Conan O'Brien Finds a New Home

[Stiker]

He'll be coming to TBS in November:

http://www.usatoday.com/life/televis...onan-tbs_N.htm

NEW YORK — Late-night mainstay Conan O'Brien is headed to TBS to resume his comedic duties with a talk show expected to debut in November, the network says.

The program will air Mondays through Thursdays at 11 p.m. Eastern, shifting TBS' "Lopez Tonight," starring George Lopez, to midnight.

Monday's surprise announcement hit the same day O'Brien starts a two-month, nationwide comedy tour in Eugene, Ore., amid persistent reports that he was likely to claim Fox as his new late-night home.

Barring Fox, syndication was widely considered O'Brien's most likely option. Few if anyone mentioned TBS as a plausible destination.

O'Brien began serious talks with TBS just last week, the network said.

"In three months, I've gone from network television to Twitter to performing live in theaters, and now I'm headed to basic cable," O'Brien said in a tongue-in-cheek-toned statement. "My plan is working perfectly."

O'Brien left NBC in January after hosting "The Tonight Show" for just eight months, as his ratings plunged from those of his longtime "Tonight" predecessor, Jay Leno, who reclaimed the hour. Until last June, O'Brien had followed Leno as host of "Late Night" since 1993.

OBrien's parting deal bars him from appearing on TV until September.

[Conrad]

[Souj]

So, he quit Late Night because his show was getting bumped an hour later, and now his new show is bumping up someone elses talk show an hour?

[Arnwulf]

To be fair, it's "Lopez Tonight" and if you've seen it, it needs to be bumped farther than that.

[Mjd]

To be fair, it's "Lopez Tonight" and if you've seen it, it needs to be bumped farther than that.

Ha.

At least he will be able to get away with a lot of stuff he couldn't on basic..

[Stiker]

So, he quit Late Night because his show was getting bumped an hour later, and now his new show is bumping up someone elses talk show an hour?

To be honest, this is a huge win for Lopez. He just got the best possible lead-in he could ask for.

[Stiker]

Apologies for the double post, but just saw this pop up on Coco's Facebook page. More details about how the deal went down. Seems Lopez actually reached out to help make it happen.

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.co...ned/?src=busln

Conan O’Brien’s manager, Gavin Polone, said that a whirlwind negotiation of only about 10 days led the late-night star to leave network television and jump to the cable network, TBS.

“They called us about a week and a half ago,” Mr. Polone said, in outlining how the negotiations began.

The Turner Entertainment president, Steve Koonin, laid out the network’s offer to give Mr. O’Brien a show at 11 p.m. weeknights, but Mr. Polone said that the Conan side had an immediate reaction: “You guys already have an 11 p.m. show.”

He was referring to the current 11 p.m. late-night show on TBS, hosted by comedian George Lopez. Mr. Polone said that Mr. Koonin told him everything had been worked out and that Mr. Lopez had agreed to slide his show back to midnight to make room for Mr. O’Brien.

But that script was awfully familiar to the Conan O’Brien side. “That sounded very similar to Jeff Gaspin coming to Conan and asking him to move back to midnight to make room for Jay,” Mr. Polone said.

In the turbulent early weeks of January, NBC’s entertainment chief, Mr. Gaspin, went to Mr. O’Brien to ask him to move the “Tonight Show” to 12:05 a.m. to free up the preceding half hour for Jay Leno to move back to late-night (in a 30-minute show) after the quick failure of his 10 p.m. comedy hour.

Mr. O’Brien of course refused and negotiated his exit from NBC. In the months since, his representatives were known to be speaking mainly to Fox Broadcasting about a new show for that network.

Mr. Polone said he went to Mr. O’Brien to inform him of the TBS offer. “Conan said, ‘We’re not putting ourselves in the position of shoving somebody out of his show.’ ” That blocked the potential deal for a brief time.

But that position changed after another phone call. Mr. Polone said that Mr. Lopez himself called Mr. O’Brien personally. “George called Conan to sell Conan on this idea. He was all for it. It really was George who made this happen.”

With Mr. Lopez on board, talks became serious very quickly with TBS, Mr. Polone said. TBS emphasized how young their audience was, a match with Mr. O’Brien’s core viewers. “The lead-ins would be shows like ‘Family Guy’ and ‘The Office,’ which is great for Conan,” Mr. Polone said. Mr. Lopez has the youngest audience in late night with a median age of 33.

The negotiations moved rapidly because, Mr. Polone said, TBS agreed quickly to almost every request. “We’d come back with complex details and they’d apologize and say they might not be able to get back to us for two hours.”

TBS also promised “the biggest promotional campaign in television history” for Mr. O’Brien, using some of TBS’s most popular properties like the NBA playoffs this spring and the Major League Baseball playoffs next fall.

Mr. O’Brien will continue to produce his show in Los Angeles, Mr. Polone said.

He declined to comment on what happened with the negotiations with the Fox network, except to say that they had been ongoing. But several executives who have been familiar with that process said that complications had made those negotiations difficult to conclude.

Mainly Fox’s affiliated stations have deals in place for syndicated programs — mostly repeats of shows like “The Simpsons” and the same two comedies that play on TBS, “The Office” and “Family Guy.” The stations have already paid for those shows and sold advertising for them.

The stations have also been through a financially crippling year because of the national recession and many were resistant to giving up the profits they would experience with the syndicated repeats. (Fox and the affiliates were also facing contentious negotiations over retransmission rights to cable networks, a source of income the two entities will battle over in terms of who gets how much.)

Mr. O’Brien was likely to reach only about 60 per cent of the country with a first broadcast at 11 p.m. The rest of the country would be reached at later hours, diminishing his chances to hit a big rating – at least initially. Fox was promising to expand the coverage to full clearance at 11 p.m. in about three years, several parties to the talks said.

But with TBS, Mr. O’Brien will reach almost every home in the nation immediately. That made the deal more attractive.

Stepping away from a broadcast network may mean that he will not get a full chance to face off with Mr. Leno and NBC, a prospect he might have liked given the circumstances of his departure.

But what it does set up is a new kind of heavyweight match in late night. Now Mr. O’Brien will be face to face with the two big stars of late-night in cable, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central.

All three men are close friends; now they will be measured directly against each other in the ratings.

[Jedimasta]

God damn, I was really hoping comedy central would pick him up. Colbert, Stewart, and O'Brien on the same network would have been insanely awesome.

[Arnwulf]

God damn, I was really hoping comedy central would pick him up. Colbert, Stewart, and O'Brien on the same network would have been insanely awesome.

That would have been great, but Comedy Central is notoriously cheap and probably would not pay O'Brien anything meaningful. I'm glad he landed a new gig and can't wait to see how it works out for him.

[Acturus]

Call me pessimistic, but it seems like TBS could have twisted George Lopez's arm so that he'd let Conan take his spot.

[Byrd]

I'm going to see him in "concert" tonight in Eugene. I'm wondering what, if anything, he'll say about this.

I also wonder if this will affect his ability to get A-list guests....

[Necronus]

Call me pessimistic, but it seems like TBS could have twisted George Lopez's arm so that he'd let Conan take his spot.

Perhaps, but if you were in Conan's spot and Lopez called you and said "nah man, its cool, I want you as a lead in", would you say no? Even if Lopez was arm twisted, that call likely made the difference in Conan agreeing to bump him back.

[Overburn]

I didn't even know they let white people on TBS besides Seinfeld reruns. I hope this ends up good though, hopefully it doesn't just mean no one else would pick him up or something.

[Warudo Ecksu]

Apparently Fox was being cheap while they were trying to work out something with Conan's people which is why nothing really came out of those negotiations. It'll be good to have Conan back, and I really don't care what channel he's on b/c we record everything we watch any way.

And I doubt TBS really had to twist Lopez's arm b/c like someone else already said, Conan is the perfect lead in for his show. I bet he gets higher ratings airing after Conan despite the fact that his show isn't that great.

[Alderaan]

Fox only likes cheap, piece of shit reality shows so no shocker they weren't gonna pay up. I think it's a perfect opener for Lopez and i only see his ratings going up. TBS is the place to be baby. Fuck network garbage.

[Duwie]

I find this really funny since I remember watching one of lopez' shows one night(left it on after watching seinfeld) and he was making fun of the whole nbc thing and one of his painfully unfunny punch lines was like... "well im not going anywhere! i'll be right here baby!" or something to that effect while making his retarded gestures. Screw that unfunny bastard and hurray Conan!

[Kaslo]

The only cool thing Lopez has done was Dave Arquett v. Some Wrestler.

[Alderaan]

The only cool thing Lopez has done was Dave Arquett v. Some Wrestler.

I dunno, i thought Eastwood coming on and giving George a leaf blower was good.

[KuroTsuki]

I kind of had mixed feelings when I first heard him going to TBS. I think part of me really wanted him to compete with Jay. But yeah, I'm just glad he's gonna be on TV again, and as soon as November.

I'm going to see him in "concert" tonight in Eugene. I'm wondering what, if anything, he'll say about this.

How was that show?

I wanted to go, but those Eugene tickets are so damn expensive lol. I'm just gonna wait for the Washington shows.

[Acturus]

Perhaps, but if you were in Conan's spot and Lopez called you and said "nah man, its cool, I want you as a lead in", would you say no? Even if Lopez was arm twisted, that call likely made the difference in Conan agreeing to bump him back.

I'm just surprised that Obrien would do -anything- that could be construed as "pulling a Leno" after his very high road exit from the NBC game.