The return of CONAN O’BRIEN

By lynn elber

AP television writer

los angeles

Timing is keY in comedy and for at least one formerly unemployed talk-show host. Thoug Conan O’Brien’s departure from “Tonight” was part of a sorry mess, it was exquisitely in sync with the growing influence of social media.

Team Coco’s adroit use of Twitter and Facebook in the months after O’Brien gave up his network TV platform gave him a direct pipeline to fans and new admirers, keeping him and his comic sensibility in a welcoming, computer-generated spotlight.

With tonight’s debut of his TBS show “Conan” (11 p.m.), O’Brien will learn how much being an online sensation can help foster late-night success in cable TV and in a new time slot.

“Let’s be clear about this: Conan O’Brien’s show will succeed if it’s good, and it will fail if it sucks,” said Josh Bernoff, co-author of “Empowered,” about using social networks in business. “Social media cannot change that. What it can change is the speed with which the message gets spread.”

There’s no question the online universe drastically affected O’Brien’s post-”Tonight” life.

“If this had happened to me 10 years ago, I’d probably be in the airport handing out literature,” he says, not a trace of laughter in his voice.

O’Brien says his abrupt exit from NBC after only seven months on “Tonight” — and some 16 years with the network — had its high and low points, “but the biggest thing it did was introduce me in a really visceral way to my fan base.”

With an NBC settlement agreement that included an extended ban on TV appearances, O’Brien found he could keep his followers intrigued — and maybe cultivate new ones — with 140-character messages on Twitter and his Facebook postings.

The question now, he says, is whether he can marry the familiar TV talk-show format with the performance freedom he felt in his final days on “Tonight,” and which he extended online and into his nationwide comedy-concert tour.

“There’s a feeling of ‘let’s experiment, let’s try.’ ... There’s this chance to rewrite the rules,” O’Brien said. “Not everything is going to work, but there’s this chance to try something new.”

The follow-up question: Will online fans, who tend to be younger and want media on their own terms, tune in for “Conan” or wait to see it online? TBS is making it easy, announcing that each show will be posted the morning after it airs, but that means the all-important ratings take a hit.

O’Brien established an online connection with fans after he left NBC’s “Tonight” rather than move his show back a half-hour to allow Jay Leno to return to late night. He has 1.8 million Twitter followers and 1 million-plus friends on Facebook. Then there’s the Team Coco website, giving the public a chance to weigh in and, importantly, get show details including the guest list. TBS offers another chance for an O’Brien fix on its website.

Consider that O’Brien averaged 2.5 million viewers during his “Tonight” tenure, a number that would be welcomed as hefty for TBS, and he’s on his way to triumph if he converts his online base to viewership.

The bar for success isn’t overwhelmingly high, said analyst Steve Sternberg. If O’Brien can increase the under 1 million nightly viewers George Lopez was getting for TBS at 11 p.m. (Lopez is now bumped to midnight), then “Conan” will “probably be considered successful,” Sternberg said. By comparison, Leno and David Letterman each have been drawing around 3.5 million viewers.