Conan O’Brien, a 28-year veteran of late-night TV, mocked CBS’s decision to sell Stephen Colbert’s popular time slot off to the highest bidder.
The legendary comedian was shocked to learn that Byron Allen, Colbert’s billionaire media mogul replacement, had purchased the timeslot from CBS for “tens of millions.”
“I didn’t know that. That’s fascinating,” O’Brien, 63, said on his post-late-night TV podcast, Conan Needs a Friend.
“Well, wait a minute. So, you’re saying I could go back on NBC,” O’Brien joked. “They’d probably let me go on at like three in the morning if I bought the time.”
O’Brien, who hosted NBC’s Late Night for 16 years before becoming Jay Leno’s Tonight Show successor, bitterly left the network in 2010 after Leno, 75, reclaimed The Tonight Show from him just seven months later.
“If that,” his longtime producer, Jeff Ross, quipped back.
“OK. Four o’clock in the morning,” O’Brien continued. “I could give the farm report.”
“Can my production company buy the four o’clock time slot on NBC and create our own show and sell all that sweet advertising money that would be coming in at four a.m.?” O’Brien sarcastically asked Ross.
Earlier in April, CBS revealed that Allen, the billionaire owner of more than a dozen TV channels, including The Weather Channel, had purchased the 11:35 p.m. timeslot that will be vacated by Colbert, 61, on May 21.
Allen already leases the 12:35 a.m. time slot and will run his comedy game show, Funny You Should Ask, after the new program.
After announcing the end of Colbert’s show last summer, citing a “financial decision,” CBS recouped many millions from Allen, who will use the time for his comedy panel show, Comics Unleashed.
“What we do is we keep the commercial time, and we sell it directly to the advertisers,” Allen said in an interview with Entertainment Tonight. “I agreed to pay the network millions of dollars—tens of millions of dollars—OK. So this better work, or I’m going to be in front of your house in a tent,” he joked.
“That’s a lie because you have many houses,” the interviewer responded.
CBS’s decision to let go of Colbert, who remains the most-viewed late-night host, has been scathed by numerous current and former late-night hosts.
“They don’t want to spend any money, so they’re going to make money,” David Letterman, Colbert’s CBS predecessor, who called the host’s firing “gutless,” said after the announcement.
While CBS claimed Colbert’s ouster was “purely a financial decision,” the vocal political comedian’s departure announcement coincided closely with the network’s $16 million payout to President Trump for his 60 Minutes lawsuit.
As of yet, Colbert has not publicly commented on his replacement.
