Originally Posted by Mr. E

This is all actually Conan's fault to begin with. Not sure how many people know what went down but it was like this. 6 years ago when Conan's contract with NBC was up, ABC was going to throw a bunch of money at him to take over for Jimmy Kimmel who's ratings were crap after his first 6 months. Conan told NBC if he stayed, he wanted to take over as host of the Tonight Show. NBC said he could take over in 2009, probably figuring Leno would be ready to retire by then anyways, so Conan stayed.