Heartless NBC execs wouldn't let Conan O'Brien change Late Night's name to "Nighty Night"

O'Brien's first NBC show almost had a very different title, the long-time host revealed on a recent episode of Inside Conan

By William Hughes | August 4, 2023 | 3:22am

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Heartless NBC execs wouldn't let Conan O'Brien change Late Night's name to

Conan O’Brien in 1993 Photo: Lesly Weiner/Network/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images

Looking back from the comfort and safety of 2023, Conan O’Brien’s run on NBC’s Late Night is the stuff of legend: An oddball and inventive take on the format of late night comedy that served as a foundation for everything O’Brien has achieved over the last 30 years of jokes. Back in 1993, though, putting the fate of a very popular TV show (which had just lost host David Letterman in one of the most public blow-ups of drama late-night had ever seen) in the hands of a funny Simpsons writer with zero on-screen experience was seen as something of a, let’s say, unconventional choice. And that’s without anyone who was observing the change at the time knowing that O’Brien had apparently wanted to change the show’s name to Nighty Night With Conan O’Brien.

This is per a recent installment of the Inside Conan podcast, which is produced by O’Brien’s own Team Coco. Discussing the early days of Late Night with long-time collaborator Jeff Ross, O’Brien revealed that he’d tried to pitch NBC exec Rich Ludwin, one of his staunchest defenders during the rough, early days of his tenure with Late Night, on changing the show’s title. (O’Brien was hoping, understandably, to distance himself from the inevitable Letterman comparisons.) Ludwin told O’Brien and head writer Robert Smiegel that NBC was attached to the name, and “wouldn’t get rid of it unless there was a spectacular new one.” Into which conditions the pair enthusiastically pitched “Nighty Night with Conan O’Brien,” which, O’Brien explained, “We thought was just really cartoon-y and funny and arch, like Pee-Wee’s Playhouse.”