Conan O’Brien took a few minutes at the top of his TBS show to address the fact that the show is coming to a close as he prepares to move into a new format on HBO Max. He thanked Turner for giving him a home when he needed it the most, after he was unceremoniously ousted from The Tonight Show. Conan also stated that the last episode will air on June 24th, and that over the next two months they will have special guests and will look back at all of the absurd madness the CONAN crew has concocted over the past 11 years.
After a successful career as a television writer on shows like The Simpsons and Saturday Night Live, Conan was tapped to replace David Letterman as the host of NBC’s Late Night after Letterman moved to CBS after being passed over to replace Johnny Carson as the host of The Tonight Show in favor of Jay Leno. Conan was eventually asked to replace Leno as host of The Tonight Show, but his run as host was tarnished by bad ratings thanks to NBC’s bizarre decision to put Leno on his own show every night at 10:00pm, resulting in horrible ratings for both shows. NBC offered to move Leno to The Tonight Show’s 11:30 pm time slot and push The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien to midnight, but Conan felt that was disrespectful to the show’s legacy, and chose to leave.
Eventually landing at TBS at an 11:00 pm slot, Conan found moderate success, but eventually stripped down to a half hour, focusing more on longer single guest interviews and digital content and forgoing late night staples like music and stand up comedy . Conan’s series Conan without Borders, on which Conan is chronicled traveling to various destinations around the world, will still continue to air on TBS after leaves the network.
Conan’s Team Coco production company is also producing several stand-up specials for HBO Max. We can assume Conan will continue to host his wildly popular podcast, Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend.