Murdoch Go-Go on CoCo, If He Can Bring the Dough-Dough

It’s funny: I was all set to comment that Murdoch is being short-sighted by measuring O’Brien’s hiring solely in terms of profits, as opposed to the long-term value of the Fox Network finally having the chance to expand meaningfully into the late-night broadcast arena. Then it hit me: what value is that again?

I’m old enough (early 40s) to still think of TV from the default perspective of the broadcast networks, even though as a viewer I now get more hours of entertainment from cable (and the Internet). In the old days, Fox was thought of as “up and coming” for a long time because it lacked the old-school trappings of a traditional broadcast net — i.e., a full prime-time schedule and non-primetime dayparts. But it’s defined itself quite nicely all the same, thanks to a robust cable operation and the growing irrelevance of morning programming, the nightly news, and late night.

That last daypart is still vibrant, but not so much that a savvy player like Murdoch would rush to it just to fit in with ABC, NBC and CBS. So as much as I think of Murdoch as a tool, I have to give him credit for resisting any urge he might feel to add Conan just for the sake of adding Conan.

(At the same time, though, I have to wonder how well O’Brien thought this all through. If Fox doesn’t take him, where can he go that will offer the same prestige and potential for success as the admittedly devalued job he gave up?)

A lot of us on the outside probably hope that the answer for Conan isn’t in taking some watered down version of the Tonight Show on a broadcast netowrk, but at a place like Comedy Central where he could be freed up creatively to do interesting and innovative things. But my guess would be that Conan is going to feel like he has a lot to prove and that redemption will be his primary motivation moving forward. Unless ABC moves Kimmell out, then it seems that FOX is his only option.

I’m struck watching Colbert these days at just how small that studio is compared with the Tonight Show’s Universal lot. If Conan went to Comedy Central, no matter how much creative freedom he’d have, most of the staff and crew that he fought for during the severance would still be screwed

I would love to see Conan create a Saturday night show to compete with Saturday Night Live, but as Conan is so close to Lorne Michaels, I doubt it would happen.

Still, I would rather see him on Comedy Central than one of the big networks. It will give him the creative freedom to create a truly great show instead of whatever mainstream crap the suits at any network would want him to produce.

Come home to New York, Conan! We miss you!!