Conan O'Brien

Late Night Underground, the totally official unofficial website for Late Night with Conan O'Brien has an amusing (but maybe a bit overlong) video of Mr. O'Brien and his former head writer, Robert Smigel, goofing around on the set. (This comes via TVTattle.)

According to the clip, Mr. Smigel, who recently co-wrote You Don't Mess with the Zohan, but is probably best known for gifting the world with Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, is not pleased with the persistent promotional "bug" on NBC's programming. (The "bug" is that translucent logo/ad in the lower left corner of the screen.) After learning how to use a telestrator—the device that allows sportscasters to scribble notes on the screen— Mr.  read more »

Another tribute to the late Tim Russert, this time from Late Night with Conan O'Brien on Hulu.com. On Friday, just a few hours after Mr. Russert's death was announced, Mr. O'Brien said in his monologue, "This is pretty shocking for us He's been a pretty good friend to me and us here at the show." Mr. O'Brien added that Mr. Russert's son, Luke, had been one of his show's interns last year.

Mr. O'Brien praised Mr. Russert by saying, "From the moment I met him, he put me at ease. I always told him countless times, he reminded me of my Irish Catholic uncles: Big head"—here he gestured to indicate he meant big in size, not in self-regard— "big laugh, huge heart."  read more »

Vogue intern and New York Ranger, Sean Avery, says the magazine is "a real, tight-knit family," and he hasn't had to fetch a cup of Starbucks yet! [Intelligencer]

Drea De Matteo was overheard saying that one of NBC's better known spin-off disasters, Joey, ruined her career. [P6]  read more »

Last week, at a press conference at NBC headquarters at 30 Rockefeller Center announcing that he would take over for Conan O’Brien on NBC’s Late Night next year, when Mr. O’Brien moves into Jay Leno’s big chair, Jimmy Fallon looked just a little sheepish.

“I’m very excited about this,” he told the crowd of reporters. “It’s just unbelievable to be in the building I used to work at! It’s gonna be a grind, is the advice I heard from everybody, and it’s gonna be really hard, and I’m ready to work really hard. I’m just excited about this. I hope to make this the best show, and the show to make everyone choose me to fall asleep during.” The crowd laughed politely. On the podium with him was his mentor, NBC comedy guru Lorne Michaels, who produces Late Night, which airs nightly at 12:30 a.m., and who had selected Mr. Fallon as its new host, just as he had anointed an unknown 30-year-old Conan O’Brien 15 years earlier.  read more »

There were no surprises at 30 Rock today as NBC announced the new host of Late Night when current host Conan O'Brien decamps to 11:30 PM sometime in 2009. As far back as February 2007, Bill Carter, The New York Times' veteran TV reporter and de facto historian of late night, had been reporting that Saturday Night Live alum Jimmy Fallon would be tapped to host the show. As reporters and film crews assembled on the 67th floor to take their lucite seats in a room with floor-to-ceiling windows dramatically framing a rainy, overcast day, Fallon's name was openly bandied about.  read more »

It's official! On May 12, NBC will finally officially announce that Saturday Night Live's Jimmy Fallon will take over next year for Conan O'Brien, who will dethrone Jay Leno on the Tonight Show gig. "Jimmy's a smart pick," one network executive told Entertainment Weekly. ''He's a young, cute guy that will draw women in.'' Um, we don't think women are all that into a giggly dude who lives in a kind of perpetual post-college adolescence, but maybe that's just us. And what about Jay?  read more »

“Ben looks like Beaker from the Muppets on the outside, but then inexplicably like a guy from Prison Break under his clothes,” said Mindy Kaling, the 28-year-old actress who plays Kelly Kapoor on The Office. “I think if I’m going to have a boyfriend who works out, he better be sort of embarrassed about it, like Ben is. Sheepish fitness is the only tolerable kind.”  read more »

History has shown that a political movement is merely an idea until it finds a badge, a recognizable symbol of solidarity in strife. Women’s Lib had burning braziers; Environmentalists have the color green; the French Revolution is known for its guillotine; and Socialism waves a red flag. The Writers Guild Strike, now in its third month, has its own emblème, too—the strike beard.

But unlike with most political movements, the act of relinquishing a strike beard has also taken on a kind of symbolism. Just ask Diane Wood, the 26-year-old daughter of Adrian Wood, who owns Paul Molé, an old-school Upper East Side barbershop that’s been shaving faces since 1913. After all, Ms. Wood shaved David Letterman’s beard yesterday, less than a week after the late-night talk show host returned to the air, having recently reached an agreement with the W.G.A.  read more »

In this week’s New Yorker, Ben McGrath writes a Talk of the Town about, well, beards. In days of yore, the piece points out, facial fuzz was de rigueur among a certain set of powerful gents—Confucius, Abraham Lincoln and Rasputin among them.

But now, it seems, there’s begun a resurgence of the bearded-bigwig milieu—particularly those ‘working’ in film and television. The reason for this trend, of course, has more to do with the extended W.G.A. strike than anything else. Now famous personalities—many of which heretofore seemed peach fuzz-free, let alone capable of generating thick cheek rugs—have started to cultivate beards of their own. Take, as the item does, Conan O’Brien, who had reportedly spent the last 44 years of his life with a clean, baby-smooth shave. Not so any more; the pompadour’d late-night talk show host now has what he bills “a hobby on my face.”  read more »

The late-night talk show hosts are returning. But the stars are not yet ready to come out for them if it means crossing the writers' picket line. Celebrities don't want to be the first to accept a booking on a show and face the wrath of the writers alone.

The New York Times reports:  read more »

As the Media Mob told us this morning, there were reports of late-night shows possibly returning by Jan. 2. Those rumors have been confirmed by NBC this morning, according to The New York Times.

NBC officially announced today that its two late-night stars, Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien, will return to the air on Jan. 2 even if the strike against networks and studios by entertainment writers is not resolved by then.  read more »

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There may be no end in sight to the writers strike, but the late-night shows could soon be back on the air anyway.

The Writers Guild said over the weekend that it would be willing to sign individual agreements with media companies, and the independent company that owns The Late Show with David Letterman said it plans to take advantage of that move to work towards a deal, according to several reports.  read more »

While Carson Daly continues to get lambasted for continuing to tape his show during the strike, Conan O'Brien is getting kudos for helping his staff through the shutdown.  read more »

“There will be no ‘Tonight Show’ tonight,” said Joe Meceiros, the show’s head writer, outside NBC Studios in Burbank, California today, according to the New York Times' TV Decoder blog.

Celebrity guests won’t feel the same financial pinch as writers, of course, but some authors and performers [scheduled to appear on late-night talk shows] will undoubtedly miss out on what might have been rare opportunities at national exposure.

Garth Brooks was expected to perform on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” tonight, in his “first late-night television performance since announcing his retirement nine years ago,” NBC said last week. But Mr. Brooks’ appearance is on hold, along with the late-night programming on NBC, CBS and Comedy Central.

In a strange way, ABC may benefit from the postponement of “The Tonight Show” and “The Late Show with David Letterman,” because its news program “Nightline” will be live and original tonight. However, “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” which airs at 12:05 a.m., will revert to a repeat tonight. “We will take it day by day,” an ABC spokeswoman confirmed today.

"Conan O'Brien will take over The Tonight Show in 2009,'' NBC Universal President and CEO Jeff Zucker said yesterday in New York at an event arranged by Syracuse Universiy's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, according to the AP.

If Tonight Show host Jay Leno is having second thoughts about surrendering his job as planned, NBC doesn't share them—at least not publicly.

Zucker said he'd like Leno to remain with the company and that ''we are in those conversations now.''

''I'm hopeful that Jay will be with us,'' the executive told the question-and-answer session.

A deal for Leno's exit was finalized three years ago as part of NBC Universal's effort to keep Late Night host O'Brien from bolting to a competing network. Leno marked his 15th year as host of Tonight last May.

Race, Booze, Jazz and Noise Make for Soho Restaurant Fight "Tom and Gayle Patrick-Odeen are reluctant to boast about their latest court victory in front of the neighbors--even though they suggest the ruling might finally allow them to reopen their embattled and long-shuttered soul-food eatery and live jazz venue, Lola, in Soho. Granted, that's all the foodie duo has been trying to do for nearly two years now, while their leased 3,500-square-foot retail space at the corner of Watts and Thompson streets sat empty." Go to Counter Espionage by Chris Shott Bloomberg's Evolution on Public Money for Private Development "Mayor Bloomberg came into office vowing to end corporate welfare as we know it. And he did. Unless your name is George Steinbrenner, Hank Paulson or Hank McKinnell. On his first day as mayor-elect, the Mr. Bloomberg renounced the property and sales tax breaks that his own media company received for its 59th Street headquarters. 'Any company that makes a decision as to where they are going to be based on the tax rate,' he said, 'is a company that won't be around very long.' The message, according to city officials and lobbyists, has caught on: Many businesses are now afraid to ask for tax breaks. But you can still get one from Bloomberg." Go to story by Matthew Schuerman Clear Channel Packs Five Offices into One Tribeca Spot "The pubic-turned-private radio empire Clear Channel Communications is consolidating five local offices and moving its nascent city headquarters to Tribeca next spring. On the heels of being sold to two investors for $26 billion three weeks ago and an announcement that it plans to shed a third of its radio stations, the Texas-based company has signed a 15-year lease at the former AT&T building at 32 Avenue of the Americas." Go to Commercial Breaks by John Koblin Manhattan Office Market Not That Hot in 2006 "To have followed the Manhattan office market in 2006 is to have bathed in praiseful adjectives. Roaring. Red-hot. Historic. Meteoric. But don't go thinking the 2006 office market's anything special. For all the understandable exuberance over the current boom market, it seems to be simply following the normal path history dictates, one spelled out by employment levels, construction activity, and altered by events no one can really see coming." Go to The Lab by Tom Acitelli Conan O'Brien buys a Majestic penthouse "Conan O'Brien has signed a contract for a corner penthouse at the Majestic, according to a source with knowledge of the deal. The Web site of the Stribling brokerage lists Mr. O'Brien's new place for $9.95 million--but there was no word yet what the everlastingly droll Late Night host paid for the apartment. The apartment was listed by Stribling senior vice president Cathy Taub, whose company biography says that she lives in the Majestic. (Manhattan brokers are suave like that.)" Go to Manhattan Transfers by Max Abelson Murder, Mystery and Real Estate in Red Hook "You know a Brooklyn neighborhood has really hit the big time when it gets its own eponymous murder mystery. The outer-borough universe in Red Hook, Reggie Nadelson's sixth Artie Cohen novel, is so shadowy and lucrative and treacherous that developers 'prowl' the streets in search of real estate. What better way to depict the land of ancient dockyards and four-bedroom waterside condos and low-income projects and hip haircuts?" Go to review by Max Abelson  read more »

"The show we're doing has no precedent in American television history," declared Louis C.K., the 37-  read more »

The Middle East has seen plenty of tall, pale men since the American infidels set their sights on Sa  read more »

Conan O'Brien, the 39-year-old talk-show host with a giant orange coxcomb of hair, was citing Master  read more »

Powaqqatsi! GlassSues

Philip Glass, the 64-year-old composer of the minimalist  read more »

On July 11, the comedian Sarah Silverman made a typically kittenish appearance on the couch of NBC's  read more »

Conan's Wet KisserAshley Wolfe is a babe, no question about it.  read more »

Wednesday, Dec.  read more »

Wednesday, August 18Andy Richter, who has announced he will leave the sidekick position on Late Nigh  read more »

Wednesday, July 14Is Conan O'Brien building a late-night empire à la David Letterman's Worldwide Pa  read more »

Wednesday, May 19NBC presented its '99-'00 lineup to its advertisers at Lincoln Center's Avery Fishe  read more »

Billy Kimball is well known in the television industry for being charming and funny and all that, bu  read more »

Former stand-up comic Jonathan Groff is the head writer of the best live-action comedy show on TV, L  read more »