The latest is that Jeff Zucker is allegedly threatening to keep Conan O'Brien "off the air for 3-and-a-half years" if Conan won't go along with the plan to host The Tonight Show at 12:05. That ain't gonna happen. At the time Zucker said it, assuming he said it, there was perhaps a chance it would scare O'Brien into compliance…but that statement Conan released has probably killed that possibility. Having taken the stance he took in it, it would be too embarrassing for Mr. O'Brien to now say, "Okay…on second thought, hosting Tonight at 12:05 is a great idea." Killing off that possibility is probably the main reason he issued the statement, along with trying to spin things so the story will be not that Conan O'Brien took over The Tonight Show and failed, but that NBC undermined him and reneged.
So Conan can't go to 12:05 without being humiliated…and Zucker can't back down on putting Leno in at 11:35 without being humiliated. Sounds to me like Conan's going elsewhere, and if the Zucker threat is true, it therefore becomes a negotiating stance, designed to get more favorable terms in the divorce.
One might also assume that NBC isn't wild about putting Conan O'Brien on the air every night so he can trash the network. So far, the jokes haven't been too painful, especially since the newsworthiness of it all is boosting Tonight Show ratings. I doubt it will come to this but there are probably discussions over at NBC about what to do if their star gets so insulting that they feel the need to yank him off the air. That would sure be a mess. Unless Conan voluntarily took a leave of absence, no one of any note would take the assignment, especially if it meant working with Conan's crew.
Mr. Zucker is getting pretty soundly trashed in the press these days…and if he's the one who actually made all the decisions attributed to him, he probably deserves trashing. I'm only hesitant because guys in his position sometimes wind up taking responsibility for moves that are forced on them by those at higher levels. No doubt the decision to move Conan now, rather than to give him a few more months to prove himself, was dictated in part by forces beyond Zucker's resistance. I'm not saying NBC didn't err mightily but in these situations, there's often a tendency to dump the blame on one guy. This was more than a one-man screw-up. In fact, it was more than one screw-up, starting back when they engineered the deal to forcibly shove Leno aside for O'Brien.
I'm still skeptical that Fox would give Conan the kind of long-term commitment he oughta have if he's going to flee to that venue. One of the major factors getting lost in all the gossip is that NBC was disappointed with Conan's ratings as host of The Tonight Show. Yes, it takes time to perfect a format and to build an audience and I think he should have had more opportunity. On the other hand, it's not like he was starting from zero, trying to create a new show out of nothing and staff it while he learned how to host a talk show. He's right that he suffered because of weak lead-ins…but you can almost hear Jay privately saying, "Hey, I had crummy lead-ins for seventeen years and I was never in third place."
Conan is a very talented guy and he's going to find a place where he can do a show for a long, long time. Apparently, it's not going to be NBC. Maybe it'll be Fox. If I were running HBO or Showtime, I'd sure consider loading a truck full of currency and seeing if he'd do a show for us. I'd put it on Monday through Friday, live and completely uncensored…and at 10 PM every night so he wasn't competing with Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Jay Leno or David Letterman. It probably won't happen but wouldn't that be interesting?