Conan O'Brien talks with Steve Kroft of '60 Minutes' during the interview being broadcast Sunday. (CBS / AP)

In his first post-”Tonight” show interview, Conan O’Brien said that if he had been in Jay Leno’s shoes, he would not have taken back the show less than a year after publicly handing it off to someone else.

“That’s me, you know,” O’Brien told Steve Kroft of “60 Minutes” in an interview to be broadcast Sunday, excerpts of which were released Thursday by CBS. “Everyone’s got their own way … of doing things.”

O’Brien, in the midst of a sold-out concert tour, said he decided to leave NBC because “this relationship is going to be toxic and maybe we just need to go our separate ways.”

It was the comic’s first interview about the late-night television drama that played out this winter.
Read the full story

Last week, Joy Behar — of The View and her own show on HLN — visited The Tonight Show with its new/old host, Jay Leno, and she got him to talk candidly about the late-night situation.

Telling Behar, “Conan got screwed… I got screwed”, Leno basically shows a TV veteran’s side of the tale, that it happens to everyone in the business one time or another:

Sarah Palin says she’s going to play Tina Fey in an upcoming Las Vegas show.

Just kidding.

The former Republican vice presidential nominee turned into a standup comic on Jay Leno’s “Tonight Show” Tuesday, dropping one-liners about the White House, Congress and Fey – the “Saturday Night Live” star known for her impression of the former Alaska governor.

Palin told Leno’s audience she planned to speak at a gun-rights convention: “Be there or else,” she warned them.

She said Alaska is different from California. In Los Angeles, “when people have a frozen look on their face, I find out it’s Botox.” Read the full story

Yet another head-shaking decision by NBC is making waves. This time, it’s of the culinary variety.

Apparently, someone in NBC’s New York studios decided on a — well, not very P.C. menu for February: Fried chicken, collard greens, cornbread, etc.

Let’s not forget that February is Black History Month, kids.

The drummer for the Roots, who are Jimmy Fallon’s house band on Late Night, was one of the first to point it out. ?uestlove sent out a Twitpic about it on Thursday.

But it was Wanda Sykes who really let NBC have it, when she appeared on The Jay Leno Show on Thursday night:

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Don’t let the cover of this week’s Entertainment Weekly fool you — Jay Leno didn’t go the Don King route with his hair suddenly.

EW has ranked NBC’s move to put Leno on at 10 p.m. at the top of its list of “TV’s 50 Biggest Bombs Ever”. Though it seems fairly obvious, EW wraps up why it chose the Leno debacle nicely:

It destroyed not only five hours of primetime programming, but also the local newscasts that followed. However, the floppage of the move doesn’t even stop there: The Tonight Show ratings with Leno’s replacement at 11:35, Conan O’Brien, also took a 50 percent dip. And NBC’s attempt to remedy the situation was just as ugly—asking Conan to move back a half-hour to 12:05am so Jay could return to 11:35.

USA Today‘s Lifeline Live blog gave us a preview by posting the top 10, including Fox taking Family Guy off the air twice and the extremely horrible American adaptation of the great BBC sitcom Coupling. (I have yet to forgive for that.)

Related stories: Kimmel slams Leno — on Leno’s show!

Report: Leno to host ‘Tonight Show’ again

Rosie O’Donnell is no fan of Jay Leno. She didn’t like his previous stewardship of the Tonight Show and she’s not thrilled with reports that Leno will bump Conan O’Brien and move back to his old time slot.

According to US Weekly, here’s what Rosie had to say on the matter during an interview Thursday:

“I think he should walk away. If you’re privileged enough to drive the bus, you should say, ‘Thank you’ and drive it to the best of your ability, and when it’s time for them to hire a new driver, you should say ‘Thank you for allowing me to drive this as long as I did’ and pass the keys to the new guy with red hair, and not try to flatten his tires before he even gets going.

“I think shame on [NBC President] Jeff Zucker and really, shame on Jay Leno. I think he’s forgotten his roots and what stand up comedy is about, and graciousness has never been his No. 1 quality. … I think it would serve him well to think about what might happen if he were able to let go and grab on to whatever the next rung is.”

As usual, Rosie took the whole thing one step too far, when asked if she’d want to be a late-night host. “That question today is like asking if I’d want to have a vacation in Haiti. While I hear that’s an enjoyable place, this isn’t the time to go.”

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Zap2It is reporting NBC has announced its Monday-Friday schedule for 10 p.m. once the Winter Olympics are over.

NBC is making the move to put several original dramas in place of The Jay Leno Show, which the network announced is leaving the prime-time schedule following the Olympics.

On Monday, Law & Order will move to 10 p.m., and Trauma will return and fill the 9 p.m. spot.

On Tuesday, new series Parenthood will follow The Biggest Loser at 10.

Wednesdays will see the new hour of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit at 10, while “encores” (aka re-runs) of SVU will be shown at 9.

Jerry Seinfeld’s new creation The Marriage Ref will head to Thursdays at 10, while a two-hour Dateline NBC at 9 will be preceded by new show Who Do You Think You Are?, a celebrity genealogy show.

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Kimmel as Leno, and the genuine article.

The big late-night story hasn’t been NBC’s alone for a little while now — it’s definitely spread to all networks.

Therefore, it’s not altogether shocking that Jay Leno has invited ABC host Jimmy Kimmel for Leno’s 10@10 Q&A segment on Thursday’s show.

Especially since Kimmel did his entire show on Tuesday doing a broad impression of Leno — complete with fake chin and grey wig.

Think Jay’ll bring it up?

‘I’M WITH COCO’: As Margaret Lyons of EW’s Pop Watch notes, the poster featuring Conan O’Brien and the phrase “I’m with Coco” has grown in popularity by a huge margin. (Actually, Lyons said it better: “levels of ubiquity we haven’t seen since Shepard Fairey took on Obama.”)

Lyons spoke with the artist responsible, Mike Mitchell, who said he originally set out to make a campaign poster for O’Brien:

“A friend suggested just ‘I’m with Conan,’ and Mitchell landed on the far-catchier ‘I’m with Coco.’ It’s a slogan even Swiss Miss could be jealous of.”

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You’d think on a week where there is such tragedy dominating the headlines that the late-night poobahs of NBC might stop their internal squabbling.

You’d think wrong.

In Wednesday night’s monologue, Conan O’Brien went after rival Jay Leno, who could be taking away his 11:30 p.m. “Tonight Show” time slot.

“Hosting The Tonight Show has been the fulfillment of a lifelong dream for me — and I just want to say to the kids out there watching: You can do anything you want in life. Unless Jay Leno wants to do it too.

“According to a new TV Guide poll, 83 percent of voters want me to stay at 11:35. When he heard this poll number, President Obama asked, “How can I get NBC to screw me over?’” said O’Brien. Read the full story

So now that Conan O’Brien has made his stand, not agreeing to NBC’s move to shift The Tonight Show to after midnight to make room for Jay Leno, it’s made his show must-see TV.

According to Zap2It blogger Rick Porter, O’Brien’s first show since the announcement handled things with varying degrees of success and bitterness. One of the brighter moments came when O’Brien got some career advice in a unique way from Howie Mandel:

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