Empathetic Dave

David Letterman, the CBS host who has competed with Jay Leno every weeknight for 15 years, now feels empathy for his late-night challenger.
In an interview with Rolling Stone on newsstands this week, Mr. Letterman, the longtime “Late Show” host, expresses bewilderment about NBC's decision to replace Mr. Leno next year.
“Unless I’m misunderstanding something, I don’t know why, after the job Jay has done for them, why they would relinquish that,” Mr. Letterman said in the interview. “I guess they thought it was a less messy way to handle what happened to me at NBC. I don’t know.”
Mr. Letterman famously moved from NBC to CBS in 1993 after Mr. Leno replaced Johnny Carson on NBC’s “Tonight” show, establishing one of the foremost rivalries on television which was documented in the book "The Late Shift"
New York Times article HERE