 Conan O’Brien made a triumphant exit from NBC Friday night, accompanied by one of the most impressive outpourings of support by younger viewers that any late-night host had ever seen  and Mr. O’Brien was effusive in his thanks for their backing. (He did beat Mr. Letterman virtually all the time in the 18-to-34 group.) Broadcasters don’t.” 
 
 Fans of sports, for example, were watching ESPN many nights instead of Mr. O’Brien; and cartoon lovers were hooked on “Adult Swim.” 
 
 But even all the competition on cable did not represent the total distraction for young viewers that Mr. O’Brien had to contend with. The late-night hours showed the highest percentage of playback outside the prime-time hours, with about 7.6 percent of playback taking place from 11 p.m. to 12 a.m. 
 
 As an executive from one of NBC’s rival networks put it: “Conan didn’t just have to worry about Letterman; he had to worry about ‘House.’ People are playing back episodes of shows like ‘House’ in late night.” 
 
 Add to all the other issues the fact that Mr. O’Brien’s young fans did not really have to watch television to see him. I think there is a sense in this country that giant corporations are ruining everything, even late night talk shows. That will happen again when Mr. Leno returns to “The Tonight Show” on March 1.
– Conan O’Brien joins the ranks of the unemployed today, so the ousted Tonight Show host now has plenty of time to track the backlash and second-guessing about the TV shell game. Jay Leno remains the villain of the piece, but the hard truth is that O’Brien never drew the numbers of young viewers to his time slot that NBC had hoped for. “The 18-to-34 group is so difficult to attract and the lower half, 18 to 25, is the hardest of all,” a strategist told the New York Times. The increasingly fractured TV landscape didn’t help. Competition is now fierce for the audience Tonight Show producers once took for granted. O'Brien has been buffetted by the same economic realities most American are grappling with, making him a "Harvard-educated, multi-millionaire late night talk show host" who was "magically transmogrified into a guy who got laid off at the local car plant," blogs Michael Ian Black.