It’s Leno vs. Letterman

NEW YORK (AP) – It’s Letterman vs. Leno, redux.

With Conan O’Brien’s exit official, CBS’s David Letterman and Jay Leno are set to renew head-to-head competition at 10:35 p.m. March 1 when Leno returns to “The Tonight Show” on NBC.

NBC and O’Brien agreed to a $45 million deal early Thursday morning, ending the contentious two-week battle and allowing NBC to unseat O’Brien and move Leno back to the program he hosted for 17 years, less than eight months after O’Brien took the “Tonight” throne from Leno.

Under the deal, O’Brien will get more than $33 million, NBC said. The rest will go to his 200-strong staff in severance.

What happens next for O’Brien?

“We don’t know,” his manager, Gavin Polone, said. “While we have had expressions of interest, we have not had any substantive conversations with anybody.”

The Leno-Letterman rematch comes at a time when their feud is in full bloom. Throughout the fallout with O’Brien, Letterman regularly has mocked Leno on “Late Show.” He has called him “Big Jaw,” done a high-pitched impression and said “vintage Jay” had been revealed.

Even though Letterman has said he “doesn’t have a dog in this fight,” his sympathies have clearly been with O’Brien. Letterman went through a similar situation when Leno stepped over him to succeed Johnny Carson on “Tonight.”

But clearly old wounds haven’t healed, as Letterman’s glee has shown.

“I’m telling jokes and making fun of Jay Leno over and over and over, relentlessly, mercilessly simply for one reason,” Letterman said on Monday’s show before pausing and smiling hugely: “I’m really enjoying it.”