As someone living outside the US, I struggled to make sense of the recent "Tonight Show" controversy?

The controversy started because several months ago, Leno was moved to an earlier time slot and Conan got the job on the Tonight Show, which has been his dream job since childhood. Leno's ratings dropped drastically in his earlier time slot, so NBC decided to move him back to the Tonight Show. They gave Conan the option to go to Leno's time slot, but he decided not to since all he wanted to do was the Tonight Show.

Therefore, Leno got his job on the Tonight Show back and Conan was basically fired, but he came out of it with a hige severance check that he said he was going to share with his staff. According to his contract, he can't work for anyone else for 7 months, which I believe that time is up sometime in August. After that, I assumo (and hope) that he will have several job offers.

Personally, I think it actually turned out better for Conan, because he had a huge fan response during this whole controversy and is now more popular than ever, while the opposite happened for Leno because he was seen as the "bad guy" during this whole thing. (This may not be true for everyone, but the 20-30 age range generally supports Conan much more than Leno.) Leno will probably be doing the Tonight Show for a very long time, and hopefully Conan can get a really awesome deal out of all this. I think they're both going to end up okay.

Hope this helps. The controversy started because several months ago, Leno was moved to an earlier time slot and Conan got the job on the Tonight Show, which has been his dream job since childhood. Leno's ratings dropped drastically in his earlier time slot, so NBC decided to move him back to the Tonight Show.

They gave Conan the option to go to Leno's time slot, but he decided not to since all he wanted to do was the Tonight Show. Therefore, Leno got his job on the Tonight Show back and Conan was basically fired, but he came out of it with a hige severance check that he said he was going to share with his staff. According to his contract, he can't work for anyone else for 7 months, which I believe that time is up sometime in August.

After that, I assumo (and hope) that he will have several job offers. Personally, I think it actually turned out better for Conan, because he had a huge fan response during this whole controversy and is now more popular than ever, while the opposite happened for Leno because he was seen as the "bad guy" during this whole thing. Leno will probably be doing the Tonight Show for a very long time, and hopefully Conan can get a really awesome deal out of all this.

I think they're both going to end up okay. Hope this helps.