Conan offers NBC ultimatum

Conan O’Brien offered NBC an ultimatum this week: move the Tonight Show later than it has aired for 60 years, and I’m walking away. While he hopes NBC will choose to keep The Tonight Show in its traditional spot with him as host, O’Brien’s ultimatum is viewed by some network execs as his resignation papers. This means NBC will effectively have given Conan only seven months on the Tonight Show after a 16-year partnership.

If NBC boots Conan, Jay Leno would be free to return to the Tonight Show, but as damaged goods; he’s already the butt of national jokes that paint him as the reason NBC is now viewed as a “minor-league” network on par with The CW and MyNetworkTV. NBC trashed five hours of scripted programming last spring to launch The Jay Leno Show, simply to hang on to a relationship with the aging comic; now, they could be trashing the future of The Tonight Show by losing out on its natural successor in O’Brien.

Sure, O’Brien is joking about selling the best weightloss products in a matter of weeks, but the truth is that he will immediately become the focus of a bidding war for his services, with Fox being the most natural suitor.

NBC muffed the Carson-to-Letterman transition, opting for Leno about 16 years ago; now they’ve muffed the Leno-to-O’Brien transition. Nitwits.