Conan O'Brien returns -- to a changed late-night landscape
Conan O’Brien, the red-haired refugee from NBC’s “Tonight Show,” returns to TV Monday night with “Conan,” his first on-air gig since Jay Leno returned to his old seat and ousted him in February. The hour-long show debuts on the cable outpost TBS at 11 p.m.Shox 2011 Women Shox NZ So what can we expect from the returning icon, whose diehard fans have had little to snack on since he went off the air, grew a beard and took his comedy show into small, college-town theaters over the past half year or so? What we know: The first-week lineup is chock full of old friends and big stars such as Seth Rogan and Tom Hanks. And of course, there are musical acts – Jack White, Soundgarden and Fistful of Mercy – and comedian John Dore. And this past week he posted “Show Zero” – a little snack of an online preview that featured a dancing taco – to prime his loyal fans, Team Coco.Shox 2010 Women Shox 2011 IN PICTURES: Conan O'Brien What we don’t know: Will Mr. O’Brien shave his beard on-air? But besides such pressing matters, there is the question of the changed late-night television environment that the former Simpson’s writer and Harvard graduate now enters. “I don’t know why anyone would even talk about Jay Leno or David Letterman as far as Conan’s competition anymore,” says Robert Thompson, founder of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University. Younger TV viewers – the under-30 crowd most coveted by advertisers, he points out – “don’t even know who Jay Leno is.” “Conan” faces off against Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, a 60-minute basic cable block that Mr. Thompson dubs, “perhaps the most talked about comedy on television right now.” (In October Mr. Stewart beat both Mr. Leno and Mr. Letterman in the key 18-to-49 demographic.) Thompson suggests that the timing of the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert Washington rally this past weekend may have had as much to do with staging a promotional offensive against the upcoming “Conan” debut as the Nov. 2 election. nike shox shoes Shox 2010