Jeff Gaspin, the chairman of NBC Universal Television Entertainment, said Tuesday that he underestimated the level of emotion that the network’s late-night changes provoked.

Chris Haston/NBC

Speaking at a television syndication conference in Las Vegas, Mr. Gaspin said the emotions particularly affected Conan O’Brien, who had a brief tenure as host of “The Tonight Show.”

Earlier this month Mr. Gaspin engineered a plan to put Jay Leno back in late-night. His proposal to push Mr. O’Brien back to 12:05 a.m. led the late-night host to exit NBC last week.

The rearrangement has tarred NBC, but when an on-stage interviewer asked whether the network had lost its nerve, Mr. Gaspin answered, “It takes a lot of nerve to do some of the things we just did.”

Mr. Leno returns to “The Tonight Show” on March 1, following the Winter Olympics on NBC. That same night, NBC restarts a normal 10 p.m. schedule.

“We need a cleansing moment,” Mr. Gaspin said. “The two weeks the Olympics are on are going to be a cleansing moment for NBC.”

Mr. Gaspin noted that “usually, you take the entire summer to launch a schedule. We have between now and March 1 to relaunch our schedule.”

Mr. O’Brien, meanwhile, is expected to find a new television home, perhaps at the Fox network. The session moderator, Ben Grossman of Broadcasting & Cable, asked, “Are you expecting to be competing with Conan this fall?” Mr. Gaspin answered, “My guess would be yes, but I just don’t know.”

At the end of the session, Mr. Gaspin was asked what he had learned from the late-night reshuffling. His answer: