Tomorrow’s Oprah is going to be some serious must-see TV. Jay Leno taped an interview with her yesterday talking mainly, I would assume, about his recent battle with Conan O’Brien for the seat at The Tonight Show. A snippet has been released online, and it does not make Jay sound good. I’ll touch more on that in a second, but read this first:

Oprah: “Have you talked to Conan in person?”

Jay: “I haven’t talked to him through all this. No. I haven’t.”

Oprah: “Did you want to pick up the phone?”

Jay: “Yeah, but it didn’t seem appropriate.”

Oprah: “Why?”

Jay: “I don’t know. I think it — let things cool down and maybe we’ll talk, you know?”

Oprah: “Were any of the things that he said about you hurtful?”

Jay: “No. They were jokes. And that’s okay. I mean — ”

Oprah: “So jokes don’t hurt you.”

Jay: “It’s what we do, you know? You can’t — it’s like being a fighter and say when you got punched in the head, did it hurt? Well, yeah. But you’re a fighter. That’s what you do.”

To me that reads like Jay’s a total puss. To see the level of integrity that we saw from Conan over the last few weeks versus this guy saying that he can’t even pick up the phone and say “Sorry, man. I know this sucks, but I’m kind of doing what I have to do,” is pathetic. It’s not public opinion that the two of them are friends, but that seems to be the most obvious gesture one human who’s fucking over another human could make. Furthermore, his attitude implies that he knows he was wrong in taking back his job after ceremoniously handing it down to the next person in line. In a way, the only thing respectable about Jay Leno right now is that he’s at least willing to go on Oprah and admit what a jellyfish he really is.

“You can do these things until they get carried out on a stretcher or you can get out while you’re still doing good.” Yeah, you said it, Leno! Honestly, you really did say that two years ago when you announced you were quitting The Tonight Show. Too bad there’s enough trolls with two year old episodes of your crappy show DVR’d in the world to call you out. Sounds like you’re singing a very different tune now, though. Sucks you had to turn Team CoCo against you in the process, man. Hope the new show goes great!

OK, let’s put this one to bed after this post, huh?

Conan O’Brien has finally come to an agreement with NBC. He’s going to take 45 million total to go fuck off. He will keep about 33 million of that and the rest will be divided up as severance amongst his staff. His very last show will be this coming Friday (with guest Barry Manilow) and Jay Leno will resume his job as host of The Tonight Show on March 1st. Of course Conan had to fight to get his 200+ staff members a cut of the deal, which is ridiculous when you think about it because it was only about a year ago that all of those people had to move from New York to Los Angeles with promises of new jobs.

After September 1st, Conan will be freed up form his NBC contract all together and ready to start a new job. Reports are saying that he’s anxious to do so and there’s rumors that he could find his home anywhere from Fox to FX to the Internet. It was amazing what he was able to do on his show with the restrictions of a major network behind him, so maybe we’ll get to see a whole new Conan if he moves to cable.

Jay Leno is awfully sick of playing the bad guy. Ever since he’s been accused of kicking Conan O’Brien out of his seat at The Tonight Show, Jay has been persona non grata in the press, most notably on the Internet, where Team CoCo seems to have been born. Last night Jay took a few moments at his desk before getting in to the day’s headlines to address the situation. It wasn’t exactly a perfectly executed letter addressed to The People of Earth, but Jay definitely got his side across. According to him, it was simply an issue of the network coming to him after being disappointed in Conan’s ratings and that he had little/nothing to do with the decisions that have been made.

This clip is worth a watch (at least to say you’ve heard the other side), but I’m Team CoCo to the death.

I’ve been waiting all week for Saturday Night Live to chip in with some Conan vs. Leno jokes, but sadly, this Larry King Live spoof was pretty much all they had to offer. Seth Meyers did make crack one pretty funny joke during Weekend Update (“This week, you didn’t need Cinemax to see someone get screwed on TV.”), but other than that… yeesh. Maybe Zucker threatened to ice them as well?

Conan O’Brien is almost definitely 100% out the door at NBC, but he’s supposedly getting a $30 million dollar apology check. Of course these rumblings are fairly certain but still considered to be rumors as NBC and/or Conan’s camp are staying silent on the details. On the flip, Conan’s not shutting up about his distaste for the network and last night he once again came out swinging in his monologue. Some choice jokes:

“Hi, I’m Conan O’Brien — future answer to a $200 “Jeopardy” question.

“Welcome to tonight’s show. By the time you see this, I’ll be halfway to Rio in a stolen NBC traffic copter.”

“In the press this week, NBC has been calling me every name in the book. In fact, they think I’m such an idiot they now want me to run the network.”

“According to the Nielsen Company our ratings are way, way up this week. And that’s nothing — wait till you see what we have planned for February.”

And while $30 million may seem like more than enough to cover the guy, NBC is reportedly stipulating that if Conan moves on to another network within a certain time period, they don’t have to pay him that full amount. From TheWrap:

The deal came following a battle between the two camps over whether O’Brien’s contract specifically guaranteed that “The Tonight Show” must air at 11:35 p.m.

As TheWrap previously reported, Team Conan was insisting that NBC has breached O’Brien’s contract because, it argued, the deal had a timeslot guarantee.

NBC’s response: No, there is no such guarantee of a specific timeslot for “Tonight.” So as long as we keep something called “The Tonight Show” on the air, there is no breach.

If NBC had been in breach, it would have owed Conan around $40 million (and as much as $50 million, according to some reports), as a penalty.

People close to NBC insisted the network would not yield on this point– it wouldn’t admit it had breached O’Brien’s deal.

One solution that had been on the table Friday, according to TheWrap’s Josef Adalian: Agreeing to disagree over the timeslot issue and instead settling on a pay or play fee.

This late night TV drama is the worst. I really just need to admit to myself that the only times I ever watched Conan were on Hulu or back in his Late Night days and move on. I’m prepared to go a year without Conan so that I don’t have to talk about this anymore. It blows goats that someone who’s made me laugh so hard over the years is getting railroaded by a bunch of losers, but like… see ya in a year, man. It’s not that long of a time.

Oh, BTW! If you missed Kimmel ripping Leno a new one over and over and over again the other night, check out this video. It’s awesome:

Image from Mashable.com

Conan O’Brien is done with NBC, so reports are saying. NBC has yet to officially confirm this news, but that’s the word on the street/Internet. Conan’s reign is scheduled to end next Friday, January 22nd. NBC had scheduled a hiatus for the show that was supposed to start the 25th, but in light of all of this crazy bullshit, Conan’s taking off a few days early.

What was the final straw? I guess NBC/Universal president & CEO Jeff Zucker was so cold and nasty throughout the negotiations that Conan became too turned off to consider going back. From Nikki Finke’s blog:

And while Jeff Zucker has not stepped up and taken responsibility for this mess he set in in motion in the first place — by replacing Leno with Conan O’Brien as host of The Tonight Show even though Jay was No. 1 in his time slot at the time — he’s been busy behind the scenes. I’ve already reported how Zucker has been privately blaming Conan for the current debacle, saying “He let me down” because The Tonight Show for the last 7 months since O’Brien took over has been losing out to David Letterman in both eyeballs and advertiser-coveted demographics. (Bullshit, Zucker, you can’t keep blaming others for your Zuck-ups.) Bad enough that Zucker made Conan hear about the planned move in the first place from the media.

…

One rep even compared Zucker to “Darth Vader” because the NBCU chief “has been so evil” about this. His 3 1/2-years threat comes because O’Brien has another 2 1/2 half years left to run on his contract, and NBC could also enforce a clause that keeps Conan off television for a year or more after that.

The backlash from Conan fans all over the Internet (it’s been somewhat of a craze the last few days) probably don’t help the fact that NBC’s ratings have been at an all-time low recently.

I’ll keep you updated as more details (and a confirmation) come in…