Late Bloomer

Thirty years ago, after David Letterman decamped to CBS, NBC made a historic decision-to give Late Night to a nobody. An oral history of CONAN O'BRIEN's tumultuous (and hilarious) first year

-  ANDREW BUSS

If you tuned in to NBC at 12:35 a.m. on September 13, 1993, you witnessed late-night history in the making:

Jay Leno had inherited The Tonight Show from Johnny Carson in 1992, and a deeply pissed-off David Letterman had decamped to CBS. That meant a new host for Late Night had to be found. NBC turned to Lorne Michaels, who tapped 30-year-old Conan O’Brien. When NBC announced the identity of the man who would take over their decade-old franchise, TV critics, audiences, and even Letterman himself had the same question: Who? O’Brien, now regarded as one of the best hosts in the medium—one who spent nearly 30 years on the air—had minimal on-camera experience when he landed the job. As he once quipped to a journalist who’d called him a relative unknown, “Sir, I am a complete unknown.”

To be fair, O’Brien had already been one of the era’s sharpest comedy writers, working on Not Necessarily the News, Saturday Night Live, and The Simpsons, not to mention spending two years as the president of the Harvard Lampoon. Those who witnessed his high-energy pitches in writers rooms were already aware of how brilliant he was. Now everybody in every living room in America just had to agree.