JAY LENO: Thank you very much. Welcome to The Tonight Show. Nice to have you. Excuse me a second. Before we get started, I wanted to tell the stagehands something. Hey, guys? Guys, leave those boxes. I'm not going anywhere. You know, we're staying.

You know, we're staying. Well, you know, it's interesting. A lot of people were shocked when they heard. Not that I was moving to prime time, but that NBC still had a prime time. We're going to be -- well, thank you. Thank you. We're going to be doing a new show in the fall. We'll start at 10 p.m. right after the last hour of The Today Show. See, the way they're gonna reschedule, it's going to be all talk.

Oh, man. Well, as you may have heard, there were rumblings that I was leaving NBC and going to ABC. Let me tell you something. Those were nothing but rumors started by a disgruntled employee: me.

Another thing, and I say this quite seriously, you know, I didn't know I was going to stay with NBC, but remembered something my parents always told me. They said, "Whatever you do in life, always try to come in fourth."

And that's really -- And that's where NBC is. We've been in fourth place for so long, by golly, we want to stay there.

I'll tell you how sneaky show business is. Do you know what CBS announced today? Did you year about this? They're moving Letterman to 9:59. I couldn't believe it. Couldn't believe it.

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JAY LENO: I should explain what went on today. We made a deal to stay on here at NBC. I'm very excited about that. We're going to go -- we're going to do a show at 10 o'clock. It won't be The Tonight Show. The Tonight Show will be Conan's. It will be similar. I'll be 20 pounds lighter. Kevin will have hair. It's going to be a little different, but we're going to be prime time. We've got to clean it up a little.

KEVIN EUBANKS: That sounds good. If it's going to give me hair.

JAY LENO: It will give you hair.

KEVIN EUBANKS: -- I'm there.

JAY LENO: And we thought it would be interesting. This is kind of new, uncharted territory. Nobody's done a show similar to this at 10 o'clock. I asked NBC, "Do some research." And they said, "Yeah, people would like to see something like this earlier." We're going to try it.

For the last 17 years, it's been a privilege to say, "Please stay tuned for Conan." And I'm glad I'll be able to do that again because people think, you know -- Conan is a great guy. Conan will do a wonderful job on The Tonight Show as well. And I think it will be fun to say, "Stay tuned for Conan coming up right after the news." .