Chin Up at NBC, Part V: Conan O’Brien and NBC Reach the Deal
This morning, NBC officially announced a $45 million settlement with Conan O’Brien, facilitating his departure from “The Tonight Show,” reinstating Jay Leno as of March 1, and allowing O’Brien to return to the air on another network as early as Sept. 1, 2010.
From the Associated Press:
Under the deal, which came seven months after O’Brien took the reins from Leno, O’Brien will get more than $33 million, NBC said. The rest will go to his 200-strong staff in severance, the network said in an announcement on the “Today” show.
His final show will be Friday, with Tom Hanks scheduled to appear as well as Will Ferrell — the first guest O’Brien welcomed as “Tonight” host last June — and musical guest Neil Young.
“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.”
As has been widely reported, O’Brien has not been offically (or, shall we say, publicly) offered a deal with Fox or any other potential suitors such as Comedy Central, but watch this space closely, because something dramatic is likely to happen in the next weeks, possibly next week — aw hell, it could happen today for all we know.
For those of you with memories that extend back to the 1992 late-night war chronicled in Bill Carter’s “The Late Shift,” David Letterman made an announcement surrounded by CBS executives as soon as NBC released him from his contract. Here’s what I suspect will happen: O’Brien will continue on with his shows tonight and tomorrow (and trust me, pay close attention to what Neil Young plays on Friday). Then on Monday morning, O’Brien and his new bosses will hold a press conference announcing his new show.
As Chase requested, here is Letterman’s scathing comment on the situation from Tuesday:
NBC will reap the whirlwind for its handling of this debacle. The network has given O’Brien a great deal, but now NBC is remarried to Leno, who returns to “The Tonight Show” as tarnished goods. Leno will likely score strong numbers when he reboots his “Tonight” in March, just because so many people will be curious, but much of his former audience now resides with Letterman and his good-guy image has been replaced by that of a giant-jawed Machiavellian. He might never reach his former heights. I personally do not think he will. But NBC owns him. It’s the Pottery Barn rule, chumps.
For the final word on this mess, for now, let’s leave it to Howard Stern. Appearing on “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” on Dec. 14, 2006, Stern predicted what happened in the last two weeks with almost frightening accuracy:
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Comments
I’m not as sure as you are that Jay won’t rebound from this. Sure, there is a lot of bad will going around, but most of that is from people who weren’t Jay fans in the first place.
He’s the lowest common denominator. The audience will always gravitate to him, even if there is no enthusiasm about it.
I’m waiting for Conan’s eventual appearance on Letterman, where he won’t say anything that violates his settlement and Dave is free to say everything for him.
Everybody forgets that Leno was number 1 in time slot of 11:35 for 10 years or so. You have to ask yourself “why did they move him in the first place”. Was he forced out by nice guy Conan or his contract. We don’t know yet who is the nice guy. They both want it bad. My bet is that if Conan had taken the 12:05 slot for a few years , soon the 11:35 slot would be his too. But he called their bluff and they said no. I think its on him. I also think he already knew what waited for him somewhere else and like letterman as much as they wanted the name “tonight show” they wanted the money more. I bet Letterman and Conan will both be making lots more money than Leno For a long time. I think the Name of the Tonight Show might be more important to Leno because of all the actions he has taken in the past for it. It will be fun to see what happens when everyone is on tv at same time. Have we all forgotten about Kimmel
Further proof that Howard Stern is a genius.
By the way, as a Staticblog fan, I humbly request you link to the Letterman bit from Tuesday. It was amazingly excoriating of Leno.