LOS ANGELES — Timing is key in comedy and for at least one formerly unemployed talk show host. While Conan O’Brien’s departure from “The Tonight Show” 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 Monday’s debut of his TBS show “Conan” (11 p.m. ET), 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 Show” 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 “The Tonight Show” — 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.
Before he was caught in NBC’s implosion, he was “sort of Luddite,” O’Brien says. Afterward, he was a believer.
“I was supposed to be in the wilderness, but I carried on this relationship that in some ways seemed more meaningful than any relationship I’ve had in television before,” he said.
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 “The Tonight Show,” 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.
As for the show itself, O’Brien acknowledges that it will hew to the familiar late-night format.
“It’s talk, it’s comedy, it’s guests,” he said. “Some people say, ‘What’s the new show gonna be?’ Well, it’s gonna be me. You know who I am. … I’m going to come out, I’ll still tell jokes to the crowd, do comedy, try anything that day we can think of that makes us laugh.”
