Conan O’Brien Reveals What He Originally Wanted To Call ‘Late Night’

Conan O’Brien hosted more than 2,700 episodes of Late Night for NBC.

The series ran from September 13, 1993 through February 20, 2009 before he briefly took over The Tonight Show and then Conan for TBS.

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But the comedian didn’t necessarily want to use the title, which began with David Letterman, who hosted it between 1982 and 1993.

He wanted to call it Nighty Night with Conan O’Brien.

“We thought was just really cartoony and funny,” he said on the Inside Conan podcast, which is produced by his Team Coco.

O’Brien and longtime exec producer Jeff Ross were speaking about the early days of the show, before it launched on the show, which is hosted by Conan writers Mike Sweeney and Jessie Gaskell.

However, the former Simpsons writer said that he was worried about being compared to Letterman, but was talked out of calling it Nighty Night by former NBC late-night chief Rick Ludwin.

“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 Letterman and we said that we were thinking of changing the name Late Night. 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.”

O’Brien added that Ludwin was a “very proper exec” and a “wonderful guy” but that he was “tearing flesh” at the idea, before he replied, “It’s going to remain Late Night with Conan O’Brien.”

O’Brien added that they weren’t under much supervision when they put together the show.

“If someone had told me they picked a guy who was 29… and has no experience and they picked a producer [Jeff Ross], who’s done some work with Kids in the Hall and much of his work has been in music, there’s no way that they’re not all over them. But we were in New York and most of the people were in LA,” he said.

Ross added, “I spent most of my time faking it and making it look like I knew what I was going until I figured it out.”

Next up for the pair is Conan O’Brien Must Go, a four-part international travelogue.

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