Friday, January 22, 2010
NEW YORK (AP) — Conan O’Brien told NBC good riddance Thursday in a $45 million deal for his exit from “The Tonight Show,” allowing Jay Leno to return to the late-night program he hosted for 17 years.
Under the deal, which came seven months after O’Brien took the reins from Leno, O’Brien will get more than $33 million, NBC said. The rest will go to his 200-strong staff in severance.
Compensation for O’Brien’s staff and crew was the final hurdle in negotiations. O’Brien was said to have been “dug in” on the issue out of concern for the workers, while NBC said this week that it had already agreed to pay “millions of dollars to compensate every one of them” and deemed it a public- relations “ploy.”
On Wednesday night’s show, speaking of a push to get a severance deal for his staff from NBC, O’Brien joked, “At first they thought I was gullible. They said the staff would be taken to a big farm, where they’d be allowed to run free forever.”
O’Brien’s final show will be tonight, with Tom Hanks scheduled to appear as well as Will Ferrell.
Leno will return to “Tonight” on March 1.
O’Brien will be free to start another TV job after Sept. 1, NBC said.