RKMBs Forums .::Robegories::. Media Conan

In the strongest indication yet that Friday indeed will mark Conan O'Brien's final "Tonight Show," a list of the booked guests for the rest of this week released Tuesday featured Will Ferrell set to appear Friday.

Ferrell, of course, was the first guest on "The Tonight Show With Conan O'Brien" when the show launched June 1.

It has become somewhat of a tradition on "Tonight." Jay Leno's first guest in 1992, Billy Crystal, guested on what was supposed to be the talk show host's second-to-last "Tonight Show" episode in May. (Leno is now set to return as "Tonight" host March 1.) The reason why Crystal didn't appear on the very last episode was that, in a demonstration of what was billed as a seamless transition, Leno's guest then was Conan O'Brien.

It is safe to say that there is zero chance O'Brien would return the favor.

Other big names scheduled for O'Brien's final week on "Tonight": Tuesday, January 19: Quentin Tarantino, Paul Bettany and musical guest Spoon; Wednesday, January 20: Adam Sandler, Joel McHale and musical guest Joss Stone; Thursday, January 21: Robin Williams and musical guest Barry Manilow; Friday, January 22: Tom Hanks, Ferrell.

As for the official announcement of O'Brien's exit and Leno's return to "Tonight," it was delayed again Tuesday as the two sides have not settled yet on the size of the severance packages of the "Tonight" staff.

NBC said Thursday it has reached a $45 million deal with Conan O'Brien for his exit from the "Tonight" show, allowing Jay Leno to return to the late-night program he hosted for 17 years.

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 staff in severance, the network said in an announcement on the "Today" show.

His final show will be Friday, and Leno will return to "Tonight" on March 1.

"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."

O'Brien will be free to begin another TV job as soon as September, NBC said. There has been speculation on where he might go next. ABC (which airs "Nightline" and "Jimmy Kimmel Live!") has said it wasn't interested, while Fox, which lacks a network late-night show, expressed appreciation for his show — but nothing more.

Copying and pasting what someone else says. Learn to think for yourself.

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Conan O’Brien’s final appearance as host of NBC’s “The Tonight Show” scored big ratings last night. The show not only won its time slot among the younger viewers that advertisers covet, it was No. 1 for the entire evening among all late-night and prime-time programs according to early numbers from NBC.

According to preliminary data from Nielsen Co. provided by NBC, O’Brien’s last show registered a 7.0 rating and a 16 share, compared with “Late Show with David Letterman” with 2.5/5; “Nightline” with 2.8/6; “Jimmy Kimmel Live” with 1.3/4; “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” with 3.3/10; and “Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson” with 1.5/4. The figures cover only metered markets.

A ratings point represents about 1,149,000 households, or 1 percent of the estimated 114.9 million TV homes in the U.S. The share is the percentage of in-use TVs tuned to a given program.

In addition, O’Brien’s final “Tonight Show” scored a 4. 8 rating among viewers aged 18-49. Its leading late-night competitor, “The Late Show with David Letterman,” scored a 0.6.

O’Brien’s ratings had been soaring in his final week, handily beating some of his late-night rivals. On several nights recently, including Jan. 20 and Jan. 21, O’Brien registered higher numbers at 11:35 p.m. among viewers aged 18-49 than Jay Leno did in his prime-time show, “The Jay Leno Show.”

After a surreal week of high emotion and comic abuse of NBC on "The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien," the 46-year-old host is gone for good from the network's airwaves after only seven months in Johnny Carson's old chair.

But the story of this misguided adventure in prime-time and late-night programming by NBC's top brass is far from over. The narrative of O'Brien being pushed out of the job he prepared himself for over five years to make room for Jay Leno, who failed miserably in prime time, demands some discussion about what happens next to the redhead.

The interest is greatest, of course, among O'Brien fans, who will miss having him there Monday night after the late local news - and hope he will be back somewhere on TV after the no-compete portion of his severance agreement with NBC ends in September. But even casual observers of this incredible corporate crackup are surely curious about how the only character who remotely resembles a protagonist in this sorry tale might fare.

The happiest pro-O'Brien story line has him showing up on Fox in September and trouncing NBC, hopefully, in some form of head-to-head competition against Leno. The Conan-moving-to-Fox scenario has been treated like a done deal in some online sites - to the point that several media outlets fell last week for hoax stories that the network had registered a Fox-Conan domain name. Not true.

"I think Peter Rice [Fox Entertainment chairman] wants Conan on the broadcast network - and, in fact, in one of our interviews, Rice said that Fox would like to be in business with him," says Stuart Levine, assistant managing editor at the trade publication Variety. Levine has been covering the late-night saga in Los Angeles.

"The problem is that Fox would have to get clearance for that from the affiliates. So emotionally, it sounds great right now for people to say Conan's going to be on Fox in September. But financially, I don't know how it would work. I'm not sure anyone has talked to the affiliates about clearances yet."

Affiliates are those 200 or so stations across the country that are not owned by the network but, as a confederation, give it the power to sell ads nationally. Affiliates were the part of the network food chain that ultimately forced NBC to cancel "The Jay Leno Show" a few weeks ago by threatening to pre-empt Leno's low-rated 10 p.m. show with their own late-night newscasts moved up an hour.

"Clearances" refer to the affiliates' clearing a time period of any local programming so that a network program can have it.

Getting clearance at WBFF-TV (Channel 45), the Fox affiliate in Baltimore, could be "complicated," according to general manger Bill Fanshawe, who also oversees Fox affiliates in Texas, Iowa, Wisconsin, Virginia, Oklahoma and South Carolina.

"Conan is clearly a talented host and would be a huge asset to any company, but there are lots of factors involved - factors that would have to be worked out between the network and the CEOs of the companies that own the stations," Fanshawe says.

"If there was an opportunity and the network got Conan, for us, one of the biggest factors would involve us having a brand [local news] built at 10 and 11 - and established in those time periods. But if there was some flexibility ... and they would consider having Conan come on after 11:30, yes, there could be an opportunity at my particular Fox station in Baltimore."

Translation: Baltimore's Fox45 airs its late local news from 10 to 11, and then offers an update at 11. The station and its owner, Sinclair, get to keep all the revenue from advertising during those time periods.

So if Fox wants to air O'Brien in Baltimore any time between 10 and 11:30, it probably would have to compensate the station for the lost revenue - and, given the comedian's weak ratings performance at 11:30 on NBC, it is far from certain that O'Brien would generate the kind of earnings that would be enough to provide for both network and affiliate profits.

Making an early start even more problematic and potentially expensive in Baltimore is the fact that Fox45 has established its late news as a winner in that profitable niche at 10 p.m., right after such Fox entertainment fare as " American Idol."

But if Fox wants to air a new O'Brien show after 11:30, that's open to negotiations.

But the Fox45 situation, with 90 minutes of late news starting at 10 p.m., is only one model. Other affiliates in other markets are locked into long-term syndication agreements for sitcoms such as "Friends" and "Seinfeld" in those hours - including after 11:30.

Would Fox be willing to compensate or buy such stations out of those contracts with syndicators to "clear" time in their cities for O'Brien? Complications within complications - but not impossible.

Nor is broadcast TV the only possibility for O'Brien. There have been reports of O'Brien's doing a nightly cable production, similar to "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" on Comedy Central.

Levine quotes John Langraf, president of the FX cable channel, as saying he'd "love to have a daily show" with Conan. But being owned by Fox, FX would have to see what the parent company wants for its network.

And how would O'Brien feel about moving from network TV to cable with a much smaller staff and far fewer resources?

"I don't know that Conan would be willing to go from NBC to basic cable," Levine says.

Some analysts have even suggested that online TV would be a good fit for O'Brien's niche-ier brand of humor. But if O'Brien thinks basic cable might be a comedown after hosting a storied network franchise, Internet TV is probably not something he is ready to seriously consider.

Where O'Brien ultimately lands in coming months matters - if for no other reason than that he has become, in the minds of some, a kind of folk hero. That might seem a laughable description of someone who leaves NBC with $35 million in severance after failing to attract a large enough audience for his employer to make a profit.

But NBC's top executives have displayed such stupidity and audience indifference in first moving Leno to prime time, and then back to 11:35 p.m. at O'Brien's expense, viewers need to root for someone against the network - and, by extension, the corporate forces that control their lives.

If you are going to miss Conan O'Brien's late night show, you likely won't have to wait too long. FOX is already starting to court the redhead who left NBC's Tonight Show after Jay Leno took his time slot at 11:35. It looks like O'Brien is going to get a jumpstart on the late night shows by starting at 11 p.m. according to a report today.

The New York Post writes:

Indications are that Fox execs began quizzing local affiliates last week to see if time at 11 p.m. -- now reserved mostly for reruns of comedies -- can be cleared.

Talks between O'Brien and FOX could start as early as next week. It looks like the only losers in the late night scandal of 2010 will be NBC and Jay Leno who has been the butt of all jokes for the past few weeks.

just saw the final show. i thought it was fun up until the will ferrel bit, and then just thought it was confusing. i guess its what conan wanted to go out with, but just seemed like an odd choice to not really be a part of the final 10 minutes of your final show.