LOS ANGELES - First Oprah, now Conan.
In the latest sign that the field has leveled between broadcast and cable television, former "Tonight Show" host Conan O'Brien has decided to make his late-night comeback this fall on TBS, a cable network that has largely been synonymous with old network reruns and Atlanta Braves baseball.
"This is the day the last brick wall fell down between broadcast and cable," said Steve Koonin, president of Turner Entertainment Networks.
O'Brien, who was dumped by NBC as host of "The Tonight Show" in favor of his predecessor, Jay Leno just four months ago, will return in November on TBS with an 11 p.m. (Tucson time) show. Comedian George Lopez, who just launched his own late-night show in that same time slot on TBS last year, has agreed to move to midnight.
In sardonic fashion, O'Brien had his own spin on the news.
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"In three months, I've gone from network television to Twitter to performing live in theaters, and now I'm headed to basic cable. My plan is working perfectly," he quipped in a statement.
For TBS, one of the country's oldest cable channels, snaring O'Brien is the culmination of a decade-long effort to transform a network that launched 30 years ago with "The Andy Griffith Show" reruns into a cutting-edge channel on par with Comedy Central, USA, FX and TNT.
O'Brien's move to TBS is a big blow to Fox, which had been actively wooing the comedian and was seen as the odds-on-favorite to land him.
While Fox was enthusiastic about getting back into the late-night game with O'Brien, that sentiment was not echoed by its affiliates. Most Fox stations carry reruns of comedies in late night and would have taken a financial hit if they had to replace those shows with O'Brien. Complicating the situation for Fox is that O'Brien would have aired in varying time periods among affiliates around the country for at least a year, undercutting ratings and advertising.
