Conan O’Brien’s New Home: Basic Cable
The news broke Monday morning: Conan O’Brien will be returning to our screens before the end of the year. This being 2010, it came via Twitter: “The good news: I will be doing a show on TBS starting in November! The bad news: I’ll be playing Rudy on the all new Cosby Show.”
Conan’s return to television was pretty much a given. What wasn’t a given was where he’d land. Conventional wisdom pointed to Fox as his likeliest new home.
Conventional wisdom got it wrong. Conan’s moving to basic cable. TBS, to be precise.
This apparently came as a surprise to some members of the Fox negotiating team, which thought their network was still the front-runner to acquiring the services of the tall, pale redhead. But despite the seeming inevitability of the move, Fox was never going to be a good fit for Conan O’Brien — or any national late-night show, for that matter.
Go check your local Fox affiliate’s listings. What are they showing between 10pm and midnight? Probably the local news, followed by syndicated programming — most likely sitcoms. Affiliates like picking up sitcoms because they’re proven ratings-garnerers, which means more ad revenues for the station. When affiliates acquires a syndicated sitcom, they agree to put it on at a particular time, and that’s pretty much that. Putting Conan on at a uniform time across the country would require many affiliates to renegotiate or break their contracts with syndicators, which they’d be reluctant to do.
Basic cable’s more flexible, in terms of scheduling and content. Word is that George Lopez called Conan O’Brien and told him he’d be happy to have his show pushed back to midnight if Conan would like to take the 11pm slot. And since it’s not broadcast television, the standards and practices are a bit looser. If Conan wants to bring out the Masturbating Bear to open the show, no one’s going to object.
Sweetening the deal: Conan O’Brien gets ownership of his own show, on top of a reported $10 million salary. He gets lead-in programming like Family Guy, which fits right in with Conan’s audience, which averages about 10 years younger than Jay Leno’s. TBS won’t put the ratings pressure on Conan that the Fox affiliates would; basic cable expectations are smaller than broadcast expectations. Those of us who experience a certain schadenfreude when Fox is outplayed get front-row seats to a blame game suitable for popcorn viewing. (Follow the saga as it unfolds on Deadline Hollywood.)
Conan O’Brien’s new show is tentatively set to debut in November. In all likelihood, it will be based in Los Angeles. Team CoCo is slated to be on the road with the Legally Prohibited From Being Funny On Television Tour until mid-June. Expect further details shortly thereafter.
