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NEWS FLASH: Conan not going gentle (later) into the night

And so the ping-pong game continues.

Conan O'Brien just said he won't do The Tonight Show if it's pushed back after midnight ET.

His statement addressed to the "People of Earth" (he used to be a Simpsons writer, remember) contends he believes moving the show from "tonight" to the next day would "seriously damage what I consider to be the greatest franchise in the history of broadcasting," and he won't take part in that.

Conan also says "I currently have no other offer and honestly have no idea what happens next."

Until, of course, his phone starts ringing. (Immediately upon the release of the statement.)

So now what happens? Will Conan make a monkey of NBC?

You tell us.

Conan's entire statement can be found here.

2 Comments

Amy Beckwith said:

No need to make a monkey of NBC when it has already succeeded in making an ass of itself.

January 13, 2010 10:10 PM

AaronS said:

With Jay Leno being cast as the bad guy in this drama, the worst is yet ahead for NBC...maybe. If Conan leaves and Jay returns to the tonight show, I am almost positive that the tonight show will falter in a big way. People love Jay (and Conan), but there are at least two things against Jay's success:

1) He's now looked at, rightly or wrongly, as the "bad guy." That's going to hurt.

2) There is something distasteful about the whole thing, the "Oops, we made a mistake and we're going to fix it." The old saying of "You can never go back" is in play here...it simply will not be the same.

If Jay returns to the Tonight Show, it will falter.

Here are some ideas:

1) Jay and Conan BOTH quit, join forces, and become the most potent late night team (perhaps with Conan again following Leno) in history, offering themselves as a single package to FOX or ABC, for a bazillion dollars.

2) Move the Jay Leno show to a once a week--and amp it WAY UP.

3) Move the Jay Leno show to a daytime TV spot, competing with, perhaps, soap operas, etc.

4) Jay to "fall on his sword" and quit, but that he and Conan work to rewrite the story so that it is all management's fault, and that Jay was nothing but a good guy and refused to hurt Conan, blah, blah, blah

January 14, 2010 6:12 AM

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Diane Werts has been glued to the tube since she can remember, growing up in a household where the TV came on first thing in the morning and stayed on till bedtime and beyond. She worked for the USA Film Festival, then for The Dallas Morning News writing about everything from Shakespeare to macrame art to rock music (and has the hearing loss to prove it). She moved to New York's Newsday to edit their glossy TV magazine, then returned to writing about television, specializing in its stranger permutations. She's a past president of the Television Critics Association.

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