In a move that no one saw coming, Conan O’Brien, late of NBC, announced on Twitter that he will be joining TBS in November. Really, no one saw this coming. It was thought Conan would be going to Fox, but in a little bit of foreshadowing, BusinessWeek picked up an article last week from Ronald Glover and Andy Fixmer of Bloomberg News, stating that talks with the network had hit a snag.
The article states that there was some infighting among Fox officials, mostly from Fox’s syndication arm that it did not want to give up the 11 p.m. hour where Conan would do his show after several lucrative deals were made with Fox affiliates to put repeats or other fare in that timeslot:
Fox’s syndication arm, which sells reruns of The Simpsons and other shows, could lose a late-night market to O’Brien. And Fox-owned stations would likely be forced to swallow losses for reruns they’ve already licensed.
So with that in mind, Conan’s management quietly talked with other suitors and during the noon hour today, we learned that Conan will go to TBS as Bill Carter of the New York Times reports.
Michael Schneider of Variety says Conan will occupy the 11 p.m. slot starting in November and moving George Lopez to midnight, but unlike the Leno mess back in January, Lopez is going willingly to 12 a.m.
Of course, this means that we’ll see plenty of Conan promos during TBS’ coverage of the MLB postseason in October. As a matter of fact, TBS has promoted other late night programming during the MLB postseason including the failed Frank TV which starred Fox NFL Sunday’s comedic prognosticator Frank Caliendo and the Lopez show. But in this case, I’ll actually look forward to seeing the Conan promos.
TBS is already running this promo and I’m sure you see more of them down the line.
We’ll follow this story as more developments arise.
