2004 VIDEO: Jay Leno five years ago on future of the ‘The Tonight Show’: “Conan, take it over, it’s yours”

In 2004 Jay Leno felt it was necessary to address the then recent disclosure that he would be handing over The Tonight Show reins to Conan O’Brien in 2009. Leno wanted his audience to understand his conviction as it pertained to this important changing of the guards.

Here’s the last thing he says:

“Because you know when I took this show over, boy there was a lot of animosity between me and Dave and who’s gonna get it, and quite frankly, a lot of … good friendships were permanently damaged. And I don’t want to see anybody ever have to go through that again. Cause this show is like a Dynasty. You hold it, and then you hand it off to the next person. And I don’t want to see all the fighting and all the ‘who’s better?’ and nasty things back and forth in the press so right now, here it is, Conan, it’s yours, see you in 4 years buddy!”

Ouch! Here’s a video clip of the complete announcement thanks to the folks over at Funny or Die – the full transcription is below.

One thing I had forgotten about is that Leno’s planned retirement from The Tonight Show was set up by NBC as a last ditch effort to keep Conan O’Brien from leaving the network. That is really harsh stuff.

“Let me explain how these things work. About 6 months ago I sat down here with the folks at NBC and they said they want to re-up and I said, “OK what do you want to do?” ‘Cause I don’t have a manager or an agent, I like the people I work with, they’re nice folks.

They said — and this IS a high paying job — so they said “Listen, we would like to do 5 more years.”

I said, “Great! I’d love to do 5 more years.” And that was 6 months ago. And then time went by, there’s all the talk about Conan O’Brien, will he go to ABC, will he go to one of these other networks?

And they came to me and they said “We don’t want to lose Conan O’Brien.”

And I said “OK, what does that mean?”

And they said, “Well, um, we think Conan would be a good replacement.” As I do. Conan is a gentleman, funny, the hottest late night guy out there.

I said “You know something, I don’t want to see Conan go anywhere else.” I’m 59- I’ll be 59 years old when this leaves. 5 years from now. That’s 1200 shows, we’re not going anywhere tomorrow. And I said, “You know there’s really only one person who could have done this into his 60s and that was Johnny Carson,” and I think it’s fair to say I’m no Johnny Carson.

So I called up my buddy, [collective “Awwwwwww” from the crowd] uh, no no no, I called my buddy Jerry Seinfeld and I said “Jerry, what do you think, you know?” And Jerry quit his show when it was the most popular. And I’m proud to say that this show has been number 1, we’ll keep it number 1, and then in ’09 I’ll say Conan, it’s, take it over, it’s yours. Because you know, you can do these things until they carry you out on a stretcher or you can get out when you still, you know, you’re still doing good and… I’m not quitting show business.

You know, you know, but I realize, I’m not spending enough time with my cars. [laughter] No, no. But anyway. This is not tomorrow, it’s 5 years from today and I want to say I don’t think there’s a better choice. Because you know when I took this show over, boy there was a lot of animosity between me and Dave and who’s gonna get it, and quite frankly, a lot of what I thought, well, good friendships were permanently damaged. And I don’t want to see anybody ever have to go through that again. Cause this, you know, this show is like a Dynasty. You hold it, and then you hand it off to the next person. And I don’t want to see all the fighting and all the “who’s better?” and nasty things back and forth in the press so right now, here it is, Conan, it’s yours, see you in 4 years buddy!

This is how it should have ended:

Cause this, you know, this show is like a Dynasty. You hold it, and then you hand it off to the next person, and then you wait about seven months, and then you take it back. And I want to see all the fighting and all the “who’s better?” and nasty things back and forth in the press so right now, here it is, Conan, it’s yours, see you in 4 years buddy! And then I’ll see you again right after that buddy!

I’ve never had an issue with Jay Leno, and I think most of the blame for how poorly all this was handled falls squarely on the shoulders of NBC, but he needs to somehow separate himself from all this before it’s too late because if you lay around in poop too long, guess what? You start to smell like poop.

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