Conan O’Brien Biography

Conan O’Brien is the comedy veteran who has hosted the late-night talk show Conan since 2010. He is also known for his short stint as host of NBC’s The Tonight Show, which began in 2009 and then ended in a messy breakup in 2010.

Conan O’Brien got his start in comedy as a student at Harvard, editing the prestigious satirical mag The Harvard Lampoon. Several jobs later he became a writer and producer for the hit TV comedy The Simpsons. That’s where he was when Lorne Michaels plucked him from relative obscurity and made him the host of NBC’s show Late Night in 1993. Lanky, red-haired and puckishly ironical, Conan O’Brien replaced David Letterman in the time slot following the long-running hit The Tonight Show, then hosted by Jay Leno. O’Brien was a success and became known less for celebrity chat than for his screwball gags on all kinds of topics, from his alleged resemblance to red-haired Finnish president Tarja Halonen to a fictional Internet celebrity called the Horny Manatee. Late Night With Conan O’Brien ran from 12:30-1:30 am for nearly 16 years, until 2009, when O’Brien became host of the The Tonight Show, which runs from 11:30 pm – 12:30 am weeknights on the network.

O’Brien’s Tonight Show ratings were low (due in part to bad lead-in ratings from a nightly show Leno started hosting at 10:00 pm), and after a turbulent month of wrangling in January 2010, O’Brien agreed to an NBC buyout of a reported $32 million, plus another $12 million for his staff, to leave The Tonight Show and let Leno return as its host. Leno reclaimed the show in March of 2010, and Conan O’Brien announced the next month that he would begin a new late-night show on cable channel TBS. That show, called simply Conan, launched in November of 2010. In 2014, his contract was renewed for four more years, through the year 2018.