Dave at Peace: The Rolling Stone Interview

Do you mean that NBC might blink and say, "Hey, we're gonna stick with Jay"?
Well, I think we're getting pretty far down the road for that. But unless I'm misunderstanding something, I don't know why, after the job Jay has done for them, why they would relinquish that. I guess they thought it was a less messy way to handle what happened to me at NBC. I don't know. I like Conan, I think he's a very funny guy, but it seems...

It seems they're stuck in an unenviable position.
I guess it's possible that Jay recognized this opportunity that would give him a blank check anywhere else he wanted to go. But I wouldn't think that, I would think he'd want to stay there, where he's been so successful.

Do you empathize at all with the situation that Jay's in at NBC? He's made no secret of course about loving The Tonight Show job and doesn't seem ready to retire at all.
I guess empathy is the right word. It's hard to know what he felt about it. I have to believe he was not happy about it.

Could you ever envision a scenario where you have Jay on your show again? He used to be a guest years ago.
It'd be interesting. I think he'd be a great guest on the show. The first night that he is out of a job, I think that would be a great situation.

How much do you care about the ratings battle with The Tonight Show and Jay anymore? Does it matter to you who comes first in this whole game?
Well, absolutely. I wish that we — and when I say, "we" I mean "me" — I wish I could have prevailed. I think it would have made things easier for us. But the reason is the difference between me and Jay. I think more people are responding to Jay than will ever respond to me, and after a while you have to face that. I'm doing the best I can, I enjoy doing what we do, and we get a certain amount of recognition for it, but the truth is, if there's a difference between the shows, it just comes down to me and Jay. I think he has greater appeal for more people than I do.

That's a contrast to years past when people in your camp explained the ratings gap between Jay and you by saying it was because of the lead-in programming or 11 o'clock news and so on. Now you're saying, in your view, that it really does come down to personality.
I think so. As much as I would like to point the finger and say, "Well, here's the real story" — and everything's a factor, really — maybe years ago I was unwilling to recognize the difference in Jay and myself as being more meaningful. But I just think that we've been at this long enough. I have a tremendous staff, I have tremendous writers, tremendous producers, so what really would make the difference? Well, the answer is me. I just think that Jay has a wider appeal than I do and, you know, good for him.

I get the sense that this is not something that agonizes you anymore.
Yeah, and also it seems unlikely that now, after years and years of trying under a wide variety of circumstances and advantages and disadvantages, that suddenly I'm going to prevail. You can't go through life fooling yourself, you have to be honest with the situation. That's fine. I can say it's fine, because I've been lucky enough to do the show and I've had a lot of fun doing it. So if I didn't get this, well, that's too bad, a lot of people suffer far greater than I have.

Do you basically develop a respect for anyone who can go out and do a show every night?
Yeah. It's a pretty small group of folks, and only the people who do it know how difficult it can be. I remember when Conan O'Brien was first on our show — and he'd been on maybe about two years, and he said, "It's going great, we've now done 18 shows in a row that are tremendous," and I thought, "Holy Christ, he's either lying or insane." At the time I'd been on the air close to 15 years, and I don't think I've done 18 shows that were tremendous in the whole time. It's not easy. I wish I was one of those guys who made it look easy. I don't have that gene.