O’Brien gives up on Fox; signs deal with TBS

LOS ANGELES — Wayward late-night entertainer Conan O’Brien finally has found a home, and it’s not on Fox television.

Unable to reach a deal to clear an 11 p.m. EDT time slot with Fox Broadcasting Network’s affiliates, the former host of NBC’s “Tonight Show” has decided to sign with cable network TBS to act as a lead-in for George Lopez’s “Lopez Tonight.”

O’Brien’s new hourlong show, yet to be titled, will run on TBS Mondays through Thursdays at the 11 p.m. slot, both in the Eastern and Pacific time zones. It ends his search for a programming home nearly three months after he left NBC.

“In three months I’ve gone from network television
to Twitter to performing live in theaters, and now I’m headed to basic
cable,” O’Brien joked in a statement. “My plan is working perfectly.”

TBS, also known as Turner Broadcasting System, is Time Warner Inc. company.

The announcement came as somewhat of a surprise, as
O’Brien was thought to be hammering out a deal with Fox, the one major
broadcast network without a late-night talk show in its lineup.

But Fox affiliates have resisted the idea,
preferring instead to show syndicated reruns during that hour — such as
its own animated series “The Simpsons” or products of other networks,
like “The Office.” (Fox, like MarketWatch, is a division of News Corp.)

So O’Brien has turned to another alternative after leaving the “Tonight Show” on NBC.

O’Brien left that show in a much-publicized dispute with the network after it decided to abandon Jay Leno’s prime-time experiment. Leno moved out of his longtime seat as “Tonight Show” host to front a 10 p.m. program leading into local newscasts. Leno failed to catch on with viewers, and so was moved back to his traditional 11:30 p.m. time.

NBC wanted to give Leno a half-hour, and offered to keep
O’Brien as host of the “Tonight Show” at midnight. But O’Brien
declined, and his tenure as the “Tonight Show” host ended after less
than eight months.

Lopez’s show will be moved back by one hour to make room for O’Brien, TBS said.

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