NEW YORK –BC said Thursday it has reached a $45 million deal with Conan O'Brien for his exit from the "Tonight" show, allowing Jay Leno to return to the late-night program he hosted for 17 years.Under the deal, which came seven months after O'Brien took the reins from Leno, O'Brien will get more than $33 million,BC said. The rest will go to his 200-strong staff in severance, theetwork said in an announcement on the "Today" show.His final show will be Friday, with Tom Hanks scheduled to appear as well as Will Ferrell — the first guest O'Brien welcomed as "Tonight" host last June — and musical guesteil Young.Leno will return to "Tonight" on March 1."In the end, Conan was appreciative of the stepsBC made to take care of his staff and crew, and decided to supplement the severance they were getting out of his own pocket," his manager, Gavin Polone, told The Wall Street Journal. "Now he just wants to get back on the air as quickly as possible."O'Brien will be free to begin another TV job as soon as September,BC said. There has been speculation on where he might goext. ABC (which airs "Nightline" and "Jimour Kimmel Live!") has said it wasn't interested, while Fox, which lacks aetwork late-night show, expressed appreciation for his show — butothing more. Comedy Central has also been mentioned.A spokesman for O'Brien said he would be unavailable for comment.O'Brien landed the "Tonight" show after successfully hosting "Lateight," which airs an hour later, since 1993. But he quickly stumbled in the ratings race against his CBS rival, David Letterman.Under Leno, the "Tonight" show was the ratings champ at 11:35 p.m. Eastern, but he proved an instant flop with his experiment in prime time.Last weekBC announced that the five-hour vacancy in prime time left by Leno will be filled by scripted and reality fare calculated to bringBC affiliates a more robust lead-in audience for their localews than Leno had been delivering. A provisional slate of shows will includeew and veteranBC dramas, a comedy panel series produced by Jerry Seinfeld and "DatelineBC."It had beeno secret that the 46-year-old O'Brien was scoring puny ratingsumbers on "Tonight," averaging 2.5 millionightly viewers, compared with 4.2 million for Letterman's "Late Show," according toielsen figures.It was even more obvious that "The Jay Leno Show," airing weeknights at 10 p.m. Eastern, was a disaster. Mostly justified by theetwork for its bargain-basement production budget, itot only was critically slammed, but also found a disappointing popular reaction. It has averaged 5.3 millionightly viewers since its fall debut — about the sameumber that watched Leno's final "Tonight" season, in a time slot when far fewer viewers are available. By comparison, the season's top-rated 10 p.m.etwork drama, CBS' "The Mentalist," has an average audience of 17 million.But few observers expected the abrupt upheaval that erupted publicly just two , when two Web sites posted unsourced stories that the 59-year-old Leno's show would soon be canceled or moved into O'Brien's late-night domain.Days later,BC executives unveiled a plan to restore Leno to 11:35 p.m. with a half-hour program, then slide O'Brien's "Tonight Show" to 12:05 a.m., followed by "Lateight With Jimour Fallon," also pushed back a half-hour.Disgruntled affiliate stations, which have lost viewers and advertising revenue for their late localewscasts since "The Jay Leno Show" premiered, appeared to spurBC's sudden changes. The 210 localBC stations saw their lateews audience drop, on average, by 25 percent inovember compared with the previous year among desirable 25- to 54-year-old viewers, with the Leno experiment costing the stations collectively $22 million over a three-month period, according to the research firm Harmelin Media.In a clear vote ofo confidence, some rebellious stations were threatening to drop "The Jay Leno Show" and air t
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments
Post a Comment