day 2.65

it's official

conan has left the building. well, he'll be leaving the building tomorrow night, jan 22. conan was already scheduled to go on hiatus starting next week so the end of his short tonight show reign is not as abrupt as it may seem. jay leno will regain the 11:35/10:35c time slot beginning march 1st, after the olympics. the new tonight show with jay leno will be a hybrid of the original show and jay leno's primetime disaster. between friday and march 1, nbc will rerun early episodes of the tonight show with conan o'brien - you know, the ones without him talking crap about the peacock net. conan's severance package includes $45 million, $12 million of which will go to pay his now job-less staff. as part of his deal to leave nbc, conan cannot return to the airwaves until september 1. though, that would be the normal start date for any new show he would have, so it's really not that big of a deal. rumor has it that fox is interested in getting into the late night game, though i saw an anonymous quote that if conan didn't work on nbc, why would he work on fox? but, with the recent renewed interest in the ginger comedian, fox's tune may have changed. truth be told, i'm a leno fan (though i think conan was good for late night, just too juvenile for the earlier show) and i'll be very interested to see how all this works out. either nbc is going to bounce back big or keep on falling. i guess we'll find out starting in march.