People say there are certain rivalries where you have to choose a side. You’re either a Beatles person or an Elvis person. You’re a Yankees fan or a Red Sox fan (well everyone really knows it’s the Red Sox) . You either love Mounds or Almond Joy. You can’t like both.

Add the latest one into the mix: You’re either a Jay Leno person or a Conan O’Brien person. Sure, there are Letterman people out there, and I know of at least one dedicated Colin Ferguson fan, but even if they’re not your favorite late-night personalities you still have to choose between the current Tonight Show host or the previous one.

Why? The battle is over over NBC’s late-night lineup.  O’Brien had his eye on the prestigious Tonight Show slot and — though I don’t know how he did it — he persuaded the brass at NBC to give it to him, ousting then-host Jay Leno. Since Leno did a good job of pulling in ratings, NBC was loathe to let him go, so they gave him his own hour-long, prime-time talk show, The Jay Leno Show, every day at 10 p.m., giving up on trying to schedule scripted series in that time slot.

It was a risky move for NBC, and, by all accounts, a failure. The Jay Leno Show turned out to be a horrible lead-in for the local news, which is reported to have angered NBC affiliates. Now, NBC had to scramble quickly to fix everything, because the last thing you want as a network television station is angry affiliates.   Did they really fix things or cause more problems ??

The Players

Jay Leno: He emerged from this situation a winner. Even though it was his show’s bad ratings that reportedly angered the affiliates, moving him back to 11:35 looks like a promotion. Saving his show made it look like NBC clearly favored  him over O’Brien.

Conan O’Brien: Not only would pushing Conan back a half-hour have looked  like a demotion, making him once again the second-fiddle to Leno, but having both Leno and O’Brien in Los Angeles means the two would still be competing for guests (if Leno’s half-hour format still has guests).  O’Brien today received $32 million to walk away and do nothing.  Not a bad result for losing a power struggle.

Letterman: Really not a whole lot of adverse effect — he’s always had loyal fans, and he always will.

Jimmy Fallon: His Late Night comes on after Conan O’Brien, and with no other NBC late-night talk-show filming in New York, he gets his pick of guests doing the NYC circuit. I think it’s worked out well for him so far.

Carson Daly: He’s an ancillary winner.  Had the original (really stupid) NBC plan gone through Leno would have been on at 11:30, Conan at 12:00 followed by Fallon.   He would have likely been out on the street. Of course, not many people knew he had a show anyway.

John Stewart and Stephen Colbert: I think they look the best in all of this, since all of the coverage of the NBC mess has the press looking around for those doing the best jobs in the late-night game, and their names keep coming up. Some have gone so far as to say that their shows make the whole late-night chat format obsolete.