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People who've known me for a while can already attest to this, but Conan O'Brien has always been the celebrity who lined up the closest with my own comedic sensibilities. I watched Late Night with Conan O'Brien from the very first episode in 1993, and (unlike the conventional wisdom about the show in hindsight) I liked it from the start, not thinking of it as "struggling." I later discovered I'd actually been laughing along to his work on The Simpsons and Saturday Night Live for years before that, but it was through his work on Late Night that my loyalty to Team Conan was born.
No matter how low I was feeling--even if I was down in the dumps and mad at the world for the rest of the day--there was never a time when Conan couldn't elicit a laugh from me, and the significance of someone's ability to do that should not be understated.
After tonight, however, NBC will stand for "Not Broadcasting Conan." :(
I'm with the emerging consensus in thinking Conan O'Brien got shafted (or "Zuckered," after head of NBC Universal Jeff Zucker) in this whole situation by both the network and, frankly, Jay Leno in particular; it's hard not to watch Leno's original announcement that he was leaving in 2004 without viewing him as an utter hypocrite now. If Jay Leno were so desperate to have The Jay Leno Show in (essentially) the same format as The Tonight Show, he should've taken it to a different network, allowing him to honour his original commitment while still keeping (essentially) the same gig going.
At this point, it's going to be the other way around, with Conan probably going to Fox (who are actively courting him) or some other network (I suppose, potentially), and the two hosts will end up competing against each other anyway--except people like me now have a grudge against Leno and thus a reason to actively avoid watching his show. Even keeping The Tonight Show as a title becomes a reminder of how he reneged on his own promises.
Granted, this whole fiasco has led to a lot of fine, funny television entertainment.
Pissing off a professional comedian is a quick way to learn how vicious they can be (and how you should never, ever get on their bad side in this way), and a bitter Conan O'Brien is a very effective object lesson in that. When Conan is at the mercy of outside forces, it has the effect of unleashing the beast, which makes him a sometimes nasty but also really awesome comic. This could previously be seen during the Writers' Strike in 2007-2008, and the same aftereffect from having to improvise is also in full evidence now. (A Hong Kong news clip of this conflict summarised with Sims-like CGI animation aptly demonstrates this point by showing Conan turning into the Hulk and bringing The Rage.)
The examples of barely-concealed hostility in his bits have been shown all over the place lately (along with the equivalents from other late-night talk shows), but I've also been enjoying some of the more random inspired wackiness that has come out of this, such as Conan listing the show for sale on Craigslist and then offering himself up on the site for casual encounters. (Take advantage of that original listing while you still can! ;))
Regardless of how everything works out, my ultimate sadness at this situation comes from feeling like things will never be the same--any new talk show with Conan will inevitably be less like Late Night than the continuity he managed to maintain on The Tonight Show, and it was the former show that drew me in the first place. NBC has already talked about owning the intellectual property to all of his recurring characters (everything from the Masturbating Bear and the Horny Manatee, to obscure early ones like the Gaseous Wiener and Pimpbot 5000, to the most famous one of all, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog) and recurring sketches (In the Year 2000, Celebrity Secrets, Conan O'Brien Hates My Homeland), so I assume none of those are coming along on whatever path Conan's journey takes next. Will I never see The String Dance again?
I'm grateful for all of the many laughs Conan O'Brien has brought me over the years, and I can look back on the glory days as well as look to what I'm sure will be many laughs to come, but a single tear will roll down my cheek before I slurp it up as I watch this delightful set of circumstances...for me to poop on.