Conan O'Brien to end late-night talk show next year
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Conan O'Brien has been a late-night host for 28 years in total.
PHOTO: TEAMCOCO/INSTAGRAM
BURBANK (BLOOMBERG) - Conan O'Brien is ending his late-night talk show to host a weekly variety series for HBO Max, underscoring the shifts in the TV industry.
One of the longest-tenured hosts on late-night TV in the United States, O'Brien will wrap up his self-titled show next June, the culmination of its 10th season on TBS.
O'Brien, a former writer for Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons, has been a late-night host for 28 years in total. He started as a replacement for David Letterman at NBC, and was named Jay Leno's successor at the Tonight Show for seven months - before Leno decided to reclaim his old show.
Having rescued O'Brien from a toxic situation at NBC, AT&T Inc.'s WarnerMedia will now ask O'Brien to figure out what a variety show looks like on the Internet.
Streaming services have struggled to find a recipe for their topical humor programmes. Netflix has cycled through several comedians, including Chelsea Handler, while Hulu briefly put on a late-night show from Sarah Silverman. Letterman also has an interview series at Netflix.
HBO, meanwhile, has found success - and lots of awards - with a weekly show from John Oliver, a former contributor to The Daily Show.
"In 1993, Johnny Carson gave me the best advice of my career: 'As soon as possible, get to a streaming platform'," O'Brien joked in a statement.
