Good job, Conan.

The cold open featuring him hauling ass across the country made me laugh from the start. Can't go wrong with a little Cheap Trick to kick off a new show.

Godspeed. 

Rick Ludwin has been through plenty of regime changes in his 29 years at NBC (he's been there long enough to work for two bosses named Silverman).

But nothing in his experience compares to the buzz and the scrutiny generated by a transition at the top of "The Tonight Show." The first phase of the transition from Jay Leno to Conan O'Brien began last week with O'Brien's sign off after nearly 16 years on NBC's "Late Night," and it continues on Monday with O'Brien's successor, Jimmy Fallon, making his debut at 12:35 a.m.

As much as NBC has been in the spotlight the past few months with its latenight shuffle, and Leno-at-10 decision, it's been a far, far less traumatic than the last time around, when Leno took the baton from Johnny Carson in May 1992, according to Ludwin, who is NBC's exec veep of late night and primetime series.

"This is a more peaceful transfer of power than the last time around," Ludwin says. "Nothing could surpass the intensity of the coverage of Carson, who was such a person of distinction in our country."

Ludwin and Lorne Michaels are the only two people in senior roles at NBC who were around during the Carson-Leno-Letterman scrum. This time around, Ludwin tried to prep his colleagues as best he could.

"'The Tonight Show' is an American institution. It's the gold standard of late night shows, and there's a bond between people and this show," he says. "And these transitions only happen once every ice age, so of course there's an intense interest."

Ludwin spent the past week in Gotham observing Fallon and "Late Night" exec producer Michaels at work on a week of test shows prior to Monday's on-air bow. The live aud was very receptive, and Fallon's style is already distinctive from O'Brien's, Ludwin said. The show is also very attuned to melding interactive elements into the telecast and on its website because "Jimmy is of the generation of multitasking," Ludwin says.

Conan O'Brien was a class act in signing off of "Late Night" on Friday after 16 years. Hard to believe that he hosted that show longer than David Letterman did.

Conan spent the past 10 minutes of his final "Late Night" seg saying a heartfelt thank you to everyone who helped him on his way, from Letterman to Jay Leno to Lorne Michaels and Jeff Ross to his family to various regimes of NBC execs (and through it all, Rick Ludwin stands tall).

Variety's Michael Schneider has the skinny on it all right here, or watch the seg for yourself courtesy of Hulu. And then click here to check out a seven-minute clip of a very different, very gawky Conan from mid-1993, doing a guest stint as "the new guy" with Letterman on the show he would soon inherit.

CBS needed some happy news last week, and it got some courtesy of its resident Scotsman-turned-American in late night.

"The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson" notched a milestone in its three-year-plus competish in the wee hours against NBC's long-dominant "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" by winning the week ended April 4 -- Ferguson averaged 1.88 million viewers for the frame to O'Brien's 1.77 million.

Not that latenight always has to be measured strictly a death-match, zero-sum game -- both Conan and Craig are very funny fellows indeed and viewers are well-served by their diverse styles -- but it is a competitive business and ratings are the yardstick by which ad sales and pop culture traction are measured.

NBC number crunchers noted that Ferguson got a big boost that week from the post-strike return of CBS' big scripted guns, the three "CSIs," "Without a Trace," "Criminal Minds" plus the circulation lift from the NCAA finals coverage, while NBC was still mostly in reruns.

Looking back over the past few weeks, however, the trend is interesting. "Late Late Show" has been making it a real horse race with "Late Night" of late, in spite of the latter's lead-in benefit from "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno." Indeed, Ferguson is more competitive with O'Brien than his 11:35 a.m. companion, "The Late Show with David Letterman" is with "Tonight Show" -- the berth O'Brien is to move up to in the fall of '09.

Stephen Colbert comes across as so comfortable in the skin of his "Colbert Report" arch-conservative pundit persona that it's easy to forget he's playing a character that has been developed by him and the writer-producers on his Comedy Central skein.

Chief among those "Colbert Report" truthiness-deciders is Allison Silverman, who was upped last month to exec producer of the show along with Colbert and Jon Stewart. Silverman, whose resume includes stints as a writer-producer on "The Daily Show" and "Late Night with Conan O'Brien," has worked closely with Colbert during the past two years to fine-tune the character that walks a fine line between arrogant jerk and arrogant-but-lovable-jerk. (And arrogant-but-lovable presidential candidate as of Oct. 17, so long as those pesky Federal Election Commission rules don't drum him out of the race.)

"In the beginning we were conscious that he could turn out to be a real jerk of a character, and we still think about it a lot. We've always wanted him to be arrogant and willfully ignorant, but not someone you'd just hate," says Silverman, who joined "Colbert" shortly after it was picked up to series in 2005. "A lot of times it's all about the tone. Sometimes he'll do something that comes off as too repugnant. He'll say the exact same things but change the tone just a little bit and it makes all the difference."

Speaking of Conan, NBC has finally taken the sensible step of making his show readily accessible for people to goof off with at work. Buried in the Peacock's raft of TCA announcements today was the news that as of Aug. 27 segs of "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" will be available for streaming on the NBC.com Web site, starting at 5 a.m. PT the morning after they air. And surely "Late Night" will also be a prime offering on the yet-to-be-named joint venture NBC Universal is whipping up with News Corp. Now if CBS would only do the same thing with David Letterman and Craig Ferguson, there'd be no need to stay up late anymore...