Does time — and a brand-new host — recover all injuries? Fourteen years after Conan O’Brien was messily ousted from NBC’s “The Tonight Show” to make method for the return of Jay Leno — the comic is lastly back.
O’Brien will appear on the April 9 program to promote his brand-new travel series “Conan O’Brien Must Go” for Max in discussion with Jimmy Fallon, who took over from Leno in 2014.
After more than 15 years of hosting “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” on NBC, O’Brien was promoted to lead the network’s flagship late-night program in 2009, after it was revealed Leno would be offered a brand-new prime-time program, likewise on NBC.
After 7 months of slipping “Tonight Show” scores and and pressure from affiliates who stated “The Jay Leno Show” wasn’t a strong adequate lead-in to their nighttime broadcasts, NBC made a strategy to reduce Leno’s program to a half-hour and offer it a 11: 35 p.m. timeslot, which would haveactually bumped “The Tonight Show” to 12: 05 a.m.
“It was my incorrect belief that, like my predecessor, I would have the advantage of some time and, simply as essential, some degree of rankings assistance from the prime-time schedule,” O’Brien stated at the time in a declaration.
He declined to accept the move, and the public spat ended with O’Brien and his personnel getting a multimillion-dollar payment to exit NBC in early 20