O'Brien deal:
$50 million, and hush up
Exiting 'Tonight' host is reportedly close to signing
By Toni Fitzgerald
Jan 19, 2010
By week's end, NBC is going to be in the awkward position of hyping Conan O'Brien's best week on "The Tonight Show" since last summer as O'Brien himself heads to the door.
The "Tonight Show" host is reportedly near signing a buyout that could be worth up to $50 million to walk away, only seven months after his much ballyhooed succession of Jay Leno.
O'Brien is expected to sign the deal, which includes severance for staff members who moved from New York to Los Angeles with him, today. It will prevent O'Brien from bad-mouthing his former NBC bosses, though there's arguably little need for him to do so.
He's already said his piece on "Tonight" in monologue after monologue ripping the company, and other late-night comics like David Letterman and Jimmy Kimmel have taken up his cause.
Leno, meanwhile, has been vilified by the press and his soon-to-be fellow late nighters, prompting him to come to his own defense last night on the primetime "The Jay Leno Show," which will air its final episode next month.
Leno addressed the situation seriously for the first time, saying that NBC had twice denied his request to be let out of his contract, most recently when affiliates' displeasure with "Leno's" ratings resulted in the show's cancellation last weekend.
Leno called O'Brien, who has aimed some of his pointed comments at the former "Tonight" host, a gentleman and said that the whole mess was essentially NBC's fault, not the comedians'. He said the network had fired him twice, once from "Tonight" while he was No. 1 and once from primetime.
"This is all business," Leno told the audience. "If you don’t get the ratings, they take you off the air. I think you know this town, you can do almost anything. You get ratings they keep you. I wasn't getting the ratings. He wasn't getting the ratings. That was NBC’s solution."
Actually, ratings for "Tonight" have improved markedly over the past week as people tune in to see what O'Brien will say about his employer. The show beat CBS's "The Late Show with David Letterman" among households on Friday night, and O'Brien's adults 18-49 average was nearly double from the previous week.
Meanwhile, with many ripping his decision making, NBC Universal chairman Jeff Zucker told Charlie Rose yesterday on PBS that he accepted responsibility for the failure of both shows, but that part of leadership is taking chances on new things.
"I think it’s the sign of a leader to step up and say, you know, when something’s not working, to have the guts to reverse it," Mr. Zucker said. "And the worst thing you can do is to let that mistake linger. And really, that’s what we’ve tried to do here."
Last week NBC Universal Television Entertainment chairman Jeff Gaspin said that he had made the decision to nix "Leno" at 10 p.m. and had convinced Zucker to do it.
As for where O'Brien will end up, many expect him to go to Fox. The buyout would free him to go to another network as soon as September. FX also expressed interest in O'Brien at its Television Critics Association tour stop.
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