Conan O'Brien scored a victory over NBC in his debut.
His new TBS show attracted 4.2 million viewers, beating the 3.5 million who tuned into Jay Leno's Tonight Show on NBC and the 3.4 million who watched David Lettermen's Late Show on CBS. Jon Stewart's The Daily Show on Comedy Central drew 1.3 million viewers.
read moreOn his first night back in the late-night saddle, Conan O'Brien killed — and was killed, Sonny Corleone-style, riddled with bullets as he left the NBC gates in his hilarious cold open. Then the guests came on, and he died a little. And then he roared back to life, jamming and clowning with ...
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Nine months, $40 million and legions of Team Coco fans later, Conan O'Brien is still not over it.
Or, at least, for the purposes of kicking off his new late-night show Conan, he isn't. Monday's premiere was all about sticking it to his former colleagues at NBC by reminding viewers that he was dumped one last time. Hopefully, that was the last time.
In the many interviews O'Brien gave between jobs, he relived his unceremonious exit from NBC's The Tonight Show over and over. More recently, he also expressed the desire to move on, to crack jokes that don't involve himself as jilted late-night host, or his former employer. (Getting the Masturbating Bear back in action for his basic-cable debut was a welcome move!)
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