I think it's absolutely fair to say that I'm well educated in the goings on of late night talk shows. It's true! While Johnny Carson had to compete with my early bedtimes and Nickelodeon during his final years, I know well enough of things before I started moonlighting in while in my tweens. Hell, I've even watched Craig Kilborn on Sportscenter, The Daily Show and The Late Late Show! I watched Jimmy Kimmel in his first week and can recall parts of Andy Milonakis's "Super Bowl is Gay" song. But really this thing going on right now is just nuts. While everyone has been talking about the 2010 NBA free agency and the mega contracts and shuffle that will bring, it can hopefully take a lesson from the situation in television.

The year started with Fox and Time Warner and Scripps and Cablevision. As always "not getting the valued contract for our programming", "costing too much for the customers aka less profits for us", blah, blah, blah and well the former almost spent a day over striking a deal past the deadline without service interruption, while Cablevision customers can rejoice in not having to see Guy Fieri stuff as much food as he can into his greasy, sweaty face, but paying the same rates for two less channels. Now this giant clusterfuck by NBC after the Jay Leno primetime experiment failed miserably. While I switched to Sir Chattiness shortly after the writer's strike, Conan was still always there to provide a hearty laugh and while there was no way I would leave Dave (who of course scumbagged his way back into America's lives) for the very show he once wished to have, I still tuned in for Conan's first week of shows.

The humor of course wasn't the same, but he was definitely growing into it and it's no secret that he embraced having that brand in front of his name. Now to only start getting bamboozled (like we did last week ourselves) by some bad contract writing (back in 1993 when Letterman signed with CBS, putting in the 11:30 slot was a major sticking point to draw him in, didn't hurt to get the ownership of the 12:30 show and $50 million either). It's amazing how easily sides have been taken and overwhelmingly favoring Conan by the public, but even then you just have to make the rounds really. By the way, consider that Jimmy Kimmel and Jay are pretty good friends and he definitely let him have it on his 10 @ 10 segment.

This week of course will certainly go down in history as far as television after the late local news goes, but next week really has the meat and potatoes coming, especially if Conan's last episode is next Friday. Big guests of course will try to be squeezed in to force CBS to put the highlights of the night on YouTube at 7:30, including well known Leno-hater Howard Stern and the following week the alleged possible trip by Coco to 53rd Street to the predecessor that put NBC behind him long, long ago. Meanwhile I'm sure Fox is making sure that contract is nice and specific when he's ready to jump ship.

-Mikhail