Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone.

IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: February 24, 1996

PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: The Late Shift, HBO [Watch on Amazon Video]

WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: The Late Shift was a kind of predecessor to the political tell-all adaptations that they would see much success with in the 2000s. Movies like Recount and Game Change, where the familiar figures of recent news cycles were re-cast as Julianne Moore, Ed Harris, and Laura Dern and where America could essentially re-live these near-current events from the comfort of knowing how it all turns out.

HBO could have made one hell of a Game Change-style movie about the 1992 Presidential election. Bill Clinton, Ross Perot, Jerry Brown, Gennifer Flowers, James Carville the cast of characters would have been brilliant. HBO didn’t make that movie (Mike Nichols did — it’s called Primary Colors and the names were changed, but it’s not at all hard to figure out who’s who); instead, they made a movie about the other great political conflict of 1992: the late-night wars between David Letterman and Jay Leno over Johnny Carson’s vacated Tonight Show seat.

The Leno/Letterman rivalry has become the stuff of TV legend, and The Late Shift is a big reason why. Based on Bill Carter’s book about the behind-the-scenes battles as NBC tried to figure out their succession plan in the wake of Carson’s retirement, The Late Shift offers indelible impressions of the major players: talented, neurotic-but-proud Letterman; affable, ambitious Leno; Kathy Bates as Leno’s fire-breathing producer; Bob Balaban, Ed Begley Jr., Treat Williams and more as the executives, agents, and suits jockeying for position. As process stories about contract negotiations between networks and their talent, it’s fairly riveting stuff.

The performances are great — John Michael Higgins and Daniel Roebuck give definitive turns as Dave and Jay — but it’s Kathy Bates who steamrolls everything in her path as Helen Kushnick, Jay’s longtime manager/producer/svengali. She won a much-deserved Golden Globe for her work.

It’s a fun, dishy tell-all of a TV movie, and we could use more of them.

[You can watch The Late Shift on Amazon Video.]