Letterman Perplexed by NBC's Move to Ditch Leno

David Letterman isn't planning to head off into the sunset when his Late Night contract expires in 2010, the New York Times reports, telling a Rolling Stone interviewer that he would love to keep going at CBS—and that he was confused by NBC's decision to put longtime rival Jay Leno out to pasture next year. "I don’t know why, after the job Jay has done for them, why they would relinquish that,” said the 26-year veteran.

"I still find it hard to believe that Jay won’t be there,” Letterman said of the man who's long stood between him and the No. 1 spot. “I wish that we—and when I say ‘we’ I mean ‘me’—I wish I could have prevailed.” Letterman, who bitterly departed NBC himself in 1993, said he had plenty of empathy for Leno ("I have to believe he was not happy about it"), and there would be a spot for him on the Late Night couch.
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