Letterman Buries Hatched with Leno

2nd\NE Quadrant: The Approval Matrix

By BRIAN STELTER\New York Times

David Letterman, the CBS host who has competed with Jay Leno every weeknight for 15 years, now feels empathy for his late-night challenger.

In an interview with Rolling Stone on newsstands this week, Mr. Letterman, the longtime “Late Show” host, expresses bewilderment about NBC’s decision, first announced four years ago, to replace Mr. Leno next year with Conan O’Brien, the current host of “Late Night.”

“Unless I’m misunderstanding something, I don’t know why, after the job Jay has done for them, why they would relinquish that,” Mr. Letterman said in the interview. “I guess they thought it was a less messy way to handle what happened to me at NBC. I don’t know.”

In what the magazine called Mr. Letterman’s first in-depth print interview since 1996, he even offers Mr. Leno a spot on his couch, saying: “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.”