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Conan O'Brien set to move west for 'terrific, fantastic dream job'

By: Bill Brioux, THE CANADIAN PRESS

19/02/2009 3:00 PM | Comments: 0

On Friday night, the first domino falls in a year of radical change in late-night TV.

Conan O'Brien will walk away from "Late Night With Conan O'Brien" (12:35 a.m. ET, NBC and A). After show No. 2,725 wraps, the Harvard history grad will grab the Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower presidential mug off his desk, head out of Studio 6A in Manhattan's storied Rockefeller Center and jet to Los Angeles, where he has already relocated his wife and two small children. There he'll continue to prepare for June 1, when he takes over "The Tonight Show" from Jay Leno.

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In between, O'Brien's successor will launch "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon" (March 2). Then in August, Leno will tackle the most radical move of all - an hour of nightly talk and comedy on "The Jay Leno Show" weeknights at 10 p.m.

That will give NBC an unprecedented 3 1/2 hours of nightly, network late-night talk, stretching all the way to "Last Call With Carson Daly" (1:35 a.m. ET). It is either an insomniac's dream or, as "Law & Order: SVU" actor Richard Belzer described it to reporters in L.A. last month, "the last gasp of a dying network."

If this seems like a crushing challenge for O'Brien, the 45-year-old comedian insists that he's up for it. When he met with reporters at the winter press tour in January, the buzz in the room was that Leno had stolen O'Brien's thunder by essentially moving his own show into prime time. Hasn't "The Tonight Show" been diminished, O'Brien was asked.

"I don't need any help diminishing 'The Tonight Show,"' O'Brien joked. "I've already got that covered."

O'Brien feels "Tonight" has been an 11:30 habit for 56 years, that it's "sacred territory." For him, it's still a terrific, fantastic dream job," one he was awarded in 2004 in a promise from NBC that he would get the gig in five years if he stuck around.

Hand-picked by his old "Saturday Night Live" boss Lorne Michaels in 1993 to replace David Letterman at "Late Night," the then 30-year-old "Simpsons" scribe was seen as out of his depth. NBC, who renewed his contract every 13 weeks in those early years, even promoted him as "the guy who doesn't deserve his own show."

Even O'Brien feels that way looking back. Craig Ferguson recently asked critics to wait a month before reviewing Jimmy Fallon's new show. O'Brien says he would have jumped at that deal. "I'd have extended it beyond a month myself," he says. "Look, from '93 to '95, let's just have a cool-down period, everybody, and then we'll look at the show."

O'Brien's early nervousness gave way to a witty, self-effacing style, with far greater emphasis on sketches, character and comedy than on talk. His show began winning Emmy Awards and became dominant in its time-slot, going on a decade-long winning streak which was only recently snapped by a couple of weekly wins by his time-slot rival, Ferguson.

After proving himself at "Late Night," O'Brien had begun to pine for the earlier hour, especially after first Fox and then ABC made inquiries and offers. NBC had to act to keep O'Brien, and the promise of "Tonight" was what did it. He is as pumped as ever about being only the fifth man to host "Tonight" behind Steve Allen, Jack Paar, Johnny Carson and Leno.

He'll do his "Tonight" from a refurbished studio on the Universal lot, a building that once was the playpen of comedy legend Jack Benny as well as the original "Knight Rider" series.

"I prefer to refer to it as the Jack Benny Studio," O'Brien says. "We're going to play down the 'Knight Rider' thing."

As he finally confirmed this week on his show, he'll be taking with him the Max Weinberg 7, the terrific house band he's performed with for nearly 16 years on "Late Night."

Other staples of "Late Night" will also make the move west, including Robert Smigel's hilarious Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, the non-PC pooch who upset some sensitivities when he "pooped" on Quebecers during O'Brien's electric week of Toronto-based shows early in 2005.

Many of O'Brien's signature bits and characters have been getting one last romp on his show this week. That doesn't mean we won't see then again, or that O'Brien will completely reinvent himself for an 11:30 audience once June 1 rolls around.

"Johnny Carson said once these show are all about the person behind the desk, and that's absolutely true," he says. "So I would need a brain transplant to deliver a completely different show."

Bill Brioux is a freelance TV columnist based in Brampton, Ont.

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