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By Bruce Fretts

It's the most potentially explosive decision made at NBC since Dateline rigged a GM truck. Last week the network placed its Late Night franchise, which generates up to $70 million in annual ad revenues, in the hands of lanky, unknown 30-year-old comedy writer Conan O'Brien. The choice was even more shocking because familiar names like Dana Carvey, Dennis Miller, and Garry Shandling had been floated as possible replacements for David Letterman. With zero recognition, ''O'Brien will be an uphill sell to advertisers,'' admits NBC West Coast president Don Ohlmeyer. That may be an understatement. ''At first I thought it was a prank,'' says one senior media executive. ''We'll probably buy time his first couple of weeks, but we're not gonna make a long-term commitment.'' Local NBC stations seem to have a bit more confidence in Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels' latest comedy find. ''NBC could have gone down the middle of the road, and it wouldn't have generated this kind of excitement,'' says James B. Waterbury, head of the 209-member NBC Affiliate Board. ''They might fall on their face, but they might knock one out of the park.'' The major concern is O'Brien's lack of on-camera experience. The carrot- topped cutup appeared in a few sketches while working for Michaels as a writer on SNL, which he left in 1991 to coproduce Fox's The Simpsons. Earlier this year, O'Brien was recruited by Michaels to produce the post-Letterman Late Night. After auditions at several L.A. comedy clubs failed to produce a host, Michaels asked O'Brien to try out. A special audition was arranged on April 13 on the Tonight Show set, with O'Brien doing a monologue and interviewing Mimi Rogers and Jason Alexander before an audience of NBC executives. Michaels watched the audition via satellite from New York and stunned NBC Entertainment president Warren Littlefield afterward by telling him that O'Brien should be the new host. Nonetheless, Littlefield began talking with Shandling about the job, reportedly offering him a four-year, $20 million contract. ''Garry just decided the 12:30 a.m. time slot was not really what he wanted,'' says a source close to Shandling. Only hours after Shandling stepped aside, NBC called O'Brien at his Simpsons office and offered him the job. ''He turned paler than usual,'' says % Matt Groening, The Simpsons' creator. ''That's the last I saw him. I suppose he'll be back to clean out his desk.'' Still reeling from the news, O'Brien made a brief, uneasy appearance with Jay Leno on the April 26 Tonight Show. Shifting his weight awkwardly and glancing sheepishly at the floor, he seemed more like an audience member picked by Leno for a skit than the newly annointed King of Late Night. ''I imagine he was nervous,'' says Leno. ''I didn't try to do a bit with him or anything, because the press will hammer you. He got an ad-lib off (about Branford Marsalis leaving Leno to become O'Brien's band leader) that was pretty funny.'' NBC wants O'Brien to be more than pretty funny-it's calling him the voice of a new generation. But with the jury still out on Leno, it seems an even bigger risk to replace Letterman with a novice. ''It's not like NBC is launching Conan off a firmly established program,'' says Betsy Frank, senior vice president of Saatchi & Saatchi advertising. ''If he were launching following Carson, I'd be less concerned.'' O'Brien's friends think he's up to the task. ''He's been doing a talk show in the Simpsons' rewrite room for the past two years-and he's brilliant,'' says Groening. ''Now America will get to see him do it.''