Well, everyone can agree that NBC screwed up. First, they agreed to give Conan "The Tonight Show" years in advance, even though Leno's ratings went up slightly during the interim and O'Brien probably lost a bit of his buzz. Then, they kept to the plan but moved Leno to prime time, which everyone thought would fail and did. Leno was killing their affiliates' late news ratings, so they announced that they were moving him back to late night. Conan wasn't going to go along with this happily, so they ended up having to give him a huge payment to go away.

I think that Leno will do ok back in late night. I realize that his show is lame, but I don't dislike him as much as most people. I give him credit for killing when he appeared as a guest on "Late Night with David Letterman" in the mid-80s. He was honestly the best comic on during that period (well except for maybe Emo Philips), and he and Letterman seemed to genuinely like another at the time.