As the late-night talker began a week of shows in Atlanta to celebrate the Final Four, Time Warner’s TBS has announced that it is extending the late-night series through November 2015. Since it premiered in November 2010, Conan has been a hit with TBS’s core audience of young adults, scoring a younger median age than any other late-night talk show.
“When we invited Conan O’Brien to come to TBS, we knew he would bring with him a passionately loyal following of young adults,” said Michael Wright, president, head of programming for TBS, TNT and Turner Classic Movies (TCM). “Conan and his colleagues at Team Coco have gone far beyond that by making Conan the top late-night brand in the digital arena. We are proud to extend our relationship with Conan as he continues to forge the future of late night. I just wish we didn’t decide to tell him on April Fools’ Day.”
O’Brien’s show gets 900,000 viewers per episode, below those of rivals Jay Leno, David Letterman and Jimmy Kimmel – but it has a younger median audience age than the other U.S. late-night talk shows.
Conan also leads the late-night crowd when it comes to online activity and engagement, with the show and its host drawing more than 8.3 million followers on Twitter, 2 million fans on Facebook, 2 million unique users each month on TeamCoco.com and 15 million video views each month on TeamCoco.com and YouTube.
O’Brien, 49, who is known for his fervent fan base, broke into late-night television with the “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” talk show on NBC in 1993. He held that spot until 2009, when he took over for Leno as host of “The Tonight Show.”
Seven months later NBC gave the show back to Leno after his new show failed to gain traction in an earlier time-slot.
