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He may be “legally prohibited from being funny on television,” but Conan O’Brien has still managed to capture the attention of a video-viewing audience. More and more fan-made videos from O’Brien’s live comedy show have made their way onto YouTube since the tour kicked off on Monday.
The stirrings of virality started yesterday, when one YouTube user uploaded a vid of Conan performing “I Will Survive,” which has since garnered more than 100,000 hits. Another video — this one depicting the comedian covering Radiohead’s “Creep” — hit the web recently as well, popping up on myriad web video sites. (The song is a rather funny choice on O’Brien’s part, as a popular parody of Jay Leno’s return to The Tonight Show featured the same jam.)
Although Conan will be returning to TV in November, his online fame only continues to grow. He’s a heavy hitter on Facebook, Biz Stone cited his Twitter fame at today’s Chirp developer conference and now videos of his live show are going viral on YouTube. Forget television at this point, Coco — the Internet is your oyster.
Check out a collection of fan-made vids below:
Did Slash really wear an I'm with Coco pin on The Tonight Show last night? NBC doesn't want you to know, but it's true.
[via I'm With Coco]
When Slash was booked to perform on last night's Tonight Show, NBC surely didn't think he would show up wearing an I'm with Coco pin. But, he did. Slash went on Leno's show to proudly and somewhat brazenly show where his loyalties lay in the Late Night Wars.
As expected, Leno's crew worked around the problem and did all they could do make sure that Slash's pin didn't get much camera time. In fact, it only made this brief cameo in the performance.
With this morning’s announcement of Conan O’Brien’s 30-city tour, the former late-night comedian is fully embracing his online fan base, “Team Coco.”
The official poster for the tour re-uses the image made famous on the Internet of a heroic Mr. O’Brien, orange hair aflame, in front of an American flag. The image was produced by Mike Mitchell, an artist in Los Angeles, as a show of support for Mr. O’Brien when NBC tried in January to move “The Tonight Show” to 12:05 a.m. Within days the image and its message, “I’m With Coco,” was a viral sensation, inspiring dozens of pro-Conan groups on Facebook. Several of Mr. O’Brien’s employees even made the image their Facebook profile photo.
Now they have formally adopted the image as their own. Days after Mr. O’Brien signed off of “The Tonight Show” on Jan. 22, one of the comedian’s producers contacted Mr. Mitchell and said that they wanted the “Coco” illustration to be the emblem of a nationwide tour they were planning.
“They wanted it to be the main image,” Mr. Mitchell recalled in an e-mail message Thursday. “They are all such fans of the ‘I’m with Coco’ poster and what it means to everyone.”
Mr. Mitchell met with Mr. O’Brien’s executive producer, Jeff Ross, about a month ago, to talk through a licensing deal.“Apparently Conan wanted to get me on board for it – obviously I was honored,” Mr. Mitchell said. He said he retains the rights to the widely distributed image; Mr. O’Brien’s team will use it for the tour and for some merchandise sales.
Mr. O’Brien has set up an online presence on Twitter and at TeamCoco.com. His representatives do not own ConanOBrien.com, so TeamCoco could become his primary Web site. The site currently promotes the tour, and says it is “Copyright © 2010 Team Coco Inc.”
Asked about compensation for the image, Mr. Mitchell said “a fair deal was made for both parties.”
Mr. Mitchell said Mr. O’Brien called to thank him for creating the image. He recalled Mr. O’Brien joking that “I love anything with my face on it, and CONAN in huge bold letters.”
Jay Leno turned serious on his show Monday to discuss the late-night chaos at NBC, explaining events from his standpoint and telling viewers he considered Conan O'Brien a "great guy."
In remarks after his monologue Monday, Leno said he'd tried to avoid doing a show in prime time but was convinced by NBC that it could work.
It didn't, with NBC pulling the plug on "The Jay Leno Show" after four months and devising a plan to put Leno back on at 11:30 p.m. and push O'Brien and "Tonight" to midnight. With O'Brien's rejection of the plan, NBC is now trying to negotiate his exit and return Leno to the late-night spot.
Leno said it looks like he might be back at 11:30 and that the situation could be resolved by Tuesday.
Here is a transcript of what Leno said:
I thought maybe I should address this. At least give you my view of what has been going on here at NBC. Oh, let's start in 2004. 2004 I'm sitting in my office, an NBC executive comes in and says to me, listen, Conan O'Brien has gotten offers from other networks. We don't want him to go, so we're going to give him 'The Tonight Show.' I said, 'well, I've been number one for 12 years.' They said, 'we know that, but we don't think you can sustain that.' I said, 'okay. How about until I fall to number two, then you fire me?' 'No, we made this decision.' I said, 'that's fine.' Don't blame Conan O'Brien. Nice guy, good family guy, great guy. He and I have talked and not a problem since then. That's what managers and people do, they try to get something for their clients. I said, 'I'll retire just to avoid what happened the last time.' Okay.
Conan O'Brien's battle with his network certainly hasn't hurt his ratings.
With his jabs at NBC network executives apparently resonating in a country filled with the unemployed, viewership has soared.
O'Brien's ratings have been rising through the week, which was an extraordinary one in late-night television and saw O'Brien and David Letterman hurling barbed remarks at Jay Leno, and Leno firing back.
"Tonight" ratings Friday were 50 percent higher than they've been this season, and O'Brien beat CBS' Letterman, according to a preliminary Nielsen Co. estimate based on large markets. In the 18-to-49-year-old demographic that NBC relies on to set advertising prices, O'Brien even beat Leno's prime-time show.
Settlement talks continued Saturday on a deal that would let O'Brien leave NBC and restore Leno to the 11:35 p.m. time slot he occupied for 17 years through last spring.
O'Brien's team sees the ratings as vindication. His manager, Gavin Polone, on Saturday compared it to when Leno, trailing Letterman in the ratings in the mid-1990s, drew attention for the memorable appearance of Hugh Grant after his arrest. Leno passed Letterman in popularity and never looked back.
"People who never watched Conan before are saying, `I'll try it,'" Polone said. "Now they're saying, `this is good, I'll stick with it.'"
It's doubtful they'll get the chance. O'Brien sounded halfway out the door on Friday's show, an exit prompted by his refusal to move his show to 12:05 a.m. at NBC's request. "By the time you see this, I'll be halfway to Rio in an NBC traffic helicopter," he said in his monologue.
He aired a skit where he was assaulted by gunfire after pulling his car into the studio parking lot. He also is showing "greatest hits" of his seven-month tenure.
But he pulled back from jokes about Leno. On Friday, Jeff Gaspin, chairman of NBC Universal Television Entertainment, had said the crossfire between hosts "has definitely crossed the line.
"Jay is the consummate professional and one of the hardest-working people in television," Gaspin said. "It's a shame that he's being pulled into this."
Meanwhile, Polone denied a New York Post item Saturday, quoting an anonymous source, that said O'Brien's staff members are "furious" with O'Brien for negotiating an exit payment reportedly approaching $30 million while they are losing their jobs. Polone noted that O'Brien paid staff members himself during the Hollywood writers' strike, and was negotiating severance packages for his employees, many of whom moved from the New York area last year when O'Brien started on "Tonight."
Polone is also angry at NBC Sports Chairman Dick Ebersol, who told The New York Times this week that O'Brien was "an astounding failure" who had stubbornly resisted advice to broaden his show's appeal. O'Brien's people blame the show's ratings problems on the poor ratings of NBC's late local news and Leno's show before that.
Leno averaged 5.2 million viewers per night on his last season at the "Tonight" show, Nielsen said. O'Brien is averaging 2.5 million this season.
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