When did NBC become all Saturday Night Live all the time? The brouhaha started a bit over a week ago when the venerable peacock network announced that it would move a truncated version of Jay Leno’s failed primetime show into a thirty-minute time at 11:35pm weeknights. But wait! The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien already occupied that real estate. Was Conan being pushed out of Tonight? Was Leno being rewarded for mediocrity? Other late night talk show hosts like David Letterman and Jimmy Kimmel were quick to pounce on NBC’s latest faux pas, and Conan said he would not be moved.

So where do we stand now? An increasingly vilified Leno will apparently return to The Tonight Show while Jeff Zuckerman, the President and CEO of NBC Universal has earned his very own Letterman List. (“Top Ten Messages On Jeff Zucker’s Voicemail… 9. Hi, this is Jay Leno. Conan seemed upset in the elevator.”) Meanwhile O’Brien leaves NBC with a large pay-off (rumored to be as much as thirty million dollars) plus the freedom to discuss a new show with another network. Shades of David Letterman’s own departure from NBC, oh so many years before?