Just weeks after, in essence, firing Conan O’Brien, NBC has ordered a pilot from O’Brien and The Tonight Show executive producer’s Conaco productions.

The pilot from O’Brien’s company has not yet been officially titled, but is currently being referred to as “Justice”.  It was written by John Eisendrath and reportedly centers around an ex-Supreme Court justice who leaves the country’s high court to start his own practice.  In Hollywood’s inner circles, it’s considered one of the season’s best pilots.

Ross and O’Brien will co-produce the project, making it a very real possibility that O’Brien could provide with the network that pulled the rug out from under him as the host of The Tonight Show with a hit show it has been seeking for several TV seasons.

This seems strange, doesn’t it?

The reason the pilot is on NBC is because Conaco operates under the NBC umbrella, basically making them a part of the NBC family.  And in O’Brien’s $33 million settlement to exit The Tonight Show, he and the network agreed that Conaco would continue to operate under the NBC umbrella until the end of the TV season.

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This post was written by Eric Van Dril.  For more of his writing, visit RipcordNews.com.

Jay Leno comes back tonight!

YES!

Just kidding.  I, as I’m sure you are having clicked on this post after reading the headline, are a fan of Conan O’Brien’s.  Which left me feeling extremely excited when I read about O’Brien’s plan of taking his talk show on the road while he waits out the NBC timeout forced upon him in his buyout.

O’Brien, according to multiple sources, is set to take his show on the road for a couple months in order to keep creating revenue for himself and his out-of-work staff.  More importantly, O’Brien’s decision would make the thousands of members of Team Coco around the country extremely happy and would continue to keep his name on the tips of peoples’ tongues up until he is allowed to return to television is September of this year.

Expect more information about the tour in the days and weeks coming.

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This post was written by Eric Van Dril.  For more of his writing, visit RipcordNews.com.

For years, WGN battled TBS for the rights to the name of ‘Best Superstation in the Country’.  Well, for the duration of my lifetime, TBS/TNT has reigned supreme.

But now, in a move that doesn’t seem the least bit feasible, it seems WGN could possibly try to regain the title over TBS/TNT by hiring Conan O’Brien.

Brandon C. Clark is spearheading the effort.  He wrote a statement that attempts to explain Chicago’s need for CoCo…

We think Chicago will be just right for Conan and his masturbating bear! Chicago has what Conan needs — plenty of stars and plenty of fans. What is lacking is a major network with a local show in place for him. Enter WGN …For years WGN and TBS have been battling for supremacy as the cable superstation. TBS has clearly been winning and has recently upped the ante by premiering The George Lopez Show. WGN should counter with an all new late night talk show hosted by Conan O’Brien and brought to you from downtown Chicago (both Block 37 and the Sullivan Center are looking for tenants and could easily provide real views of downtown from a specially built studio).

So until Conan finds a new home it will be the stated goal of ‘Chicago Wants Conan’ to convince both Conan O’Brien and WGN that his new home should be Chicago!

I don’t think this will ever happen because WGN can’t possibly afford O’Brien, but it’s a fun thing to think/talk about.

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This post was written by Eric Van Dril.  For more of his writing, check out RipcordNews.com.

TMZ is reporting (and NBC is denying) that Jay Leno has agreed to a contract to take over The Tonight Show when Conan O’Brien leaves.  The show will reportedly be an hour-long.

At this point, TMZ’s report is unconfirmed, with various sources on the internet speculating that Leno might leave NBC.  In my opinion – and the opinion of hundreds of television experts – Leno’s the type of guy who loves the spotlight and loves to be loved by everyone.  With Conan leaving The Tonight Show, Leno is faced with a pretty rare situation where he isn’t loved by most of the public.

In fact, he and NBC have taken the brunt of the hits throughout this whole ordeal, which, in the long run, figure to hurt the new Tonight Show because more people have switched to Letterman and Leno is now a tainted product.  He’s a failure who was unfunny at 9:00 p.m. and is now bringing his new/old product back to the old timeslot.  The problem is that it’s the old show with the old host on the same crappy network.

That’s why I won’t be watching.  What about you?

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This post was written by Eric Van Dril.  For more of his writing, check out RipcordNews.com.

Conan O’Brien’s struggles in taking over for Jay Leno have been well documented since he began at the beginning of June.

If you’re reading this article, that means you’ve most likely read about Conan’s lack of appeal to middle America and how his type of show is basically the same thing David Letterman has been doing since 1982.

These two things, along with many others that show why Conan is failing, have been beaten to death over the last four months.  But a few days ago The New York Times published an article that shows exactly how many people have abandoned The Tonight Show…

For the first month of the television season, the declines for Mr. O’Brien have been the worst among total viewers, something most NBC executives had predicted. Those numbers are big: Mr. O’Brien is off by more 2 million viewers, ­or about 47 percent, from Mr. Leno’s performance last year. He has averaged 2.53 million total viewers for the first four weeks of the season; Mr. Leno averaged 4.75 million last year. (Mr. Letterman is at 4.59 million this season, up from 3.97 million.)

The one underrated thing about Conan failing at 10:30 (CT) is the use of DVR.  Let’s say somebody prefers Leno to Conan.  They could simply tape Leno’s 9 p.m. show and then watch it at 10:30.  It would allow them to return their life to normal while, at the same time, skipping over a ton of commercials.

This is one of the increasing number of problems NBC has to deal with while trying to fix their massive blunder.

After addressing why he disappeared for five days during Wednesday’s press conference, Mark Sanford seemed ashamed.  His life had officially fallen apart because his career was finished and his marriage was done.  Sanford’s actions – flying to Argentina to hook up with a woman who wasn’t his wife – was incredibly stupid, but also hilarious for late night hosts.

Stephen Colbert, originally from South Carolina, said: “I would never in my life have believed that Gov. Mark Sanford was capable of doing something interesting.”

David Letterman, trying to avoid another Sarah Palin controversy, said: “I have to be careful here, I haven’t had much luck with jokes about governors” he said.  But then added: “Why can’t he be like our governor and use a local escort service?”

As you know, Conan O’Brien takes over The Tonight Show Monday night.  The takeover, in my mind, raises three huge questions.

How will the new Tonight Show deal with The Colbert Report?

Conan O’Brien and Stephen Colbert, generally speaking, share the same audience.  Reports have shown that they attract young people with high IQs, which was perfect for O’Brien’s Late Night.  College students, for example, could watch the hour block of Comedy Central’s faux news shows, choose the more interesting guest on Leno or Letterman and then watch Conan’s entire show.   But this formula will change tonight because O’Brien’s first half hour is much more appealing than Leno and Letterman’s.

Prediction: Conan will be helped by the mainstream use of DVRs and Comedy Central replaying The Colbert Report four times a day.  People won’t ignore quality TV and I think the younger audience both shows appeal to will find a way to view both on a regular basis.  I know I will.

Will Jimmy Fallon’s audience stay tuned after The Tonight Show?

Compared to Late Night with Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Fallon’s new show is incredibly lame and will likely be exposed as such following the new Tonight Show. Fallon will have very good ratings initially, but don’t expect that to last very long because the nightly presence of Conan will further point out how bad Fallon is as a late night host.

Prediction: Craig Ferguson continuously beats Fallon in three months and Fallon begins to receive heavy criticism when his ratings begin to drop.

Can Conan O’Brien get guests that rival David Letterman’s?

Letterman has more contacts around the country and O’Brien will play second fiddle to Jay Leno once his new talk show debuts at 9 p.m.  If you look at the first two weeks of Conan’s reign at The Tonight Show, it’s clear that Letterman has the better slate of guests.  But Conan’s bits shouldn’t be stale like most of Letterman’s and his monologue should be edgier.  Both Conan and Dave’s brand of comedy is smarter than Leno’s, but Conan seems to be a nicer interviewer than Letterman, who can make guests very awkward.

Prediction: Letterman’s ratings will increase because he’ll be able to get better guests than O’Brien.  This will make their ratings race more exciting than the Letterman-Leno battle.  The thing that Letterman doesn’t have is a young audience, which publicists figure to choose The Tonight Show for.  All in all, things should be somewhat even between the two.  But will things change once Leno’s new talk show starts?  I don’t know, but I’m excited to watch.

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As I’ve written on countless occasions on this website and others, I’m fascinated by Jay Leno moving to 9 p.m. a few months after Conan O’Brien takes over The Tonight Show on June 1st.

I’m intrigued for many reasons, but the biggest is because I think Conan hates Jay and Jay hates Conan.  There are many different examples over the years of how and why the two hate each other (Conan barely thanked Jay on his final Late Night episode, but raved about David Letterman. Every interview between Jay and Conan has been awkward.  Conan is a student of late night talk shows and knows how Jay basically stole everything from Letterman’s anti-talk show back when he stole The Tonight Show from under Letterman in 1992.  There’s more too.), but Leno will have O’Brien as his final Tonight Show guest in two weeks.

The final episode, which will air on May 29, will serve as a passing of the torch between Leno and O’Brien, who will still play Leno’s little brother on NBC when Jay moves to 9 p.m. in the Fall.

And that’s why this is so interesting in my eyes.  Leno and O’Brien will both have their marquee shows in Los Angeles five times-per-week and they certainly won’t have guests on back-to-back nights (I wouldn’t think).  So Conan, like he did before, is going to get the second-tier guests in Los Angeles while Letterman gets top-of-the-line guests in New York.

I think Letterman realizes this too and is excited to see how he does in the ratings.

It’s going to be a very interesting situation to follow and that’s why I think you should check out RipcordNews.com for all of the play-by-play once O’Brien takes over The Tonight Show. It’s going to be the most interesting thing of the summer, in my opinion, so please join the fun.

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Written by: Eric Van Dril – Follow him at ripcordnews.com or at twitter.com/ripcordnews.

I’ve been really into Late Night with Conan O’Brien lately, and it’s mostly been by accident.  Unlike many of the TV shows that I normally watch, I don’t plan on watching Conan, but I always do.

This was the case last night, when Alec Baldwin was the first guest.  While I enjoy 30 Rock – especially the first 10 minutes of last night’s episode – I think Baldwin is pretty annoying in interviews.  He comes across as pompous and seems like he would be excruciating to have as a friend or family member.

So I wasn’t planning on tuning into Late Night, but did because the Dallas-Boston game was over.  And what happened between Baldwin and Conan last night was historical (and quite funny).

First a little back story.

Since Conan O’Brien is taking over for Jay Leno on The Tonight Show at the beginning of August, Conan is moving out to Los Angeles.  There’s many reasons why this is happening, but what it means is that many of the New York-based guests (Brian Williams being the biggest one that comes to mind) that frequent the show won’t be able to talk to Conan any more.

Alec Baldwin falls into this category.  So, Baldwin told Conan that the way to solve this was to kill him off.

“I’ve been a character on your show,” Baldwin said. “I feel that the only way to go on these kind of shows, is to be killed off.  And I would like to be the first person to be killed off a talk show.”

Conan obliged, calling on Tony Sirico, in character as Paulie from The Sopranos, to take out Baldwin.  He did – choking the Emmy winner until he fell on the floor.

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For more talk-show slayings, follow Eric Van Dril on www.twitter.com/isthisitx

Jack White, and possibly Meg White, will reportedly be on Late Night with Conan O’Brien Feb. 20th – one of O’Brien’s final days as the host of Late Night.

The key word with that first sentence is reportedly.  Right now, the interbridge.com is reporting that the White Stripes will be on the show next week, but they’re not an official source of these types of things.  So stay tuned for more concrete news, I guess is the point.

The White Stripes, as may or may not know, have pledged their allegence to Conan (as many rock ‘n’ roll bands have) because of the forum he grants many up-and-coming acts.  The White Stripes even had O’Brien in their video for “Denial Twist.”

Stay tuned.

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For more updates on the White Stripes and all the bands part of the garage rock revolution, follow author Eric Van Dril and his sites at www.twitter.com/isthisitx