How NBC Convinced Conan O'Brien To Turn Down A Massive Payday From Fox
When I was a younger man, Conan O'Brien was the king of late night. I'm not talking in terms of ratings; I'm talking in terms of popularity among my peers. Jay Leno was boring and unfunny, Letterman was once great but had lost a step, and Conan was the absolute best. His style of humor, which leaned into the absurd, made his late-night talk show "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" worth staying up for (this was back when I could actually stay up late; now that I'm 40, I pass out around 9 PM).
While Conan flourished on his own talk show on NBC, in a timeslot that once belonged to Letterman before Letterman moved to CBS, there was one gig he coveted: hosting "The Tonight Show." Despite the presence of the hacky Jay Leno, "The Tonight Show" remained a storied institution; it was legendary, and Conan O'Brien very badly wanted to host it someday. And he did! You might have memory-holed this, or never learned it, but there was a period where O'Brien was indeed the host of "The Tonight Show" — before Jay Leno and NBC screwed him over and kicked him to the curb.
As it turns out, before he got "The Tonight Show" gig, the folks at Fox offered Conan a ton of money to come host a show on their network. But a promise from NBC kept him in place. It was a promise the network eventually broke, but for Conan's part, he doesn't regret the way it played out. Or so he says.
Leno vs Conan
Here's a brief recap of what happened. In 2004, it was announced that in 2009, after hosting "The Tonight Show" for 17 years, Jay Leno would retire and Conan O'Brien would take over. And sure enough, that's what happened: Leno said goodbye in 2009 and Conan stepped in, with his version of "The Tonight Show" premiering on June 1, 2009. Sadly, he wouldn't have the gig very long. The ratings for Conan's "Tonight Show" weren't exactly great. Then, to further complicate things, Jay Leno returned with a whole new show, titled "The Jay Leno Show," which premiered in September 2009 and aired before Conan's "Tonight Show" on NBC.
In January of 2010, NBC made the surprise announcement that they planned to bump Leno's show to "The Tonight Show"'s 11:35 PM timeslot and move Conan's "Tonight Show" to a post-midnight slot. This did not sit well with O'Brien, who firmly believed that moving "The Tonight Show" off its traditional 11:35 PM slot would ruin the legacy of the show. After some back-and-forth negotiations, NBC eventually bought out Conan's contract. As a result, O'Brien's version of "The Tonight Show" ended on January 22, 2010, after only 146 episodes. "The Tonight Show" then returned to the airwaves in March of 2010, with Leno back as the host. Leno would remain host until February 2014, at which point Jimmy Fallon took over the job. O'Brien would go on to host a new talk show, titled "Conan," on TBS.
'I don't regret trying'
But all of that almost didn't happen. On "The Howard Stern Show," Stern mentioned that before he took over "The Tonight Show," Conan O'Brien was offered a huge sum of money to jump over and host a show on Fox. "I remember there was a point where Fox TV came to you and said, 'We're going to give you 20 — something crazy — 28 million dollars to jump over to Fox,'" Stern said, continuing: "NBC heard about it, they said to you, 'Well, we're gonna give you 8 million dollars, but, we're going to give you the Tonight Show when Jay retires."
Conan agreed that this was indeed what happened. But he really wanted "The Tonight Show," and so he stayed put at NBC. "Here's the other thing," O'Brien told Stern. "I never made a decision in my career based on money. Not once. I'm not going to lie, it's nice to have money. But I've also not had money, and I'm okay with that. I really wanted to keep my body of work. All I ever wanted was a body of work. And that can sound pretentious to people, but it is the most important ... Next to my family, my wife and kids, my body of work is like the most important thing to me."
He added:
"It's my legacy, and I've put so much into it and I'm really proud of – the good stuff, I'm very proud of. And so the idea of leaving NBC on bad terms, or leaving and not having access to 16 years of work that I'm incredibly proud of, was crushing to me. So, I do not regret anything. I don't regret trying."
I believe Conan when he says he doesn't regret his decision, but you have to admit: NBC and Jay Leno did him dirty, and his version of "Tonight Show" deserved better.