NBC: Conan O'Brien reaches $45 mil exit deal

NEW YORK -- Conan O'Brien bid NBC good riddance Thursday in a $45 million deal for his exit from "The Tonight Show," but his immediate future in television remains a question mark.

The contentious two-week battle that would allow NBC to unseat O'Brien and move Jay Leno back to the program he hosted for 17 years comes less than eight months after O'Brien took the "Tonight" throne from Leno.

Under the deal, O'Brien will get more than $33 million, NBC said. The rest will go to his 200-strong staff in severance.

What happens next for O'Brien?

"We don't know," his manager, Gavin Polone, said Thursday. "While we have had expressions of interest, we have not had any substantive conversations with anybody."

Ideally, said Polone, O'Brien "wants to get back on the air, doing the show he's doing now, as soon as possible."

There has been much speculation on where that might be. ABC (which airs "Nightline" and "Jimmy Kimmel Live!") has said it wasn't interested, while Fox, which lacks a network late-night show, expressed appreciation for his show Ã¢â‚¬â€ť but nothing more. Comedy Central has also been mentioned as a future home.

Meanwhile, O'Brien might conceivably conduct off-camera business with his old bosses.

"We do have a continuing development relationship with Conan's (production) company," said Marc Graboff, chairman of NBC Entertainment and Universal Media Studios. "So we still keep the door open."

Leno, whose weeknight prime-time hour ends Feb. 11 after just five lackluster months, will return to "Tonight" on March 1, originating from the same Burbank stage where he has hosted his prime-time show. The staff of "The Jay Leno Show" is expected to be kept mostly intact for "Tonight."

Leno's viewer appeal will also prove intact when he resumes his rivalry with CBS host David Letterman, predicts Jeff Gaspin, chairman of NBC Universal Television Entertainment.

"We believe Leno will be very competitive right away," he said, "and that over time Leno will be the late-night leader again."

O'Brien will be free to start another TV job after Sept. 1, NBC said. His final show will be Friday, with Tom Hanks scheduled to appear as well as Will Ferrell Ã¢â‚¬â€ť his first guest when O'Brien debuted as "Tonight" host last June.

O'Brien landed the "Tonight" show after successfully hosting "Late Night," which airs an hour later, since 1993. But he quickly stumbled in the ratings race against his CBS rival, David Letterman. Under Leno, the "Tonight" show was the ratings champ at 11:35 p.m. Eastern, but he proved an instant flop with his experiment in prime time.

Last week, NBC announced that the five-hour vacancy in prime time left by Leno will be filled by scripted and reality fare calculated to bring NBC affiliates a more robust lead-in audience for their local news than Leno had been delivering. A provisional slate of shows will include new and veteran NBC dramas, a comedy panel series produced by Jerry Seinfeld and "Dateline NBC."

It had been no secret that the 46-year-old O'Brien was scoring puny ratings numbers on "Tonight," averaging 2.5 million nightly viewers, compared with 4.2 million for Letterman's "Late Show," according to Nielsen figures.

It was even more obvious that "The Jay Leno Show," airing weeknights at 10 p.m. Eastern, was a disaster. Mostly justified by the network for its bargain-basement production budget, it not only was critically slammed but also found a disappointing popular reaction. It has averaged 5.3 million nightly viewers since its fall debut Ã¢â‚¬â€ť about the same number that watched Leno's final "Tonight" season, in a time slot when far fewer viewers are available. By comparison, the season's top-rated 10 p.m. network drama, CBS' "The Mentalist," has an average audience of 17 million.