Rupert Murdoch on Fox Pursuing Conan O'Brien

It's no secret that Fox is thinking about adding Conan O'Brien to its roster. You remember Conan, right? Tall, pale Irish guy, manned The Tonight Show chair until NBC rewarded the host of its biggest prime time disaster since Joey? It always seemed like Fox could be a final destination for O'Brien, since it's the only network of the big four that doesn't have a late night presence. However, it's not as simple as just pointing a camera at him in September, when his Peacock Freeze expires. It will cost millions to build a studio, Fox would have to pay Conan probably at least $10 million a year (he might work a little cheaper than his Tonight Show salary, given the circumstances), and with Leno, Letterman, and Conan occupying the same time slot, plus ancillary competition from Kimmel, the Comedy Central shows, George Lopez, and a surprisingly strong ratings machine at Adult Swim, there's no guarantee anyone will come out a winner. Well, Nightline will, because it's cheaper and has no competition among that group, but otherwise... News Corp boss Rupert Murdoch was interviewed recently by The Wall Street Journal, which he also owns, to discuss the O'Brien situation. There's one more thing we didn't mention above (though we have in the past), because it's better to hear it from the horse's mouth. Murdoch says there have been "some conversations" but stopped short of saying Fox is talking contracts with O'Brien, pointing out that before that happens he'll have to have "some difficult negotiations" with network affiliates. But wouldn't those affiliates love to have a late night show? Maybe, maybe not. In fact, because Fox doesn't have any national show after the late local news (which is actually early on most Fox affiliates because there's also no 10pm network programming), the affiliates get to keep all the revenue they generate from syndicated repeats of whatever it is. And, because they want to be competitive, those are usually very recognizable shows like Seinfeld or Friends. That's a lot of money to sacrifice, especially because A) The stations wouldn't get 100% of the revenue from a Conan talk show, and B) There's no guarantee another talk show could even work in the long term for Fox, because of the reasons we mentioned above. So the affiliates will have to be convinced this is the right move, and the presumed earlier start time for Conan would have to be part of these discussions. The affiliates would probably be more amenable to a syndicated lead-in for O'Brien, but I doubt the network would want that, particularly in the case of its owned and operated stations. Yep, that's tough. Murdoch does say he has zero issues about pursuing O'Brien, commenting that they'd do the show "in a flash" if the upside is really there. And I don't know that it is. After all, Conan inherited the top talk show in TV history and quickly lost half its audience and a huge amount of revenue. Fox would probably have lower expectations going in, but if that's the case, why take all that money away from the affiliates that are already counterprogramming effectively? One option that's been thrown around is FX, but I don't know if that's something O'Brien would really want. It's probably a safer bet for NewsCorp, however.

Comments

[Orinn]

I'm only human that cant expect me to keep up my comedy central and adult swim and still catch Conan. Of course I just watch it online at my convenience but then the stuidos think the shows have poor ratings and cancel them.

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