CoCo Show a Go

He’s selling tickets just fine here. When I checked about an hour after they went on sale the only seats left for both Chicago shows were crappy far left and right of center balcony seats. I’m not sure how he’s doing in smaller cities.
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It’s a creative idea. People were expecting him to start talking to other networks but this puts him back in front of people bringing the funny like he says he wants to do. If the show doesn’t suck it’ll be months worth of positive press and potential future employers see a guy that is working hard to entertain people.
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It’s funny if you think about it. Conan taking his show to the people while Jay, allegedly a man of the people, sits in LA doing the Tonight Show to slowly deflating ratings.

Already got my tickets booked! May 18th in Minneapolis. I’ve literally been watching since his first show on Late Nite and have always wanted the chance to see him live. This should be pretty fun.

still some great seats here in San Diego, but they’re going fast! i’m totally bummed i can’t go the night he’s here…

Hee-hee! They opened a second Seattle date as I was buying- I’m in A row of the orchestra section, bee-otches! I can feel the flop-sweat from the string dance now.

James, I usually like your columns and blogs. But I think for the past few weeks you have been blatantly promoting Conan and dissing Jay. I would understand these opinions appearing on a personal blog but they seem out of place when they appear on Time’s webpage.

He’s a TV critic. It’s his job to give opinions. He’s also just staying true to the fact that Conan is funny and Jay is a douche.

I’ll admit, I’m properly jealous of you lot, I really am. Being in the UK means I can’t see Conan on tour.

But if the reports that surfaced before anyone believed this tour would happen are to be believed, there’s interest from this side of the Atlantic. So, it may be in vain but there’s a little bit of hope.

If the tickets keep selling as well as they are selling now, I’ pretty sure they won’t be able to pass up doing a European tour. I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you!

I am SO EXCITED about this tour. Talk about the ultimate “Screw you” to NBC. He’s going to be getting massive more amounts of publicity than Jay, and his fans get to support him even more!

Let’s go Team CoCo!

What’s it called, “The totally not funny tour?”

Conan was just paid more than $30,000,000 to exit NBC, but apparently that wasn’t enough for him. The ticket price range for seats at these shows is $39.50 to $695.00. I don’t know who is more pathetic–Conan, who thinks someone should pay $695 to have their picture taken with him, or the person that actually pays it.

As far as I understand he has taken a significant portion of his payout to essentially provide his staff with severances. This is has to do with the fact that many of his staff members from Late Night picked up their lives from New York and transplanted themselves in LA where they don’t have the same connections they did in NY to find themselves work.

Also such a tour may employ some of his staff.

Aside from that, he’s not a saint (and nobody has made him out to be one). He’s an entertainer that has a market for his talent. He was given a payout because contractually NBC didn’t hold up their end of the bargain (when it comes to running a business they’ve proven themselves to be idiots). Why is it wrong for him to squeeze every penny out them? If people are willing to pay that much for a ticket to his show why shouldn’t it be that? And if this year has proven anything for him and his staff, there is no such thing as job security. The Tonight Show was supposed to be the highest pinnacle of his profession. So even if they do end up at another network there is nothing to say that they will be able to count on that job. So why not take advantage of the opportunities you have now? You’d probably do the same.

Oh, and just in case you were wondering, I am not (or wasn’t) Team Coco or Team Jay. Just an observer who found the whole thing fascinating.

One of the reasons Conan held out for such a huge payout from NBC is because he wanted money for his staff:

See, Jan 17, 2010, NY TImes, O’Brien Deal With NBC Said to Be Imminent: “The financial terms include a payment of about $40 million by NBC, though Mr. O’Brien would not personally receive all of that. A portion would go to staff members who have contracts of their own, one representative said.”

He got millions for himself and for his staff, who are also eligible for unemployment, but that isn’t enough?

LOL!

Fine, make money on a tour. But does his severance package keep him off YouTube? Technically, that’s not TV. It has a wide distribution, and is anyway more favored than TV by the demographic that is likely to watch Conan.

Conan’s fans would rather see him on YouTube than in person on a tour? Really?
Have you asked any of them?

In any case, why does everyone here seem to think that Conan (or any other entertainer, for that matter) get’s to determine the admission prices for their show? Have you people ever heard of a little cupcake of a company called Ticket Master?

No dates anywhere near me! This is a conspiracy! :(

davids0011, don’t be disingenuous. The regular tickets are 40, 60, and 80 bucks, which are less than what you’ll pay on Broadway.

Yes, there’s an option for a $700 meet-and-greet ticket, but that’s a staple of concerts/tours like this. Average Joe Conan Fan is never expected to pay that.

OH! BURN! Man that one was awesome. Wow. You got him. I gotta say, you really got him on that one. Whoa.

Conan is an entertainer, and he makes amounts of money that are obscene and unfathomable to most people. This is true of many entertainers (Kobe Bryant, Madonna, Jerry Seinfeld, and Jay Leno, to name a few.) Is there a certain amount of money entertainers are supposed to make and then retire?

Conan didn’t retire, and he embarking on a comedy tour. If you don’t like his humor, you will not understand why people would pay money to go see him (similar to a Metallica fan wondering why people pay to see Rascal Flatts, or vice versa.)

The point is that no matter what the tickets cost, if you have a fan base, you will sell tickets. Even if you were paid so much money you were supposed tom retire…

You forgot to include tickets for $500 for the Hot Sound Package and for $250 for the Hot Seat Package.

Yes, love of celebrities is such that people happily pay hundreds of dollars to multimillionaires.

What?! Is Jay Leno going on tour too? Wow, he’s good…unfunny, but good…

What is your problem? O’Brien is taking advantage of an opportunity to work that is within the legal limits imposed in his settlement with NBC. Everyone has a right to work, why not Conan? He has an opportunity to do what he likes and entertain an audience who is voluntarily buying tickets to see him perform. If you had a similar economic opportunity, try and tell everyone here you wouldn’t take it. You seem to be jealous because you don’t like Conan and you don’t like him taking advantage of a business opportunity. Your objection is lame and unreasonable at best. Are you upset because Bill Gates keeps making millions of dollars every year?

davids0011, what is your justification here? That Conan got millions for being screwed by the idiots at NBC, therefore he isn’t allowed to work in his chosen field? What kind of nonsense do you subscribe to? This tour is completely within the terms of Conan’s settlement with NBC, and in the past he has taken his show on tour to Chicago and San Francisco. So there is nothing wrong with anyone taking advantage of their business opportunities and doing the work they love. Judging by the response, there are plenty of Americans who want to see Conan’s show. This is either jealousy, pettiness, or just plain foolishness on your part. If Conan’s tour sells well during this tour, and I’ll bet you it does, it will prove that Conan can deliver ratings to whatever television network besides NBC that might want to consider giving him a show on their network.

No, that would be taking a page from your lame book!

rwdokken and davids0011, why am I not surprised that two of the people who don’t get it the most would be together? Yes, Conan got a huge settlement from NBC. Why? Because they breached Conan’s contract, they completely screwed-up “The Tonight Show” and Jay Leno’s failed prime-time “experiment” and managed to make the majority of their network affiliates unhappy. Nice going, NBC top-brass morons. They gave Conan a huge settlement because they had no choice, or they wouldn’t have done it. So why exactly does that require that Conan retire from show-business? He’s popular, he’s entertaining, and by the looks of the ticket sales he’s going to have a hit 32 city nationwide tour. It will put him in a great position to do whatever he wants after his temporary ban from TV is over. It gives him an opportunity to keep his comedy chops in shape in front of 32 live audiences, which any comedian will tell you is the measure of how good you really are. What’s wrong with you two? Somebody else’s success too much for you to take?

anon76,

Dear God. Get a life. You could have saved yourself a lot of bile if you had understood the question. Exactly how did I imply that Conan’s fan would rather see him on YouTube instead of on tour? I asked whether he could do YouTube IN ADDITION to the tour. And maybe (no, maybe not — you would have thought of it already, right?) not everyone who wants to see him can make it to the show. Why wouldn’t he want to keep his visibility up with an occasional clip on the internet?

Seriously, how you managed to get that question so wrong is breathtaking. And the fact that you got angry over what you thought it meant is the icing on the cake.

@oizy- my bad, I read

and is anyway more favored than TV

as

and is anyway more favored than a tour

which I’m sure you’ll agree would have changed the meaning of your post. “How might I have made such a misreading?”, you ask. Easy- I had a six-month old screaming in my ear, and I was thrown off by your opening of ‘Fine, make money on a tour. but …’, which seemed pretty dismissive of the touring business (not to mention, given his touring schedule, when would he have time to do additional quality youtube clips?)
No worries though, as karmic irony returned the misreading favor, making you think that there was some amount of ‘bile’ in my post (I assure there wasn’t). I did question your understanding of Conan’s fans owing to my misreading of your post, and then I questioned the understanding of touring events that davids0011 evinced in several previous posts.
Hopefully this means I don’t really need to get a life, though I’m sorry if I’ve removed the icing from your cake.

I just saw this story on TMZ: http://www.tmz.com/2010/03/11/conan-obrien-tour-tonight-show-team-coco-nbc/

I don’t know how reliable that is, but it says that he’s not really making any $$$ from the tour, that he is trying to find a way to keep his staff employed while waiting for his not-on-tv time to be over.

Back to your desk at NBC, troll. There are about a dozen news stories out there saying that Conan’s not making a dime off of this tour…that all the money is going to his writers and staff and crew.

I don’t get your point. Why is the author saying that Conan is making a good move (and judging by how fast the tickets disappeared at all the cities near me, it seems like a really, really popular move too) a shot at Leno? Now, if he had gone on to point out that Conan doesn’t make a dime off this tour and is using to to keep his staff and writers and band and crew employed, while Jay admits that he banks all his TV money and then goes and does shows in Vegas to make more cash for himself…maybe then you’d have a legitimate complaint. But all this article did was to say that Conan is doing something that will likely be perceived as good.

Judging by the fact that it’s sold out or selling out everywhere, I would say not.