Conan O’Brien Reveals the Hilariously Bad Name Change He Wanted for ‘Late Night’ When He Took the Job | Video

In his first appearance NBC’s “Late Night” since leaving the show in 2009, Conan O’Brien cracked up current host Seth Meyers by revealing the absolutely terrible name change he suggested when he took over the show in 1993.

O’Brien hosted the show from 1993-2009, a critically acclaimed and culturally impactful run filled with weird, original humor still praised to this day. But he took over the show from its creator, David Letterman, an already legendary late night host who left to create “The Late Show” for CBS. And as he explained to Meyers, Letterman’s legacy made them extremely self conscious.

“When [the show’s first head writer] Robert Smigel and I take over the late night, and the whole country is saying, I mean, there are articles that say ‘this is insane,’ ‘Who is Conan O’Brien,’ ‘this is a bad idea, and that’s my family talking,” O’Brien explained. “And everyone thought, this is, this is this is going to work. And so that was bad. And I don’t know, we were so afraid of being compared to Letterman, because he’s a genius. He invented this time slot and this sensibility. And we kept thinking, we don’t want to be associated. We want people to think we’re doing something different. Let’s not use the name ‘Late Night.'”

“And Robert and I became convinced that we should change the name to, I’m not kidding, we were convinced that it should be ‘Nighty Night with Conan O’Brien,’ and that that would show everyone that it’s a different show,” O’Brien continued.

Fortunately, a meeting with an NBC executive nipped that terrible idea in the bud.

“We had a meeting with this guy named Rick Ludwin, who was a saint and a wonderful man, but old school jacket and tie, he went in and talked to Johnny Carson every night about the show, and then he’d come and talk to me about my show. And you know, this is just, this is how it’s done. He was the guy in late night who was the old school, and he’d tell us where to put the mic and how to sit. It was just a different environment back then. And we went in and we said, just, let’s hear us out. Rick, it’s not ‘Late Night’ anymore. It’s ‘Nighty Night.’ And he started scratching the back of his head, really buttoned down guy, but I saw four blood vessels burst.”

Ludwin told O’Brien and Smigel that “Late Night is a fruitful franchise. We built that franchise. We were going to keep that franchise, that franchise will long, long outlive you, we’re going to keep that,” at which point, O’Brien said, “we ran away.”

Watch the clip below:

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