Conan O Brien

First Oprah, now Conan. In the latest sign that the field has leveled between broadcast and cable television, former "Tonight Show" host Conan O'Brien has decided to make his late-night comeback this fall on TBS, a cable network that has largely been synonymous with old network reruns and Atlanta Braves baseball. "This is the day the last brick wall fell down between broadcast and cable," declared Steve Koonin, president of Turner Entertainment Networks. O'Brien, dumped by NBC as host of "The Tonight Show" in favor of his predecessor, Jay Leno, just four months ago, will return in November on TBS with an 11 p.m. show.

There Metta World Peace sat, yucking it up on Conan O'Brien's TBS show Monday night. He had planned for this appearance two weeks ago, but he figured it might be bad timing to appear on a late-night comedy show. After all, World Peace had just earned a seven-game suspension for throwing a vicious elbow at Oklahoma City guard James Harden. Since that time, World Peace has endlessly watched the replay in which he cocked his arm before elbowing Harden and giving him a concussion.

TBS asked comedian George Lopez to move his noisy and hip late-night program again — this time off the network. Last year "Lopez Tonight" became an unwitting player in a late-night domino game when TBS pushed back the talk show an hour later than originally planned to make room for Conan O'Brien — who had been shoved off his late night perch at NBC. On Wednesday, the cable network announced Thursday's show would be the last one. ...

Star Wars: The Complete Saga 20th Century Fox Blu-ray, $139.99 A long time ago, in a galaxy not so far away, George Lucas launched a sci-fi series that won legions of fans for its ingenuity and personality. And ever since — or so it seems — Lucas has been working overtime to make those fans angry. Now out on Blu-ray, the six-film "Star Wars" saga has been tinkered with yet again by Lucas, with re-done effects and enhancements making the series even less like what people loved so much in the late '70s and early '80s.

Conan O'Brien is not going to take one for the team. The host of NBC's "The Tonight Show" released a statement this afternoon saying that he would not move his show from 11:35 p.m. to 12:05 a.m. to make room for Jay Leno's return to late night. Since news broke last week that NBC wanted to move Jay Leno out of prime time and put him back in late night, speculation has centered around whether O'Brien would be willing to move his show or walk. In a statement, O'Brien said that he was disappointed but "after only seven months with my "Tonight Show" in its infancy, NBC has decided to react to their horrible difficulties in primetime in making a change in their long established late-night schedule.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, who once said, "There are no second acts in American lives," probably wouldn't know what to make of Craig Kilborn. After all, the 47-year-old Minnesota native is about to start his fourth act. The lanky ex-host of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" and CBS' "The Late Late Show" returns to television with "The Kilborn File," a topical half-hour talk and comedy show that debuts at 6:30 p.m. Monday on Fox's KTTV-TV Channel 11....

This just wasn't Conan O'Brien's year. NBC didn't let him keep his dream job as host of "The Tonight Show," and the red-haired comedian came up short with Emmy voters Sunday night. Instead, "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" kept its winning streak alive, bagging its seventh straight Emmy for variety, music or comedy series. It had been one of the most anticipated categories of the evening, threatening to pose an awkward moment or two for NBC, which was broadcasting the Emmys, and host Jimmy Fallon.

Conan O'Brien rolled out his 30-city Legally Prohibited From Being Funny On Television Tour on Thursday, billing it as "a night of music, comedy, hugging and the occasional awkward silence." The comedian's live tour will begin in Eugene, Ore., on April 12 and make a stop, on April 24 and 25, at Universal Studios in Los Angeles (yes, the same entertainment complex owned by O'Brien's longtime employer, NBC Universal, and just a stone's throw away from the glitzy studio that NBC built for O'Brien to host "The Tonight Show," a job that lasted less than eight months)

Fox Broadcasting is inching closer to bringing Conan O'Brien back to late night. Key Fox executives, including Rupert Murdoch, are on board with the plan and would like to finalize a deal in coming weeks so they can make a splash on May 17 when the network unveils its fall lineup. Several significant issues remain and the Fox talks could fall apart, according to people close to the negotiations who asked anonymity because the discussions were meant to be private. But people close to O'Brien are cautiously optimistic.

Neal Gabler offers a mostly insightful analysis of NBC's recent late-night meltdown ["Leno Trumps What's Cool," Jan. 23]. It is true, and perhaps axiomatic by this point, that NBC gambled in favor of Conan O'Brien's "hip" factor and lost bad. But Gabler reveals his own ignorance of Conan's real appeal to his audience with the flip and highly subjective comment that Conan, while he "may have been modish . . . wasn't funny." What qualification does Gabler have to make this judgment?

TBS asked comedian George Lopez to move his noisy and hip late-night program again — this time off the network. Last year "Lopez Tonight" became an unwitting player in a late-night domino game when TBS pushed back the talk show an hour later than originally planned to make room for Conan O'Brien — who had been shoved off his late night perch at NBC. On Wednesday, the cable network announced Thursday's show would be the last one. ...

'Conan O'Brien Can't Stop' MPAA rating: R for language Running time: 1 hour, 29 minutes Playing: At Landmark Regent, Westwood

Time Warner's cable network unit Turner Broadcasting, parent of TBS, TNT and Cartoon Network, announced new shows to advertisers Wednesday morning. Among the new shows are: "Major Crimes," starring Mary McDonnell, which premieres on TNT after the series finale of "The Closer" early next year. Also new is a mystery movie lineup on Tuesday nights from a host of bestselling crime authors. Among the works and writers slated for the new movie slot are: Scott Turow's "Innocent," Richard North Patterson's "Silent Witness," Sandra Brown's "Ricochet," Lisa Gardner's "Hide," April Smith's "Good Morning, Killer," and Mary Higgins Clark and Carol Higgins Clark's "Deck the Halls.

Jimmy Pardo, the official warm up guy for Conan O'Brien, may be the funniest man averse to jokes. He doesn't write them; he rarely tells them. And that translates as hilarious to audiences. Call him the crowd whisperer. Instead of using crafted material to liven up the crowd before Conan tapings, Pardo simply shows up and riffs, loosely, with the audience — that's his thing. His stand-up routine at clubs is just as unstructured, akin to "one-man improv," he says, and is drawing comparisons to Don Rickles and Robin Williams.

Now that Conan O'Brien has come to rest, presumably for more than seven months, as the host of a TBS talk show, it seems like a good time to take another look at the person who replaced him, and I don't mean Jay Leno. One year and nine months ago Jimmy Fallon ? who, like O'Brien, was touched by the hand of Lorne, and I do mean Michaels ? followed O'Brien into the "Late Night" chair previously vacated by David Letterman. FOR THE RECORD: Jimmy Fallon: A headline on the cover of last Sunday's Calendar section referred to Jimmy Fallon's "Late Show.

Conan O'Brien's contractually mandated wandering in the wilderness that is Everything That Is Not Television came to an end Monday night with the premiere of his new TBS late-night show, " Conan. " Technically, it came to an end the previous week with a three-minute walk-on to new late-night neighbor George Lopez's "Lopez Tonight," which "Conan" has bumped to midnight; a sexy mock-sexy promo involving a garden hose; and an impressive American Express commercial in which O'Brien travels to India to buy, weave and dye the silk for the curtain for his new show.

For more than four decades, the broadcast networks have set aside a week in May for staging splashy presentations in Manhattan to unveil their fall schedules for advertisers. The annual ritual kicks off television's ad sales season, known as the upfronts, when the networks sell more than two-thirds of their commercials for the coming season. Cable powerhouse Turner Broadcasting System two years ago crashed the party. The division of Time Warner Inc. decided to pitch its shows on TNT and TBS during the week reserved for major broadcast networks ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC. Turner's message: It was now one of the big boys.

Conan O'Brien is going to cable. The former host of NBC's "Tonight Show," who lost the program to Jay Leno earlier this year, has signed a deal for a new late-night program on TBS, the basic cable network owned by Time Warner. O'Brien's show will start in November at 11 p.m. George Lopez, the comedian who currently occupies that slot, will have his show move to midnight. "In three months, I've gone from network television to Twitter to performing live in theaters, and now I'm headed to basic cable.

As their new 11 p.m. TBS talk show gets ready to roll Monday, Conan O'Brien and his staff have started to learn how the other half lives. After 17 years at NBC, they're adjusting to cable-sized portions. "We have a lower budget for the show," Jeffrey Ross, executive producer of "Conan," said in an interview. "So unfortunately we couldn't bring everybody with us" from "The Tonight Show," where O'Brien was unceremoniously dumped and Jay Leno reinstalled as host earlier this year.