Eight months ago, Conan O’Brien took over the reins of the “The Tonight Show” from Jay Leno. At that time, the show was the king of its time slot, but that changed soon after Conan entered the picture. The initial slump was attributed to people acclimatizing themselves to Conan’s style of humor and presentation. However, as the ratings nosedive continued, alarm bells started ringing at NBC and the network soon came to a decision.
$45 million was the magic number that eventually sorted out NBC’s problems. Conan takes home $33 million of that while the remaining $12 million is split amongst his 200 strong staff. The long drawn out negotiations were mainly due to Conan’s insistence on the amount that should be paid to his staff as compensation. The network puts that down as a public relations stunt by the O’Brien camp; call it what you may, the little people in the big game have somehow been taken care of in a good way.
Conan’s run on the show ends in the month of January and thereafter reruns will take over until the end of February. The first of March will see the familiar face of Leno returning to “The Tonight Show”, which NBC hopes will return it to the top of the ratings chart. Meanwhile, Conan can cool his heels until September, which is when he will able to take up other commitments. What those commitments may be is pure speculation at this point, as no one seems to be interested.