Lucille Ball and Yosemite Sam already have their spots, and now the time has come for Conan O’Brien to prove once again that he deserves a place among America’s favorite redheads.
On Nov. 8, O’Brien’s new show, humbly titled “Conan,” will premiere on TBS.
Just a little more than nine months after the end of his reign on the NBC “Tonight Show” franchise, O’Brien must now move past all of the controversy surrounding the end of his time at the broadcast network and establish himself on cable television.
After subpar ratings and less than a year as host of “The Tonight Show,” NBC decided to give the show back to its former host, Jay Leno. While NBC gave O’Brien an option to keep the show and move it to a later time, he refused, opting to leave the network.
In the end, O’Brien came out of the mess with a $45 million contract buyout, appearing to many as the maligned underdog.
Moving to cable in a time slot alongside the likes of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s popular Comedy Central shows, O’Brien remains the underdog.
Max Dawson, an assistant professor in the Department of Radio, Television and Film at Northwestern U., questions the chances of success for “Conan.”
“Whoever thought it would be a good idea to put him on up against ‘The Daily Show,’ I think, really needs to have their head examined,” Dawson said.
Most of his students record the shows they watch, leaving only one or two to watch live, those of Stewart and Colbert. If O’Brien’s show follows the same topical late-night format of his competitors, he stands less of a chance to garner a solid viewership.
“It has a very short shelf life. A very fast expiration period,” Dawson said. “Either you watch the day it airs or you don’t watch.”
It’s possible that O’Brien, who got his start in television writing for “Saturday Night Live” and “The Simpsons” in the late ’80s and early ’90s, might take the show in a vastly different direction from his days as host of “The Tonight Show.”
Dawson pointed out that late-night host Jimmy Fallon has had success with planned segments that lack timeliness and therefore do better on internet sites such as Hulu.
“I can’t imagine them deviating too much from the established late night template,” Dawson said. “It would be advantageous to them to go in that direction and perhaps consider more pre-taped bits, stuff that might have a viral afterlife.”
Christine Becker, associate professor in the Department of Film, Television and Theatre at U. Notre Dame, also theorized that O’Brien’s new show will focus on the host’s comedy roots.
“Being on cable would seem to give him even more creative license to take the show further afield from late night convention,” Becker said in an e-mail. “He’ll be under less ratings pressure than he was at NBC, and TBS is supposedly giving him the creative freedom to do whatever he wants with the show, so I expect to see him experiment more than before.”
No matter what direction the show takes, ratings are one thing all interested parties can agree on. Both Dawson and Becker agree that O’Brien won’t have to reach NBC ratings on TBS and most likely won’t be able to.
That coveted 18-34 demographic is the real target “Conan” will be shooting for.
Fortunately, O’Brien has developed somewhat of a cult following that flourished just before he left NBC.
“Team Coco” has established a presence online, prompting the host and his team to use social networking to engage a younger audience.
“If Conan’s smart, he’s going to continue to do that — continue to use things like Twitter and his website in order to keep some of that excitement going and also to keep that target audience feeling as if they are involved in some sort of movement,” Dawson said.
Whether Dawson thinks “Conan” will rise from the ashes of the NBC debacle and prosper is unclear, and he won’t make any bets without absolute certainty.
“Depends on how you define ‘success,’” he said.