You feel that something, philosophically, at your show, caused this viewership shift?

Yeah. And it’s just my judgment. Before, I felt pretty confident in what we were up to, because there was no competition to speak of, whatsoever. In the beginning [at CBS], we came out of the chute, going a million miles an hour. And then when that was all done, we just sort of said, “Really, can we go a million miles an hour again?” And we tried, and we couldn’t. I think we had gone way down the road, maybe way down the wrong road.

How did you get back on the right track?

I don’t know that we ever did get back the right way. It didn’t start to settle down until it couldn’t be more clear that Jay was the more popular show. And when we all realized that there’s not much we can do here — you can’t put toothpaste back in the tube — then we started going our own way again. I think it was just inevitability. The guy in the race who spends more time looking over his shoulder, well, that’s the mistake. For two years, I made that mistake. We ran out of steam.

But you came in and continued to do the job.

Well, that was the other thing. I was always surprised that they didn’t let me go. Wait a minute — wouldn’t you like me to go home now? Well, no. Next thing you know, I’ve been here 23 years.

Were there times in your CBS tenure when you thought you might not have control over when you’d leave?

It’s a blur to me now, but when we came over from NBC, it was Howard Stringer running the show. He brought us here, and paid a lot of money to remodel this theater and really made the commitment. And then when he left, that commitment, I was worried about that leaving, too. Those were the days when CBS was really doing poorly. They lost [N.F.L.] football. And I just thought to myself, this can’t be good for us. Then [Les] Moonves came in and turned the place into Disney World.

When you had your heart surgery in 2000, did you fear you might never come back to the show?

I was concerned that I’ll never be able to run again — that was my big concern. Because I had so relied on running, all my life, to get myself clearheaded. And of course, I was worried that somebody would go on while I was off with my heart surgery, and be good enough that they didn’t want me back. As I’m trying to recover from quintuple bypass surgery, I’m paranoid that my life is ending. And then, six weeks after the surgery, I ran for five miles. So let’s face it, I am a hero. There’s no two ways of looking at it.