Basically, he whines that it's NBC's fault, not his:
  • For a moment, the late-night jokes ended tonight as Jay Leno tried to explain his side of the story.

    During the taping of his canceled "The Jay Leno Show," the comedian said NBC pushed him out of his "Tonight Show" spot because executives lost confidence that he could hang onto the No. 1 spot in the ratings.

    The revelation came five years ago when NBC executives explained that they planned to move Conan O'Brien into Leno's spot because O'Brien was getting offers from other networks. Leno pointed out that he was at the top of the ratings for the time period.

    "We don't think you can maintain that," one told him.

    Leno also said that when NBC hatched the idea of moving him to 10 p.m. that executives promised to give the show two years. While he realized that his ratings would suffer against the best shows from rival networks, he thought he'd do well during the summer when more reruns are aired.

    But then network executives approached him with the idea of returning to 11:35, and pushing O'Brien back to midnight. He agreed but asked, "Do you think Conan will go for that?"

    He was told yes.

    It turned out that O'Brien had no interest in doing the "Tonight Show" at midnight. He's expected to leave NBC.

    Leno, who has been widely portrayed as the bad guy in the battle, said O'Brien is a gentleman. "Don't blame Conan O'Brien," he said.


That's all well and good, Jay. However, when it became clear that NBC didn't have Conan on board for the move, the classy thing would have been to support him and not steal his show.