Two major TV networks put their squabbles aside and decided to equally exploit the reunion of internet sensation Ted Williams and his 92-year-old mother. The Brooklyn-born, homeless Ohio man with a great voice hadn’t seen her in about two decades.

A CBS crew from the ‘Early Show’ brought her to LaGuardia airport where he was originally slated to see her, but NBC’s ‘Today Show’ whisked him off before that could happen according to New York Daily News. However, earlier today, the heartwarming homecoming took place after the rival shows eventually reached an agreement. Talk about tear jerkers.

Yesterday, soon-to-be working again late night host, Conan O’Brien joined Twitter with a single tweet: “Today I interviewed a squirrel in my backyard and then threw to commercial. Somebody help me.”

Not surprisingly, this riled his base into a frenzy and as of noon today, he has over 265k followers and rising. Compare that to Jay Leno’s 506 tweets and 30k or so followers and that NBC, is what we in the industry like to call: young people! But good luck with that new show.

The voice-over for this vintage NBC news report from 1976 warns: “This is a part of Brooklyn that few people see anymore. It is the 83rd precinct, a battleground for the police and young street criminals.” Ha. That would place it smack dab in the middle of Bushwick. Watch this rare footage about the legendary hell-raising ‘Devils Rebels‘ as they battle an equally grimy gang: the NYPD.

A minor racial controversy erupted yesterday afternoon when ?uestlove posted a photo he took in the NBC cafeteria to his Twitter account, a picture of a special menu offering for Black History Month featuring fried chicken, black-eyed peas, and collard greens. In his tweet, ?uestlove posted the note, “Hmm HR?”, insinuating that the NBC brass needed to consider the whole thing racist. But the menu was prepared by a black cafeteria worker who says that ?uestlove actually discussed the menu with her and specifically requested neck bones in the black-eyed peas.

Leslie Calhoun told the Post that all she wanted to do was “make a meal that everyone would enjoy — and that I eat myself.” And then ?uestlove sort of stabbed her in the back.

“Questlove, who I serve every day and who enjoys my food, requested the neck bone [cooked in] the black-eyed peas and fried chicken, then got off the line, saying, ‘This is racist,’ ” she said.

“The next thing you know, people were taking pictures of the sign and asking all the other black people in the cafeteria if this was racist. They said that it wasn’t.”

In the wake of the controversy, NBC pulled the plug on the fried chicken/collard greens special menu item, which left poor Leslie Calhoun understandably heartbroken.

A disappointed Calhoun, who has worked at NBC for eight years, said she’s been begging for years to make special entrees in honor of Black History Month, and got her wish last year.

So is ?uestlove just a dick?

According to the internet, Conan O’Brien and NBC reached a settlement yesterday that will pay he and his staff $45-million. Interestingly, Conan’s settlement contains a “nondisparagement clause” stating that he can’t make fun of NBC publicly for an undisclosed period of time after he leaves the network, which means he’ll be unloading both barrels tonight. Set your DVRs kids! Meanwhile, Leno will appear on Oprah to try to salvage his reputation. |WSJ|

Just when you think the seemingly never-ending late night talk show wars were winding down, along comes Monday night to flare them back up again. So what happened last night? Letterman admitted that he’s “really enjoying” making relentless fun of Leno, Leno said all of this is the network’s fault and Jeff Zucker praised himself.

Above is Letterman ripping into Jay and an NBC executive, below is Jay being full of bullshit talking about how great Conan is and that all of this is all NBC’s fault…

And here is Jeff Zucker, the NBC fathead responsible for this entire mess, spinning out of control on the Charlie Rose show:

Additionally, Conan spent most of his monologue ripping into the “incompetent morons” at NBC, but the network pulled the video from his website. Shocking, no. Anyway, you can watch it here if you like.

UPDATE: Well, the video is apparently existing, at least temporarily, on YouTube…

Someone went back and dug up a New York Times piece from 1992 on the fight between Jay Leno and David Letterman over who’d host the Tonight Show. At the time, Leno was 7 months into his stint as host of the show (Just like Conan is now!) and his ratings were struggling, leading many to speculate that NBC would replace him with Letterman.

“Am I crazy?” Mr. Leno said in a telephone interview. “The ratings are going up, the advertisers are happy and so are the affiliates.” And yet Mr. Leno said he had not received any assurances from NBC executives in New York that he would not be dropped in favor of Mr. Letterman by Jan. 15. That is the deadline NBC is facing to match a CBS offer to give Mr. Letterman about $16 million to star in a nightly talk show at 11:30, the same time as the “Tonight” show.

“I am disappointed,” Mr. Leno said. “I feel like a guy who has bought a car from somebody, painted it, fixed it up and made it look nice and then the guy comes back and says he promised to sell the car to his brother-in-law.” Go Elsewhere? ‘Of Course’

Mr. Leno said he would “obviously leave NBC immediately” if the network decided to give the “Tonight” show to Mr. Letterman. He said he would absolutely refuse to do a show in the 12:30 A.M. spot now occupied by Mr. Letterman’s show, “Late Night,” and would indeed consider creating the same problem for NBC that Mr. Letterman’s proposed deal with CBS caused.

“Would I go to CBS if they asked me?” Mr. Leno said. “Of course. I’m not going to do some little happy hour from Omaha at 12:30.”

Oh the irony! it is delicious, no?

Interestingly, an NBC executive came out in defense of their move today saying that everything is Conan’s fault because his ratings have sucked. And then, mere hours later, the ratings for television’s 4th quarter came out and they showed that Conan had moved into the top spot in late night for the coveted 18-49 age demographic. Fucking beautiful!

America’s late night talk show hosts continued to savage Jay Leno and NBC last night. Each night seems to get bloodier and it’s hard not to love it. With that said, the most harsh and cringe-worthy rhetorical beatdown was dished out by Jimmy Kimmel, on Leno’s own show no less!

For some reason Jay had Kimmel on as his guest during his “10 at 10″ segment, which Kimmel used to take numerous shots at Jay. It made for particularly compelling television.

And of course, Letterman continued his relentless assault on his long-time adversary…

Meanwhile, Conan put his show up for sale on Craigslist.