Talk Talk

It looks as though the late night debacle is nearing a close: Conan O'Brien has reportedly agreed to a $40 million buyout from NBC that will force him to stop trashing the network but allow him to resurface elsewhere within a year. Meanwhile, Jay Leno is about to step back into the role that he "retired" from last year: host of The Tonight Show. At 11:30.

I've got to say, as annoying as this whole thing was to watch as someone who's a big Conan fan and not so much a Leno fan, it has made for some great TV the last two weeks: Conan (and Leno) ripping into NBC; Conan, Letterman and Jimmy Kimmel ripping into Leno; and everybody trashing NBC exec Jeff Zucker, who made all this possible.

Moving Conan to 11:30 definitely was a mistake; it forced him to rein his brand of humor in. The "dead man walking" situation of the last few weeks has seemingly freed him up to get his edge back. No longer worried about pleasing anyone, Conan has been hilarious. His ratings have gone up by 50%, even beating Leno's prime-time show. Alas, too little, too late.

One sidenote that hasn't been resolved yet: Conan and NBC are reportedly negotiating over whether he gets to take the characters created on his shows with him, or whether NBC owns the intellectual property of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, the Masturbating Bear and Pimpbot 5000, among other classic bits. A similar battle ensued when Letterman left NBC in the early '90s, forcing good ol' Larry "Bud" Melman to go by his real name, Calvert DeForest:



And Triumph, of course: