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In January 2010, Conan O’Brien signed off after a truncated run as host of The Tonight Show.
Thanks to NBC’s embarrassing “Hey, let’s give the 10 p.m. hour to Jay Leno” gambit, Conan had barely seven months in the hosting chair — a blunder so egregious it cast a pall over the entire broadcasting lineup for months, and so completely unforced you can mock it to this day.
O’Brien spent five years as Leno’s designated heir, only to get shuffled to the dustbin in less than the gestation time for a hippopotamus, so if anybody had the right to be angry and if anybody had a wide assortment of targets for that anger, it was him.
Instead, O’Brien thanked NBC, his television home for 22 years, and then offered advice to his young audience. “Please, do not be cynical,” O’Brien said. “I hate cynicism. For the record, it’s my least favorite quality, and it doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.”
