David Letterman Extends Invitation To Jay Leno: Did They Kiss And Make Up?
It's no big secret that I loves me some David Letterman. I've been a big fan of his since his first days at NBC, when I was a teenager and staying up until 12:30 on a school night to catch his irreverent show was a big deal for me, and I remember being upset that he wasn't offered The Tonight Show after Johnny Carson left. I can look over at my bookshelf and see a copy of The Late Shift, chronicling the behind-the-scenes story of the late night wars. And it isn't like nobody knew that there was a bit of friction between Dave and his late-night rival, Jay Leno, who ended up with the coveted chair at NBC. Well, in the twilight of Jay's day behind the big desk, Dave gets a bit philosophical on just why Jay is leaving:
“Unless I’m misunderstanding something, I don’t know why, after the job Jay has done for them, why they would relinquish that,” Mr. Letterman said in the interview. “I guess they thought it was a less messy way to handle what happened to me at NBC. I don’t know.”Mr. Letterman famously moved from NBC to CBS in 1993 after Mr. Leno replaced Johnny Carson on NBC’s “Tonight” show, establishing one of the foremost rivalries on television. Asked by the interviewer Jason Gay whether he empathizes with Mr. Leno’s situation, Mr. Letterman said: “I guess empathy is the right word. It’s hard to know what he felt about it. I have to believe he was not happy about it.” [...]
In the interview Mr. Letterman spends more time talking about the succession plan at NBC than he does his own future. Mr. Leno’s last edition of “Tonight” is scheduled for May 29, 2009. Mr. O’Brien is expected to take over on June 1. Mr. Letterman apparently harbored doubts about whether his former network would go forward with the plan. “I’m not quite sure why they would do that, so much so that one wonders if that’s actually what’s going to happen,” he said, later adding that it “just seemed so preposterous to me.”
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