The Peacock Network has agreed in principle to fork over $32.5 million to Conan O'Brien to leave as "The Tonight Show" host and give Jay Leno the chance to reclaim his mantle as the king of late-night talk shows, sources said yester day.
The deal also reportedly provides severance pack ages totaling $7.5 million for the show's loyal staffers, many of whom packed up with their families and moved across the country to work for O'Brien, whose previous show taped in the Big Apple.
[...]
The decision to let O'Brien walk apparently came down to who was cheaper to let go.
Leno has an ironclad, "brilliantly written" agreement that guarantees his production company a staggering $150 million if NBC Universal axes his flailing primetime show, an insider said.
via NYPOST.com.
Perhaps Conan needs a lawyer upgrade.
LOL wow – Leno sure knows how to take care of himself!
Leno isnt even worth any of that money. Face it Leno, no one wants to see u in primetime!
@Anonymous
Jay is savy enough to know that in the business he’s in he has to take care of himself, because NBC will surely look out for themselves. It seems his lawyers did their job and I’m sure they were well compensated for it. This is reality folks.
Again, what was Zucker thinking? There was concern when the Leno deal was first announced about its effect on the local news. I can understand the desire (and need) to try something new, but to make it so difficult to reverse?
Leno said in 2004 that in 5 years he was leaving the tonight show in 5 years and didnt want any of the stuff that happened to lettermen and him to happen to conan. Leno is a dam hipocrite. I will never ever watch leno again.
But they DID axe his primetime show. If he really wanted to, Leno could sue for that $150 mil, couldn’t he?
But hasn’t NBC cancelled “his flailing primetime show”? Leno is taking over The Tonight Show, not moving The Jan Leno Show to The Tonight Show’s timeslot. So wouldn’t Leno still be entitled to his $150 million?
Well, Leno certainly has himself taken care of, whether or not he has a show to go to…like any good prenup agreement would.
Can you imagine the hue and cry if NBC had booted Leno to the tune of $150m and kept Conan? Leno apparently had the better prenup here. Let that be a lesson to Conan on whatever new adventure he embarks.
When it’s all over and done, the networks are primarily driven by money, and this is an excellent example of that fact.
Is it really NBCs fault if people dont want to watch Leno every night? People actually have taste in television. His show got plenty of promotion.
Moxy says:
January 20, 2010 at 8:41 am
“But they DID axe his primetime show. If he really wanted to, Leno could sue for that $150 mil, couldn’t he?”
I am going to assume his new contract will null and void this. Or perhaps his contract says if he gets the old show back they don’t have to pay it back. Who knows. And Leno protecting himself is smart which is why I won’t buy the stmt he made on his show the other night. This now IMO makes that “I agreed on a handshake” really sound ridiculous.
Leno might not have a Hollywood agent but he does have a good contract lawyer.
Kitkat–I believe Leno did it on a handshake. But understand that the “I did it on a handshake” doesn’t mean, that’s it, that’s the deal, and nothing else is documented. All it means is that he’ll allow his show to go off the air without declaring a default and suing for the $150m. His lawyers and NBC will spend the next 3 weeks documenting a new contract.
Outlander well your probably right. At this point he still has his original contract in place so he is still legally protected. So if for some reason NBC backed out on him, he’d get his 150 million.
@kitkat Yes, I assume that as well. It’s just interesting that Leno has claimed to be upset about this situation, yet he’s letting NBC completely off the hook. No mention of NBC breaching his contract (other than the “Never Believe your Contract jab) or the potential penalty at all.
So, if Leno flops at 11:30, are they stuck with him unless they want to give him the $150 million pay-out? It seems weird that the network has to take all the risk of a show being a flop. Doesn’t the “talent” have some responsibility for his/her own success? Or maybe it’s like baseball when a team pays a player $140 million without knowing how future performance will be.
Nice contract. Well written and well done. Can’t blame Leno for wanting to protect himself in case things went badly.
Vivendi became quite the wild card in this fiasco. It seems that once they decided to sell their stake in the NBC world, and Comcast decided to go fishing for it, all hell broke loose from the affiliates who were already unhappy because of the JLS experiment.
If I were Conan, I would:
(1) Get the names of Leno’s contract lawyers, find out what their fees are, and put them on retainer as fast as possible. They certainly proved to be quite the prudent investment for Leno.
(2) Set up an independent company and house everything under it (if he has not already done so — I admit I don’t know if he has such a thing ala Worldwide Pants or not and am in too much of a rush to look right now, so if anyone knows, feel free to educate me
) so intellectual property issues won’t be such an issue in the future.
Im predicting now that jay will now fail at 11:30. A lot of people are turned off to him now cuz of this whole messs. He will not beat lettermen this time around and nbc will be kicking themselves for letting Conan go!!
Just look how jays ratings have slipped even further since this mess started.
Hey Robert, I know you think I’m the lunatic but I’m not the one who watches Around the Horn religiously. Republicans go to church, Conan loving lunatics watch ATH…….
But anyway….. Let’s change the topic….what should we talk about?
Oh. How about the fact that I predicted this whole mess would happen back before Conan even moved to LA. I also predicted that the media would side with him because he is from the east coast. Cmon, the freak graduated from Harvard, what a nerd. How can you scumbags support Conan?
I told you guys a year ago that Conan had lost his edge, but you wrote me off like I’m a lunatic. Robert, I’m still looking for an apology for calling me part of the “lunatic fringe” who thinks the media sides with Conan.
Now that I have room to breath and voice my opinion, (because I’m not on one of the 2 computers Rob and Bill banned me from writing from), I want to say that all this talk about Conan going to FOX is a bunch of gutterman bullsheist. Why would FOX want an over the hill talk show host who got spanked in the ratings by Letterman?