Conan O'Brien bid NBC good riddance Thursday in a $45 million deal for his exit
from "The Tonight Show," but his immediate future in television remains a question
mark.
The contentious two-week battle that would allow NBC to unseat O'Brien and move
Jay Leno back to the program he hosted for 17 years, comes less than eight months
after O'Brien took the "Tonight" throne from Leno.
Under the deal, O'Brien will get more than $33 million, NBC said. The rest will go to
his 200-strong staff in severance.
What happens next for O'Brien?
"We don't know," his manager, Gavin Polone, said Thursday. "While we have had
expressions of interest, we have not had any substantive conversations with
anybody."
Ideally, said Polone, O'Brien "wants to get back on the air, doing the show he's doing
now, as soon as possible."
There has been much speculation on where that might be. ABC (which airs "Nightline"
and "Jimmy Kimmel Live!") has said it wasn't interested, while Fox, which lacks a network
late-night show, expressed appreciation for his show – but nothing more. Comedy Central
has also been mentioned as a future home.
Meanwhile, O'Brien might conceivably conduct off-camera business with his old bosses.
