perfect for him.