Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, April 27, 1993 TAG: 9304270280
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: From wire reports
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"Tonight" show host Jay Leno introduced O'Brien, 30, to the "Tonight" audience Monday night.
"Nobody knows this guy, nobody's seen him and I thought you might want to say hello," Leno said in his opening monologue. "It'll be great to see someone else's name in the paper all the time."
Leno's accession to the "Tonight" host's job last May prompted Letterman's defection to CBS this summer after 11 years at "Late Night." Letterman and Leno will compete head-to-head.
O'Brien said he had learned only eight hours earlier that he'd succeed Letterman.
"I was eating a big sandwich and they called me on the phone and said I had this job," O'Brien said from the guest's chair. "It's something I've wanted to do all my life. I'm ecstatic."
Leno, who succeeded Johnny Carson, said, "You know, Dave Letterman is a legend here at NBC, and if anything's fun to do, it's replacing legends at NBC." Carson retired last May after almost 30 years as "Tonight" host.
O'Brien is a 1985 graduate of Harvard University, where he was twice president of the Harvard Lampoon magazine, the nation's leading undergraduate comedy school. His graduate course was the San Francisco-based Groundlings comedy troupe, training in sketch comedy and improvisation.
O'Brien was a writer for HBO's "Not Necessarily the News" before his five-year stint at "Saturday Night Live," where he shared a writing Emmy and occasionally appeared as a sketch player.
For the past two years, he has been a writer-producer at Fox's hit animated sitcom "The Simpsons."
The announcement ended a week of speculation that longtime standup Garry Shandling, star of HBO's talk-show spoof "The Larry Sanders Show," would get the nod.
by CNB