PASADENA I picture a two-person convention of tall, pasty-faced white guys whose names begin with "C" and contain 12 characters.

Conan O'Brien, 6-foot-5, and Craig Kilborn, 6-foot-4, network talk-show hosts destined to go head-to-head at some point in the future, bumped into each other at a restaurant, said O'Brien, host of NBC's "Late Night with Conan O'Brien." He described the encounter for TV critics here:

"He was horribly drunk," O'Brien wisecracked. "It's a terrible illness."

In reality, O'Brien said, he and Kilborn, who hosts "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central, talked about Kilborn's eventual move to CBS. Kilborn is slated to take over the "Late, Late Show" from Tom Snyder and compete directly with O'Brien, although when that happens depends mainly on when Comedy Central finds a "Daily Show" replacement.

"We chatted about it," O'Brien said. "And he was saying, 'Look, I don't even know if our show is really going to be doing the same kinds of things as your show.' If he's going to do any of the stuff that they've been doing on 'The Daily Show,' it's quite a different show."

O'Brien said he doesn't expect to alter "Late Night," either in anticipation of or reaction to Kilborn going to CBS. "The stupidest thing I could do right now would be to react to a show that isn't there," he said.

Even after a Kilborn show appears, O'Brien said, "I don't see us reacting to that program. I think that would be a mistake.... May he eat into some of our hardcore audience? He might. [But] he might actually bring some other people to the table, which happens often in late night.

"People think that two shows are going to siphon off viewers from each other," said O'Brien. But it turns out, he said, that "it's actually someone bringing more viewers into late night."

Copyright New York Daily News 1998