Some context: Late Night with Conan O'Brien is an American late-night talk show hosted by Conan O'Brien that aired 2,725 episodes on NBC between 1993 and 2009. The show featured varied comedic material, celebrity interviews, and musical and comedy performances. Late Night aired weeknights at 12:37 am Eastern/11:37 pm Central and 12:37 am Mountain in the United States.
O'Brien's Late Night debuted on September 13, 1993, with Andy Richter chosen as O'Brien's sidekick. The premiere episode featured John Goodman (who received a "First Guest" medal for his appearance), Drew Barrymore, and Tony Randall. The episode featured a cold open of O'Brien's walk to the studio with constant reminders that he was expected to live up to Letterman, parodying a popular sentiment expressed in the media at the time. After seeming to be unaffected by the comments, O'Brien arrives at his dressing room and cheerfully prepares to hang himself. However, a warning that the show is about to start causes him to abandon his plans. O'Brien's inexperience was apparent and the show was generally considered mediocre by critics in terms of the host's ability. The Chicago Sun-Times' Lon Grankhe called O'Brien "nervous, unprepared and generally geeky" and Tom Shales wrote "As for O'Brien, the young man is a living collage of annoying nervous habits. He giggles and titters, jiggles about and fiddles with his cuffs. He has dark, beady little eyes like a rabbit. He's one of the whitest white men ever." (O'Brien wrote for The New York Times a satirical review of the first episode the day it aired titled "O'Brien Flops!", in which he told readers "Frankly, I was not impressed".) The originality and quality of the comedy, however, led by original head writer Robert Smigel, was widely praised. Although O'Brien benefited by comparison from the quick critical and commercial failure of the fellow new late-night The Chevy Chase Show, NBC only offered short-term contracts, 13 weeks at a time and once for six weeks, as widely reported by the press at the time. O'Brien was reportedly almost fired at least once in this period, but NBC had no one to replace him. According to Smigel, "We were basically canceled at Conan, and then they changed their minds in August of '94, gave us a reprieve." According to O'Brien a network executive told him, in regards to Andy Richter, he'd "never succeed until I 'got rid of that big fat dildo.' That was the tone of the conversations between us and the network." It was widely expected that the host of Talk Soup, Greg Kinnear would take over the role, but Kinnear turned down the opportunity and decided to pursue a career in acting. Stars like Tom Hanks agreed to appear on Late Night, which boosted audience awareness. Even Letterman, who admired O'Brien's comic sensibility, appeared as a guest to register his support. O'Brien's performance style improved through experience and he began to receive more favorable reviews and ratings the following year. With the ratings gradually improving over the course of two years, Late Night reached a new level of critical and commercial success in 1996. Tom Shales officially recanted his previous critical review with the headline "I was wrong", and O'Brien received his first Emmy writing nomination, which he has gone on to receive every year since.
Who else appeared on the show during the early days?
A: Stars like Tom Hanks agreed to appear on Late Night, which boosted audience awareness. Even Letterman, who admired O'Brien's comic sensibility, appeared as a guest to register his support.
Some context: Kevin Jeffrey Clash (born September 17, 1960) is an American puppeteer, director and producer whose characters include Elmo, Clifford, Benny Rabbit, and Hoots the Owl. Clash developed an interest in puppetry at an early age and began performing for local TV children's shows in his hometown of Baltimore, Maryland, as a teenager. In the early 1980s, he began working in Captain Kangaroo and began performing in Sesame Street in 1984. He was the fifth puppeteer to perform Elmo, the character he became the most famous for and became an executive producer and director for the show.
Captain Kangaroo was cancelled in 1984 after 29 seasons, and Great Space Coaster ended, freeing up Clash to work on projects with Henson such as the film Labyrinth and Sesame Street. Clash started working at Sesame Street for ten episodes in 1983, mostly performing nondescript, stand-in puppets known as Anything Muppets. Some of his earliest characters included the saxophone-playing Hoots the Owl (based on Louis Armstrong), the infant Baby Natasha, and inventor Dr. Nobel Price. After 1985, Elmo, a furry red monster, became his main character. Four puppeteers, including Richard Hunt, had performed Elmo previously, but it was Clash's development, with a falsetto voice, that established the character. He based Elmo's character on the preschool children that attended his mother's daycare in Baltimore and upon his own personality and the personality of his parents. Clash followed the advice of fellow puppeteer Frank Oz, who told Clash to always "find one special hook" for each character. Clash decided that the central characteristic for Elmo should be that he "should represent love". After the height of Elmo's popularity, especially the "Tickle Me Elmo" craze in 1996, Clash's responsibilities at Sesame Street increased. He recruited, auditioned, and trained its puppeteers, and became the senior Muppet coordinator, a writer, director, and co-producer of the "Elmo's World" segment of the show. Clash worked with and mentored the puppeteers of Sesame Street's international co-productions. He found working with the co-productions "a lot of fun" and "very rewarding". He worked on the 1985 feature film Follow That Bird. In 2007, he was promoted to senior creative adviser for the Sesame Workshop. Until 2011, he was the sole performer as Elmo in all his public relations appearances, making his schedule, as he called it, "crazy". Cheryl Henson, president of the Jim Henson Foundation, called him "essential" to the show. Clash worked on the first film version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, in 1990 and the sequel, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze, which was dedicated to Henson, in 1991, voicing Master Splinter. He performed in several productions with Jim Henson Productions, including as the Muppet Clifford in The Jim Henson Hour (1989), and performing the puppetry for Frank Oz's characters (Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Sam the Eagle, and Animal) in Muppet Treasure Island (1996). Clash performed in the films Muppets from Space (1999) and The Muppets' Wizard of Oz (2005), and the TV series Muppets Tonight (1996--1998), in which he reprised Clifford, who served as the show's host. He performed characters and worked behind the scenes on the sitcom Dinosaurs. In 1999, Clash worked on a film starring Elmo, The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland. In 2006, Clash published his autobiography, co-written by Gary Brozek and Louis Henry Mitchell, entitled My Life as a Furry Red Monster: What Being Elmo Has Taught Me About Life, Love and Laughing Out Loud. His life was featured in the 2011 documentary Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey.
what were his characters?
A:
Some of his earliest characters included the saxophone-playing Hoots the Owl (based on Louis Armstrong),