Are Conan and Fox a good match? Yes, but.
When he was asked about bringing Conan O'Brien to Fox, the network's entertainment chief Kevin Reilly — a huge Conan fan back when he was an NBC executive — told TV critics last month, "I love Conan, personally and professionally." After the news conference, he was even more effusive.
But as I, and many of my colleagues, learned when we talked privately with Fox executives afterward, there was more than one side to this story.
And that has been confirmed by none other than Rupert Murdoch himself (pictured at left), chair of News Corp., owner of Fox, in this story.
At best Fox's response to Conan at this very preliminary stage can be described as "Yes, but."
Yes, but the terms will have to be more favorable to Fox. Translation: Conan's got to get used to the entrepreneurial culture of News Corp. If he accepts lower pay in a deal laden with incentives, he'll be in a position to profit if he succeeds. If he fails to capitalize, the risk won't be so great for Fox.
Yes, but the affiliates will need to be fully behind it. Translation: We're not going to jerk the affiliates around. It is true, said Reilly, that we can compel the affiliates to take a late night offering. But we must be prepared to make it worth their while — probably by offering a generous amount of local advertising time during the Conanshow, or surrendering a network commercial spot in prime or something — some sort of compensation which, again, drives the amount of money the network would be willing to pay Conan.
Yes, but it must be right for Fox. Translation: Team Coco will have to rethink how they do a late night show ... again. It's not as simple as bringing back the Masturbating Bear. Fox is a network that has a working formula for attracting 18-49-year-old viewers — and as we all know, NBC has been a ... what's the phrase? ... astounding failure in attracting adult demos. Furthermore, the Fox affiliates do their news an hour earlier, some do 90 minutes of news and some do 60. So in other words, every decision TC makes with Fox will be in some fundamental way different from the decisions they made at NBC. On the other hand, that's on the whole a good thing.
By the way, when I told a certain East Coast reporter that there were markets like Kansas City that do 90 minutes of late news, he busted a gut. "What the bleep is there to report on for 90 minutes?" he said. My guess is that Conan knows more about Fox's business than this guy does. If anyone can do this deal, it's Team Coco.
P.S. Can we please stop talking about how much money Conan walked away from NBC with? We don't know if that is contingent on his next deal, and there may be triggers built in which would greatly reduce NBC's risk if he jumps teams (think NFL contracts). And reports are out there that had NBC cut Jay Leno loose, Jay would have had a severance deal five times the size of Conan's ... 150 million smackeroos.
