Musical chair$ in late night TV

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on June 19th, 2007

Ben Grossman, writing in Broadcasting & Cable, says that an unnamed source says that some NBC suits met with Jon Stewart and his agent.

“They just made their interest known in finding a way to do business together if Jon was ever available,” says the source, who categorized the talks as “exploratory.”

It gets interesting further down the page.

When the dust settles, the whole affair might make the Johnny/Letterman/Leno baton handover conflagration look like a shift change at the local mini-mart.

The network has some major decisions to make in the wake of its announcement that Conan O’Brien is scheduled to replace Jay Leno on The Tonight Show in 2009. Leno is still printing money for NBC, and the show’s profitability is even more important now, given the network’s primetime struggles.

While NBC may decide to keep Leno and give O’Brien a reported $40 million payout…

Conan to Fox? Kimmell to the Home Shopping Network? Our world, it is rocked. Read the whole thing here.

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