And so.  Apparently Conan’s contract did indeed stipulate 11:30 (or 11:35, rather) slot.

There have been arguments for and against, but a revelation from The Hollywood Reporter reveals that Conan O’Brien’s contract for ‘The Tonight Show’ did specify the 11:35 time slot. It’s good to know that Conan did, in fact, learn from David Letterman’s mistakes.  The only leg NBC had to stand on was the belief that Conan’s contract did not specify the time. It didn’t, but only in a 2004 amendment to an original 2002 contract (which makes it a seven year wait, not five). It was assumed by all parties that the amendment supporting the wording in the original article. NBC, being evil, tried to take advantage of this. Truth was the first casualty of the Second Late Night War.

All this time we’d heard that the network would not be punished for a 12:00 slot, supposedly stuck in the slot to work around the occasional sports events.  But this all explains why Conan walked away with roughly the amount his contract obligated him in the event that the network canned him.  The great mysteries of the “Late Night War 2010″… solved.

Meanwhile, “The Tonight Show with Conan O’brien” has been utterly scrubbed from the Internet.  Now I was expecting this from NBC’s website and hulu, but I am a bit taken aback from the clips removal from youtube.  Old Late Night clips remain on youtube.  Apparently not for that long, though — I see notes that NBC is planning on scrubbing those stray Late Night clips — more concerted than Letterman.
Pretty soon, the 16 and a half year NBC career of Conan O’brien will be a strange underground sensation.  Or, maybe as the years go by NBC will let up — I have to wonder if the Internet were as it is now back in 1993 if they’d take the same scapel they are to Conan but aren’t to Letterman and take a hardline against Letterman.

Interesting to note Letterman appears to be ready to bear, I guess feeling a competitive desire to beat Leno in his second chance.

Letterman’s bookers have put out the call, celebrities, if you sit down with Leno, don’t call us, we’ll call you.  Right now  it’s off limits to any cross over  guest for the Late SHOW with David Letterman.

This may be good news for the viewers, these shows have turned into late night info commercials ,  guests promoting their books ,films or any other  services  they are pitching. […]

The same actors and actress just doing the rounds, the networks are giving us nothing in return, maybe this will force David and Jay to retrench and get with it, and now for something completely different.  […]

Oh, for the love of lard…
Actually hereabouts you get to a crux of a matter with these late night talk shows.  One advantage the 12:30 programs have over the 11:30 programs is a generally more interesting guest list.  Ed Koch, a default regular guest-list of the early Conan years, is a more interesting personality than, say, Harrison Ford.  And these days, Letterman has guarded himself completely from the possibility of another Madonna interview.  His formula has been winded down to the pre-pared “Anecdote #1, Anecdote #2, Anecdote #3, plug your project.”  Oh, for More interesting guests.

Nonetheless, Dave is cleaning up in the ratings.  In the absence of any competition.  Looks like he’ll rise again.

About a week ago, I watched the two shows — Dave and Conan, clicking back between the two.  Conan’s was, of course, a rerun — from just after the NBA Championship — Kobe Bryant was a guest.  The post-monolouge bit was nothing particularly outstanding — a mildly amusing example of what you get in this format of “grind something out 5 episodes a week; go to whatever well you can find” — he ran out to the studio back lot and set up  a giant discarded statue on the stage.  The strange tenants of late night — the show is the show, you’re filling a schedule.  Before NBC scrubbed all presence of Conan from hulu, I picked about and shifted through the seven months of material.  There was Pee Wee Herman.  Norm Macdonald was worth his few interviews — apparently Macdonald was ready to serve as a go-to-guest.  But I’m tending to stray toward the comedy bits in these things.

Hey!  Tonight is the final broadcast of such a thing as “The Tonight Show with Conan O’brien”.  I remain convinced that as we become more fractured in terms of entertainment options, in the years ahead, the networks will look back at Conan’s disappointing ratings as high ratings.

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