The Late-Night Dawning of Conan

David Letterman’s “Late Show” has become David Letterman’s “Lame Show.” Jay Leno and “The Tonight Show,” once counted out as a flop, now beats Letterman in the ratings. ABC’s “Nightline,” with American icon Ted Koppel, just keeps rolling along.

And Conan O’Brien, the 33-year-old host of NBC’s “Late Night” series (which follows Leno each night), has gone through one of the most amazing transformations in television history: from annoying nuisance to prize package. His ascent was slow but sure. Now it’s been made official, in a way, with a long cover story in the June 22 issue of TV Guide.

We call them talk shows, but they’re also soap operas--the late-night programs that scramble and hustle for viewers and guests, rise and dip in the ratings, and tend to reveal more about their stars than any prime-time shows do. Letterman’s stock may have fallen, but O’Brien’s has risen. He could be called the New Dave.

“Conan O’Brien is doing the most innovative comedy in television,” says Robert Morton, who was Letterman’s loyal producer for 14 years until Letterman callously fired him in April. That’s another story.

Even Letterman himself, in an interview last year, expressed admiration for O’Brien and his staff of wackies. “When I see that show, it just withers me with exhaustion,” Letterman said. “They do so much stuff, and I know a little of what it takes to get that stuff on the air every night.”

O’Brien, who succeeded Letterman as “Late Night” host (when Letterman made the jump to CBS), says he doesn’t embrace the notion that Dave is out and Conan is in. “No, I don’t like that,” says O’Brien from his apartment in New York. “I’m never comfortable with that. It feels silly and wrong.”

Modest, wry, self-effacing and demonstrably the most intelligent of the late-night hosts (excluding Koppel, of course), O’Brien survived one of the most merciless drubbings ever handed out when he and his show premiered in September 1993. Some critics, present company included, were very harsh, perhaps because it seemed so presumptuous for an unknown like O’Brien to follow in the near-legendary Letterman’s footsteps.

“As hard as anyone else was on me, I’ve always been hard on myself,” says O’Brien, with no apparent bitterness. “I never said to myself, ‘They’re all crazy, the show’s great, it’s right where it needs to be.’ There are things in the first week that I’m proud of still, but basically the show was a--backwards. There were 75 or 100 things that weren’t quite right. I had not figured out how to be myself in this strange environment.”

O’Brien was a gifted comedy writer, on “The Simpsons” and other series, but had never hosted his own show before.

Lorne Michaels, producer of “Saturday Night Live”and of O’Brien’s show, told him, “Conan, you’re not being yourself,” O’Brien recalls. “The show’s too loud, you’re pushing it.” O’Brien says he realized that “nobody wants to see you working at 12:30 at night,” that it has to look relaxed and effortless, no matter how much effort has gone into it.

Meanwhile, NBC executives, like sharks sniffing blood, circled the show, sending endless notes and complaints to O’Brien’s executive producer, Jeff Ross, who shielded O’Brien as much as possible from the bombardment.

“I never actually got the call, ‘You’re off the air in two weeks if things don’t improve,’ ” O’Brien says, “but obviously they were worried. They had to be thinking, ‘Maybe this won’t be our 12:30 show.’ It’s probably best that I don’t know how close we came to being replaced by old ‘F-Troop’ reruns.”

The ratings are good now--not quite as good as Letterman’s were in the time period, but healthy and solid. It’s become easier for Ross to book big-name guests, and the show has become a reliable launching pad for new stand-up comics and rock bands. It seems clear that O’Brien’s days of humiliating ignominy are over.

“12:30 is a great place to be,” he says contentedly. “I can really see living here the rest of my life, if they’ll let me. At that time of night, you can really misbehave.”

* “Late Night With Conan O’Brien” airs weeknights at 12:35 a.m. on NBC (Channel 4).