CONAN HASN’T HEARD FROM JAY — DOESN’T EXPECT TO

Conan O’Brien says that he has not heard directly from Jay Leno since he was told by NBC officials that they intended to move The Jay Leno Show to 11:35 p.m. and The Tonight Show to midnight (a proposal that O’Brien rejected, opening the way for Leno to resume hosting Tonight).

In recent interviews, O’Brien has suggested that he believes Leno reneged on a 2004 bargain to walk away from Tonight in five years and let O’Brien take over so as to prevent O’Brien from moving to another network. Leno’s position is that he was effectively fired by NBC and then asked to come back when things didn’t work out as planned. “I don’t think I’ll be hearing from him,” O’Brien told Larry King in one of King’s final shows. “There’s nothing really for either of us to talk about.” As for being relegated to cable TV, O’Brien insisted that cable allows him to do things that NBC executives might never have countenanced. “I feel like, let’s try anything, let’s just go for it, I’ve got nothing to lose,” he told King. “I think that’s one of the best feelings you can have in comedy.”