When then-Turner Entertainment president Steve Koonin pitched Conan O’Brien on launching a show at TBS, he was upfront with the host: We won’t be able to deliver you an audience as big as the one you had at NBC.
But at least he said it up front: This network can’t deliver you the audience that a network can.
O’Brien and his team launched “Conan” on TBS in November 2010, evolving the show and its format over the past 11 years just as the entire TV landscape — including late night — dramatically changed.
“The actual ratings in this late-night game are less relevant than they’ve ever been,” said Ross, noting how much of the viewership is now online.
An HBO Max show is on the horizon — more on that in a moment — but for now, Ross, who has been with O’Brien since “Late Night With Conan O’Brien” launched in 1993, has been taking a deep trip down memory lane in recent weeks.
“We spent the last like two, three weeks looking at all the stuff in the last 11 years,” he said.
Ross spent most of the time focused on the more than a decade of “Conan” at TBS, and both O’Brien and his show have evolved quite a bit in the social media age compared to the NBC days.
“When we realized that we weren’t going to be able to get that kind of audience at TBS, we doubled down on it,” Ross said.
“We just went, we weren’t sure it was going to be a segment on the show or what it was, and we went up spending a week there and we made it a whole show,” Ross said.
“We’re like a little boutique media business, and we were ramping up a live part of our business.
And even as late night gravitated toward more political humor, particularly during the Trump years, Ross said “that is not the kind of comedy that he wants to make.
“Conan” has been running packages in recent days compiling some of the TBS show’s best moments, and more will be posted online as web exclusives.
Ross said re-watching the clips also reminded him of the brilliance of O’Brien’s longtime sidekick, Andy Richter.
But Ross said there might not be as much pomp and circumstance this time: “The problem is, this time we were like, ‘we can’t have another big finale because we’ve already had two big finales .
At the very least, the show is ending with an audience inside the Largo at the Coronet Theatre, where “Conan” moved last year during the pandemic.
“Conan” had been based on the Warner Bros.
“Conan’s always had an attachment to the Largo,” Ross said.
Next up, Ross and O’Brien will take a breather before sitting down and mapping out just what the HBO Max show will be.
We don’t know how often, how many we’ll make yet and we’re still in those conversations.
“But the amount of stuff that we did in 11 years that’s so fucking funny, and of quality, that’s hard to do when you’re doing it every day.