On January 7th, and perhaps for some time after, NBC executives decided that they’ve gone through life long enough without having seen what the inside of their assholes look like.

The meeting went as follows: NBC was upset that Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien’s ratings were each doing worse than before following NBC’s relocation of Conan’s timeslot. To rectify the situation, NBC bigwigs stated that O’Brien would be moved back to his previous timeslot of 12:05am and Leno would be given back the 11:05 timeslot. Thinking that Conan is really dumb, NBC proposed that though Conan would be hosting the same show that he had fought so hard to leave, they would just change the show’s name to “The Tonight Show”. Finally, all the old people who loved to watch Kevin Eubanks laugh at literally anything could catch Leno and company at his original time. Problem solved, right?

TV reached a new low in hokiness that day. Days later, O’Brien released a statement to NBC (and to anyone with a computer) saying how deeply he cares for the Tonight Show franchise and how “delaying The Tonight Show into the next day to accommodate another comedy program will seriously damage what I consider to be the greatest franchise in the history of broadcasting.”

Reacting to O’Brien’s statement, NBC figured they just wanted him off the air as quickly as possible. In between tapings of The Tonight Show, Conan and NBC negotiated how go get Conan out of his contract. This is where the fun began.

For every show during the negotiations, Conan simply trashed his home network. His monologue was filled to the brim with shots at NBC and the competency (or lack thereof) of its executives. One particular bit had Conan opening up with the phrase “NBC is calling me every name in the book. In fact, they think I’m such an idiot, they want me to run the network.”

On January 15th, Conan put the tonight show up for sale on Craigslist. He received hundreds of replies requesting trades for other goods; some serious, most not. One man offered O’Brien a beat-up storage shed in exchange for the illustrious franchise.

Two days prior, Conan hosted a short home shopping network spoof in which he announced that he would be selling a Tonight Show carry-on bag, with ballistics material that made it “as impenetrable as an NBC executive’s skull.”

In the finals days of his show, O’Brien offered up a new idea; since NBC was still paying for his show, he would introduce new Tonight Show characters that, according to O’Brien, “aren’t so much funny as they are crazy expensive.” The first of such was ”the Bugatti Veyron mouse”, essentially a Veyron with cheesy whiskers and ears glued on; whose theme music was the original master recording of the Rolling Stones’ Satisfaction. The bit cost $1.5 million total. The next one cost over two million, where O’Brien purchased that year’s Kentucky Derby winner. The horse coincidentally likes to watch Super Bowl footage.

Conan left The Tonight Show with an extra $32 million in his pocket, and ended his final show with a very poignant speech where he thanked the network that ended up screwing him. Not since Johnny Carson has late night TV seen such a class act. Adios, Coco.

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Conan O’Brien has been missed by many of his fans if not all of them. They are waiting for his comeback and are already dreading to hear again his comic remarks just about anything.

Friday 30 April 2010, 16:59

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