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NBC announces departure deal for Conan O’Brien
It’s official. Conan O’Brien’s last “Tonight Show” will be Friday night.
Following an increasingly bitter on-air battle between O’Brien and 17-year “Tonight Show” host Jay Leno and a public relations debacle for last-place NBC, the Associated Press reported today that a $45 million deal has been struck which will provide severance for O’Brien and his staff, allow the host to return to the air on another network as early as September, and provide for Leno’s return to “The Tonight Show” on March 1, following the Winter Olympics.
A deal had been expected earlier in the week, but reports surfaced that O’Brien was holding out for severance for “Tonight Show” employees, who relocated with him to Los Angeles from New York where he hosted “Late Night” before taking over for Leno seven months ago. NBC moved Leno to 9 p.m. CT and both hosts experienced steep ratings declines. Complaints from local affiliates, who watched helplessly as their late night news ratings (and revenues) dropped because of Leno’s weak lead-in, forced the network to abandon its wait-and-see, “52-week strategy” for Leno and initiate his return to the “Tonight Show.”
“In the end, Conan was appreciative of the steps NBC made to take care of his staff and crew, and decided to supplement the severance they were getting out of his own pocket,” his manager, Gavin Polone, told The Wall Street Journal. “Now he just wants to get back on the air as quickly as possible.”
No word yet on other details of the settlement, including who owns the rights to the characters O’Brien created while on “The Tonight Show” and “Late Night.” When CBS late night host David Letterman left NBC after being rejected as Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show” replacement in 1992, the network claimed rights to his routines as its “intellectual property.”
Are you glad it’s over or will you miss the on-air sniping which, frankly, seemed to raise both Leno’s and O’Brien’s games while Letterman chuckled from the CBS sidelines?
Sound off!
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment Categories: Entertainment, News coverage
Comments
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By john doe
January 21, 2010 11:30 AM | Link to this
I give Jay at most a year and then he'll be gone also probably along with The Tonight Show institution. The ratings will never recover. Conan will go on to be successful on another network.
By Dale Roe
January 21, 2010 8:48 AM | Link to this
Hi, Michelle!
Speculation is that it would cost the network much more to get rid of Leno than Conan. As always, it seems to come down to dollars. What's frustrating is the revisionist history that conveniently forgets how very long it took Leno to overtake Letterman and get those banner "Tonight Show" ratings. To expect Conan to do that in 7 months was not realistic. And Jay's 9 p.m. ratings were terrible, too. Do you think they'll go back up when he returns to 10:35? I was never a fan, but I really think he is damaged goods now.
By Michelle Brown
January 21, 2010 8:25 AM | Link to this
I don't understand why Leno, whose show tanked, is the one who gets the plum spot of "The Tonight Show," especially when he apparently was told by the network five years ago that he would be retired from that spot to make way for O'Brien.
I don't blame either talk show host, but the network sure isn't acting like there is a brain among its leaders.