Which Way To The Front?

Last year, Gerard Van der Leun wrote, “The Media is how America fights its civil wars.” And evidently, it’s also where the media itself fights its own wars:

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Maybe the reason why the Civil War analogy seems so apt is that the concept of late night show-biz-style chat shows is so old. Much like the 6:30 PM network news, these formats are well over a half century old — and are increasingly showing their age in the days of the Internet. Johnny isn’t marching home from this war — and neither are Steve Allen and Dick Cavett.

Related: From the days when Conan was merely cannon fodder in the late-night wars. As Tom McMahon writes, click here “to see a wonderfully surreal out-of-sync video like those old Godzilla films you used to see on TV as a kid” of one of O’Brien’s first appearances on NBC. He plays the doorman at Saturday Night Live’s posh, exclusive “Five Timers’ Club.”

But where’s Buck Henry?

Update: I’m not sure what it is about Conan that inspires memes from south of the Mason-Dixon Line, but as of now, New York magazine has the clip of the end of his final show, where he, Will Ferrell (complete with cowbell, of course), Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top, and others go out playing Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird.”  This is in contradistinction to YouTube, which has been yanking these clips left and right as NBC apparently has been sending out a flurry of DMCA take-down notices.