Conan's New Show Is Named...

Unless you're the dissenting Washington Post critic

(NEWSER) - Conan’s back —but how’d he do? Most critics were happy with his TBS debut:

• “The first lines of this new chapter were promising, if not quite the fulfillment of his last wild nights at NBC, when caution was thrown to the wind ,” writes Robert Lloyd in the Los Angeles Times . “The shift from broadcast to basic cable … neither inhibited nor liberated him,” his new smaller set suits him, and he still has Andy Richter—“the person who brings out the best in O'Brien.”
• “Looking for all the world like a free man just sprung from maximum security, he actually seemed joyful to be creating his own show,” writes Lloyd Grove on the Daily Beast . “He didn’t lean on desperate gimmicks or overwrought pyrotechnics.” He “just was funny—or ‘Very Funny,’ as the TBS slogan would have it.”

O'Brien came off more whiny than sympathetic

(NEWSER) - Conan O’Brien insisted last night on 60 Minutes that he is fine—“doing great,” in fact. But everything else he said in the “awkward mishap” of an interview made him look more like a sad sack, writes Andrew Wallenstein. Not only did he discuss “his departure in the agonized terms of someone suffering a fatal illness,” O’Brien displayed “zero of the antic charm that makes him such a great comic in late night.” More»

Fellow late night host's welcome to O'Brien an act

(NEWSER) - Watch out, Conan: George Lopez doesn’t like you any more than you like Jay Leno. Lopez’s “the lady doth protest too much” moment of overexcited glee at O’Brien’s arrival on TBS was all an act, sources tell the New York Post . Unsurprisingly, Lopez didn’t actually want his show to be pushed back an hour for Conan’s sake—but “he was told that if he wasn't supportive, his show would not be renewed,” says a source. More»

Curse? Yep. Drugs? Why not!

(NEWSER) - Conan O’Brien’s move to TBS is a bad idea—assuming that by "bad" you mean "naughty." In fact, “on sex-friendly, expletive-filled basic cable, the gutter's the limit!” writes Lane Brown in New York , who lists seven things the late night host is now free to do:

• Curse: OK, maybe he can’t say some of the really bad words, but thanks to the precedent set by South Park, he can at least use the word “shit.”
• Smoke: Conan himself probably won’t, but “tar-lunged celebrities” like Sean Penn could “light up right on his couch.”

Questions loom as O'Brien debuts on TBS

(NEWSER) - As Conan O'Brien returns to TV tonight on TBS, 10 months after the fiasco at NBC that ended his tenure as the Tonight Show host, questions abound:

• Perhaps the biggest of those questions is whether or not Conan can take his phenomenal success on Twitter and translate it back into TV ratings, the Los Angeles Times notes.
• Conan isn't directly competing with rival Jay Leno, but his 11pm cable slot pits him against two much more challenging opponents: Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, both riding high from their hugely popular Washington rallies, reports the New York Times .