The sultan of smile, the duke of delightful — Conan O’Brien is and always will be the king of late-night television. During O’Brien’s 16-year run on NBC’s Late Night with Conan O’Brien, followed by an 11-year stint with Conan on TBS, the former Simpson’s writer never failed to crack us up.
Interestingly, Late Night with Conan O’Brien might not have been called Late Night with Conan O’Brien — that is, if the host had it his way.
In a recent interview during his Inside Conan podcast, O’Brien detailed the naming process of his legendary late-night show, and what it might have been called instead. “Nighty Night with Conan O’Brien.”
After finding himself face-to-face with NBC late-night chief Rick Ludwin, Conan did what Conan does best. Spitball like crazy. Along with an imagined number of different poses, funny faces, and dance moves.
“We had a meeting in this office in 30 Rock that Rick had, we told Rick we wanted to meet with him, we were worried about being compared to (David) Letterman and we said that we were thinking of changing the name Late Night. “
Who would have thunk? NBC wouldn’t budge. Leave it to a big bad media corporation to decide what’s funny, and what’s not. Although to be quite honest with you, NBC made the right choice here.
“Rick said that NBC owns that name, it is a popular franchise, and wouldn’t get rid of it unless there was a spectacular new one and we said we wanted to call it Nighty Night with Conan O’Brien.”
Nighty Night with Conan O’Brien. God, it’s beautiful. Sure it’s not great, but damn if it isn’t funny. Just picture the entire world having to tune into Nighty Night with Conan O’Brien, right before beddy-bye time.
It was a troll before trolling was a thing, and that’s worth a true tip of the cap to a guy like Conan. Oh, what could have been. A guy can dream, can’t he? Pun (obviously) intended.
