Remote pieces and episodes shot on location Remote pieces shot on location were a recurring staple on
Late Night, but occasionally, entire episodes were shot on location, usually during
sweeps months. The first vacation for the show was a week-long stint of shows in Los Angeles the week of November 9–12, 1999. This was the only location week for the show while Andy Richter was with the show, and the only time the show's theme was altered for the week, with a more surf-style version of the show's normal theme (though the Toronto shows ended the normal theme with a piece of "
O Canada"). The show was broadcast from NBC's L.A. studios (NBC Studios Burbank) and an L.A.-themed set was built, very similar in layout to the New York set. From February 10–13, 2004,
Late Night broadcast from the
Elgin Theatre in Toronto, Canada. The guests for these episodes were all Canadians (with the exception of
Adam Sandler), and included such stars as
Jim Carrey and
Mike Myers. As the show was taped at a theater, unlike the trip to L.A., the set built was not like the show's standard set. From May 9–12, 2006, the show made a similar venture to the
Chicago Theatre in Chicago, Illinois, taking cues from their previous trip to Toronto. Between April 30 – May 4, 2007, the show originated from the
Orpheum Theatre in San Francisco. In a sketch called "Conan O'Brien Hates My Homeland", Conan mocked every nation in the world to see which ones he gets letters from. An announcer on the Finnish entertainment channel SubTV, which airs the show a couple of days after it is aired in the US, asked people to defend Finland before Conan got to insult it, and the viewers in Finland began sending mail before the bit had even gotten to the letter F. Conan responded by assuming the Finnish "just couldn't wait" to be insulted and officially insulted Finland in the segment. An overwhelming number of postcards were supposedly received, which apparently "forced" Conan to give Finland a formal apology. Conan then went as far as to have the flag of Finland shown in the background during a speech and slandered the Finns' "hated" neighbor
Sweden with a sign saying "Sweden Sucks!" printed over the flag of Sweden. It would seem that this chain of events led to elevated ratings in Finland and subsequently also sparked a special relationship with the viewers in Finland. Later when Conan was talking to audience members before the show, a group of fans visiting from Finland commented that he resembled their female president
Tarja Halonen. Conan mentioned the resemblance on his show, even showing pictures of Halonen next to himself. When he discovered that Halonen was up for
reelection he began making satirical commercials in support of Halonen and vowed to travel to Finland to meet her if she won re-election. When she did indeed win re-election in January 2006, Conan traveled to Finland and met with her. One episode, broadcast on March 10, 2006, was compiled mainly of footage from O'Brien's trip to
Finland. In the episode, Conan greeted fans at the airport, participated in a Sami cultural ceremony, appeared on a Finnish talk show, and attempted to visit a fan who had written to him. The episode was not strictly taped as a live episode there, however, but was prefaced by an introduction by O'Brien taped in New York. The Finland episode came as the culmination of a long-running joke on the show. Aside from location shows, the show also did special one-shots in its early years. In 1995, one episode of the show was taped aboard a New York City ferry in New York Harbor. Dubbed "The Show on a Boat" by the showtunes-style song-and-dance number performed by a trio of "sailors" at the start of the show, O'Brien, Richter, the band and guests were all crammed onto the deck of the ferry. The show was taped at its normal afternoon time, while it was still light out.
Technical and production difficulties A more unexpected shoot occurred on October 10, 1996, when a five-alarm fire in
Rockefeller Plaza rendered the 6A studios out of commission for the remainder of that week. The fire occurred on early Thursday morning, which left O'Brien's staff precious little time to assemble a show elsewhere. Pressed for time as 12:35 approached, O'Brien taped the show outside, after dark, despite the cold weather, on a makeshift set with the
Prometheus statue and 30 Rock serving as a backdrop. Furthering the unfortunate nature of the evening's circumstances was the final guest,
Julie Scardina, who brought along wild animals, including birds that Conan explained had to be kept tied up, as they could not be freed outside. Earlier in the show, O'Brien and Richter walked into
Brookstone (located in the lobby of Rockefeller Center), camera crew in tow, and bought a massaging leather recliner for the first guest,
Samuel L. Jackson. The second of the two "fire shows", on Friday night, was taped in the
Today Show studio, which was not affected by the fire, though the East L.A. rock band
Los Lobos performed in the blustery wind a song from their newest album
Colossal Head. During the
Northeast blackout of 2003, O'Brien and the staff taped a short 10-minute introduction explaining that the episode they had planned would not be taking place due to the blackout. Studio 6A was powered by a generator and lit by battery-powered floodlights. A standby show was aired in-progress after the intro. One of the scheduled guests that night,
The Dandy Warhols, commandeered the studio's
green room, where they stayed until they performed on the show the next night.
Gimmick episodes Other shows that were taped in the regular 6A studio were augmented by special gimmicks: A lot of high-concept gimmick episodes were done in the early years of the show, such as a 1995 show done entirely on a boat of the circle line or "Time Travel Week", four episodes from early 1996, where Conan and Andy (and the rest of the crew) "time-traveled" to a different point in time each night. Times and locations included
The Civil War,
Ancient Greece, The future, and The early '80s (featuring a cameo by
David Letterman in the cold open, who occupied Conan's studio in 1983, cruelly brushing off Conan and Andy's attempt at explaining their presence in Letterman's dressing room by saying, "Why don't you two fellas go find a nice, warm place to screw yourselves? Security!"). In 1997, a special episode was taped in which the studio audience was composed solely of grade-school age children, primarily 5–10 years of age. Conan interacted with the children, encouraging them to laugh and cheer to keep away the boredom monster. The October 18, 2002 episode was re-shot entirely in
clay animation nearly seven months after its first airing, including the opening credits and commercial bumpers. The episode's originally broadcast soundtrack was retained while the visuals were reproduced to mirror the original footage in a small-scale reproduction of the studio 6A. On October 31, 2006, a similarly conceptualized
Halloween episode was created from an episode which originally aired in May and featured
Larry King, among other guests. Using a process the show called "Skelevision", all the visuals were re-shot with a Halloween motif, with
human skeletons adorned with the clothing and accessories of the humans. This re-shoot was shot using the actual studio, and the puppeteers moved the skeletons with wires and cables while being visually obscured by
green screen technology. Once again, the opening and bumpers were altered, this time including a model of a hearse winding through a foggy landscape and cemetery, and the voice of
Bill Hader as
Vincent Price in place of
Joel Godard.
U2 exclusive The October 5, 2005 episode of
Late Night was devoted entirely to the band
U2, marking the first time in the show's then 13-year run that it had devoted an entire show to a single guest. Jim Pitt, the talent executive in charge of booking acts for the show, remarked that in his 12 years of working for
Late Night, U2 and
Johnny Cash were the "dream artists" he'd tried, but never succeeded in getting.
Anniversary episodes In 1996, a third anniversary episode was taped, though it aired in the regular 12:35/11:35 late night time slot. The show was composed of clips of the best of the first three years, and featured cameos from many former guests, including
Janeane Garofalo,
Scott Thompson,
Tony Randall and
George Wendt. Typical of O'Brien's style of comedy, he introduced his first guest (Wendt) by listing his notable achievements in television (particularly
Cheers) then introduced each subsequent guest by repeatedly listing Wendt's achievements (insinuating that all of his guests for that night's show played the role of Norm on
Cheers). In 1998,
Late Night aired a fifth anniversary special in prime time, mostly consisting of clips from the first five years. It was taped in the
Saturday Night Live studio, also in the GE Building. The special was later sold on VHS tape. In 2003, a similar tenth anniversary special was taped in New York City's famed
Beacon Theatre and later made available on DVD.
The final episode ''Late Night with Conan O'Brien''s last episode was recorded February 20, 2009, and aired shortly after midnight that next morning. The episode featured clips from past shows and a reflection on the show's sixteen-year-long run.
John Mayer sent a farewell video message, singing a song about how Los Angeles is "going to eat [Conan] alive" (an ironic foretelling of
things to come). In a short
remote piece, Conan released regular contributor
Abe Vigoda "into the wild," as he could not bring him to Los Angeles for the move to
The Tonight Show.
Will Ferrell made a surprise visit as
George W. Bush, which quickly devolved into Ferrell tearing off his business suit to reveal an ill-fitting green leprechaun outfit that had been worn in a number of previous appearances on the show. Former sidekick
Andy Richter, who re-joined O'Brien when he took over
The Tonight Show in June, joined O'Brien onstage for two segments, watching clips and reminiscing about the show. The song would be used many years later as the theme for O'Brien's podcast ''
Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend''. The program concluded with a visibly emotional O'Brien giving a farewell speech from behind his desk, thanking his fans, writers, producers, backstage crew, his family,
the Max Weinberg 7,
David Letterman,
Joel Godard,
Jay Leno, and
Lorne Michaels, as well as a final assurance that he would not "grow up" as he moved to
The Tonight Show. After the end of the series, Studio 6A at Rockefeller Center was remodeled for
The Dr. Oz Show. In the summer of 2013, NBC moved
Late Night with Jimmy Fallon to Studio 6A while 6B, which housed
Late Night since Fallon succeeded O'Brien in 2009, was being renovated when Fallon took over
The Tonight Show on February 17, 2014, while
The Dr. Oz Show moved to ABC's Upper West Side studios. ==Awards and nominations==