George Lopez Lands TBS Talk Show

Looks like late-night host is no major windfall for TBS

(NEWSER) - George Lopez's late-night talk show got booted to midnight to make room for Conan O'Brien. Sacrifices have to be made in the quest for fortune, right? Eh, maybe. Turns out Conan is barely more popular than Lopez Tonight was. The redhead's TBS show officially turned one this week, and the first-year stats are nothing to write home about. Yahoo reports that he averaged 952,000 viewers a night, to Lopez's 911,000, per Nielsen. That's a serious drop from Conan's 4 million-viewer debut. More»

New network launches tongue-in-cheek campaign for old network

(NEWSER) - Conan O'Brien's network wants him nominated for an Emmy Award—for a show that aired on another network. TBS, where the late-night host/martyr's latest effort will debut in November, is running "for your consideration" ads touting The Tonight Show With Conan O'Brien, which crashed and burned on NBC. "Conan’s great work in 2009 and 2010 deserves Emmy consideration,” Turner Entertainment Networks' president tells Entertainment Weekly —in a statement, so we don't know whether he was able to say it with a straight face. 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»

(NEWSER) - After months of promoting Jay Leno's move to 10pm, NBC may shake up its prime-time schedule again, moving its late local news to 10 and Leno to 10:30, the network's onetime programming head speculates. Garth Ancier, now chief of BBC America, shared his speculation with critics at the summer press tour this week in Los Angeles, Washington Post TV columnist Lisa de Moraes reports. More»

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 .