Photo: Conan O'Brien from the TBS website

Former “Tonight Show” Host/Comic, Conan O’Brien, appears to have made a triumphant return to late night TV. “Conan” debuted late night on TBS and according to The Wrap whipped the competition. In the Nielsen’s 56 metered markets, Conan rated a 2.8, Leno got a 2.7 , and Letterman a 2.5.

On the TBS website today, the comedy network crowed about the late night talker’s young adult demographics as well. Here are those  numbers:

• 2, 451, 000 adults 18-34 watched
• 3, 285, 000 adults 18-49 watched
• 4, 155, 000 total viewers

In a press release, TBS credited O’Brien’s strong following among younger viewers and social media for the show’s successful kick-off. ”Conan’s audience has been very vocal online, and he clearly made a smooth transition from Twitter to TBS,” said Steve Koonin, president of Turner Entertainment Networks. “Conan delivered an extraordinary audience and stands out as the youngest late-night talk show on television.”

It’s going to take a few weeks to see if these numbers hold after the hype of “Conan” wears off.  Even if O’Brien show takes a dip in the ratings, his comeback from the NBC debacle last winter, which resulted in the entertainer walking away from “The Tonight Show” hosting job, has been admirable.

Last night, O’Brien’s guests included Seth Rogen and Jack White. Click here for the monologue posted over on Deadline.com. Tonight, Tom Hanks and Soundgarden join O’Brien. “Conan” airs at 11 p.m, Monday through Friday. The late night talker is produced right here in Burbank, at Warner Bros.’ Stage 15.

Photo: Pete Souza/White House -- President Obama shared a light moment with "The Daily Show" Host, Jon Stewart, during a taping in Washington DC, October 27, 2010

President Obama appears on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” tonight. The show taped at the Harman Center for the Arts in Washington DC, earlier today. President Obama stuck to his agenda of touting his administration’ achievements, days before next Tuesday’s mid-term election.  USA Today has more on Stewart’s interview with President Obama here.

UPDATED: Thursday, October 28, 2010

If you missed President Obama’s appearance on the “The Daily Show” last night, click over to The Wrap. There’s a nice post about the interview as well as a link to the video of that lively exchange between Obama and Stewart.

TV reality show judge wins Larry King’s job

The British Talk Show host-turned- “America’s Got Talent” Judge, Piers Morgan, is Larry King’s replacement. Rumors about the deal have been in the wind for weeks. Today CNN made the official announcement. 

Earlier this summer, King announced he would be retiring from his high-profile interview program, “Larry King Live,” this fall, after 25 years.

Deadline.com has a report on the behind the scenes wheeling and dealing that got Morgan the job.

Hollywood and book readers hot for “The Hunger Games” series 

The final installment of the “Hunger Games” book series is a monster hit. Galleycat reports the publisher, Scholastic, announced “Mockingjay” sold an incredible 450,000 copies in hardcover and ebooks since its release on August 24. That’s around 45,000 books a day! The publisher reportedly is printing a second run of 400,000 hardcover copies.

Suzanne Collins’ YA (Young Adult) fantasy series has made a variety of bestseller lists, including Barnes & Noble, The New York Times, and USA Today. Lionsgate has bought the film rights to the first book in the series, “The Hunger Games.”  The script is written and reportedly several directors are circling the project.

George Clooney hangs onto the Box Office lead

Apparently “The American” is getting some good recommendations from moviegoers. The George Clooney thriller won the Labor Day Holiday weekend domestic Box Office and continues to out run the competition this week.

 The thriller is about an American assassin who finds himself marked for death. Three of my friends saw “The American” over the weekend. They say Clooney was great eye-candy, but didn’t think the film was worth the price of admission — especially at $11.50 each.

“The American” raked up a weak $16.6 million over the three-day-holiday, followed by the new action flick “Machete” in second with $14 million. The “Machete” plot revolves around a Mexican immigrant/renegade who gets caught up in a political conspiracy. It stars Danny Trejo, Steven Seagal, and Jessica Alba.

The crime drama “Takers” took third with $13.5 million. “The Last Exorcism” scared up $8.7 million for fourth and rounding out the top five the new romantic comedy, “Going the Distance” with $8.5 million. In “Going the Distance” a couple tries to make it work even though he lives in New York and she in San Francisco. Drew Barrymore leads a cast that includes Justin Long and Christina Applegate.

Madonna sued over “Material Girl”  clothing line

Entertainer, Madonna, has launched a “Material Girl” clothing line with daughter, Lourdes Maria Ciccone Leon. Oops!  L.A. Triumph, claims it’s been selling clothes under that label since around 1997 and at some of the same high-ended retailers involved in the new Madonna deal.

This week, the California company sued Madonna. More details in a story on The Los Angeles Times website.

Dr. Laura’s controversial farewell

In the wake of a controversy over her use of the N-word on the air, Conservative Radio Talk Show Host, Dr. Laura Schlessinger,  announced she would pull the plug on her program at the end of the year. Dr. Laura made the surprise announcement on CNN’s “Larry King Live.”

Dr. Laura says she’s taking the drastic step because she wants  her  ”… First Amendment rights back.” Not everyone is buying that reasoning — here’s a good post about it all on The Wrap. Dr. Laura’s radio program can be heard locally on KFWB News Talk 980. 

Oh, click here for Dr. Laura’s blog where she talks about the controversy, her apology, and the support she’s getting from Sarah Palin.

Betty White’s new two-book deal

UPDATED:  Sunday,  August 22, 2010                                                                                                                                                       

 Actress Betty White has another Emmy to add to her collection. White won number  seven last night for best guest actress in a comedy series for her hosting of a “Saturday Night Live” episode, back in the spring.

That award winner was announced during the creative arts section of the 62 Annual  Primetime Emmy Awards, at the Nokia Theater in Downtown Los Angeles.  The winners in some of the major Emmy categories will be announced on a broadcast next Sunday, August 29, 2010, on NBC. 

Actress Betty White is 88-years-old and has a career that’s on the upswing. The Emmy Award-winning actress has gained new fans with her appearance in a hit Super Bowl TV commercial back in February, then in May as a guest host on NBC-TV’s, “Saturday Night Live,” and now she has a role on cable network TV Land’s popular series, “Hot in Cleveland.”  This week it was disclosed White has sealed a two-book deal with G. P. Putnam’s Sons.

The first book, “Listen Up,” will be about life lessons learned during White’s many years in Hollywood. It’s due out in hardcover next spring. By the way, she has been nominated for 20 Emmy Awards and has won six — including two for her role in the 1970s ”The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and one for starring in the hit 1980s series, “The Golden Girls.”

The second book, “The Zoo and I: Betty and Her Friends” will showcase stories and photographs of White and her friends at the Los Angeles Zoo – scheduled to hit the market in 2012.

In a PR Newswire press release, White said she’s enjoying the new challenge: “Much as I love what I do for a living in show business, I love writing even more – so I am thrilled to be working on not only one new book but two of them.”  White is the author of five other books.

Late Night TV host, Jay Leno, will soon be heading down South to perform a benefit for some victims of that devastating Gulf Coast oil spill. The host of NBC’s “The Tonight Show” will take to the stage in a theater at the Beau Rivage Resort & Casino in Biloxi on the Mississippi Gulf Coast,  next month, on Saturday, August 21.

“It’s great to be able to do shows like this,” Leno said in a PR Newswire press release. “We did it for flood victims in Iowa; we did it for auto workers in Detroit; we did it for victims of Katrina and others. We tell a few jokes and help out people.”

Proceeds from ticket sales, which range from $40  to $150, will go to the Gulf Coast Community Foundation’s Mississippi Oil Spill Recovery Fund.

Meanwhile, work on the damaged BP oil well and other spill operations in the Gulf have been halted due to the approaching Tropical Storm, Bonnie. The April 20 explosion and fire on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, which  killed 11 workers, unleashed a massive oil spill that has caused an environmental and economic disaster in the Gulf Coast region. The cost is in the billions of dollars. More on Bonnie and the Gulf Coast on CNN.

File Photo: Jay Leno

Jay Leno returned to his old gig as host of “The Tonight Show” on Monday.  I guess it’s going to take a while before Leno and staff get their “Tonight Show” groove back.  Last night’s monologue seemed a bit stiff and light on the throw-down funny jokes. Still, there were a few smile-worthy zingers.

Jay Leno

”It’s good to be home.  I’m Jay Leno your host… at least for a while.  ”

“This is something you may have heard on ’60 Minutes.’  Blackwater Worldwide, the State Department’s largest contractor… those guys we hired as guards. Well, now they have been accused of hiring prostitutes with tax dollars and putting them on the company payroll. In fact, they say this is the first time tax money has ever been used to pay whores since that Wall Street bailout.”

“Speaking of getting screwed. The airlines are going to begin charging a fee for flying standby. They are going to charge you a fee to standby. In fact, they don’t even call it standby anymore. It’s now called ‘Stand and Bend Over.’” Leno’s Monday monologue, complete text and video, at The Wrap.

Oh, there’s a new website for “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.” It’s got a lot of flash and things to check out. I found it all rather so-so. Let’s see if Leno and crew can bring back that old “Tonight Show” spark or maybe even something new and interesting. I could dig that.

Look who’s talking? Oprah interviewed Jay Leno yesterday about the much debated “Tonight Show” debacle. NBC executives jerked around both Leno and fellow talk show host Conan O’Brien. Last Friday, O’Brien gave up “The Tonight Show” rather than see it compromised. Oh, O’Brien walked away with a huge chunk of money and a ton of favorable publicity as well.

On the other hand, Leno did not come out the clear winner, either. He gets to host ”The Tonight Show” again, but has become the target of bad press and dissing from fans for not being a real stand-up guy. The reason: he didn’t call out the NBC executives over that tacky plan to shift “The Tonight Show” from its traditional 11:35 p.m. time period to 12:05 a.m., which would have allowed a half-hour version of “The Jay Leno Show” to start in the 11:35 p.m. slot.

In the interview on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” Leno answered some tough questions, and in doing so, smoothed out a few dents in his public image. I encountered the comedian a number of times when I  worked as a news writer at NBC and on occasion, in the local Burbank community. I once bumped into Leno, with a staffer, making a food run for “The Tonight Show” crew at a McDonald’s in Burbank. Each time I met Leno, he came across as a great guy. Also, I’m a fan. However, I was quite disappointed with the way Leno handled himself in “The Tonight Show” mess.

After reading the transcript of his interview with Oprah on Nikki Finke’s Deadline.com/Hollywood site, I better understand Leno’s position and perspective.

Leno admits NBC “broke his heart” when they told him in 2004, that despite being number one, he would get the boot from “The Tonight Show” five years down the road.

“…I was devastated. This is the job that I always wanted and it was the only job that ever mattered in show business to me. It’s the job every comic aspires to. And it was just like, “What’s–why–what is it?” “Well, we’re getting pressure here and Conan’s people want to make this announcement and to make sure you do leave we want to announce it right now, you know, prior to the five years.” And I said, “Can we at least wait and as I said the other night on my show, couldn’t we wait until I’m number two and then say, okay, he dropped to number two, that’s the reason we’re moving you.”

How did Leno feel when his prime time show failed?

“… I felt bad for everybody on the show and I felt bad for our affiliates. A couple weeks ago I called the head of the affiliate board and I said listen, they’re the ones that canceled us, and I said, “I’m sorry I let you guys down. I mean, you guys supported us, you went along with the decision. I’m sorry our show wasn’t successful for you.”

 Leno says that notorious late night talk show plan was a surprise to him, too.

“I never expected this to happen. People think you’re behind the scenes pulling strings. There’s no strings to pull. I have a show that’s been canceled. So why would I have any power to go, oh, I want that? What happened was NBC came to me and they said, “Look, your show was down 14%, Conan’s show was down 49%. We have a plan. We want to keep you both.”

 Why did he agree to return to “The Tonight Show?”

“You know, if you’re a gunfighter, you like to die in the street.”

Do you think you’re robbing O’Brien of his shot at the big time?

“No, because again, this is an affiliate decision. The affiliates felt the ratings were low. This was the first time in the 60-year history of “The Tonight Show” that “The Tonight Show” would have lost money and that’s what it comes down to. It’s really just a matter of dollars and cents. If the numbers had been there, they wouldn’t have asked me. And they only asked me after Conan turned down moving it back half an hour.”

What does Leno think about the way NBC handled the situation?

“Anything they did would have been better than this. Anything. Anything they did. If they’d come in and shot everybody, I mean, it would have been people murdered, but at least it would have been a two-day story. I mean, yes. NBC could not have handled it worse, from 2004 onward, this whole thing was a huge, a huge mess, yeah.”

Despite all that has happened, Leno thinks he can revive “The Tonight Show.”

“I hope so. I think so. Yeah. And I hope Conan gets a job somewhere else. I hope he gets on at Fox or somewhere and we all compete together. “Ooh, Conan’s back on,” and it raises the level of interest. And you know what happens? The best one wins. Maybe I’ll get my butt kicked, maybe we’ll win.”

If you didn’t get a chance to catch the interview on TV, check out the transcript on Finke’s site, it is well worth the read. Also, Talk Show Diva, Oprah, has more on the controversy on her website, too.

The plot thickens over at troubled NBC. “Tonight Show” host, Conan O’Brien, issued a statement today, in which he turns thumbs down on the NBC plan to give Jay Leno a half-hour comedy show at 11:35 p.m. In the statement, O’Brien claims shifting the  “Tonight Show” to 12:05 a.m. is not an option he can accept:”For 60 years the Tonight Show has aired immediately following the late local news. I sincerely believe that delaying the Tonight Show into the next day to accommodate another comedy program will seriously damage what I consider to be the greatest franchise in the history of broadcasting. The Tonight Show at 12:05 simply isn’t the Tonight Show.”

O’Brien goes on to say: ”My staff and I have worked unbelievably hard and we are very proud of our contribution to the legacy of The Tonight Show. But I cannot participate in what I honestly believe is its destruction.”      

You know, I’ve never been a real big O’Brien fan, however, I have to give the comedian his props for this bold statement. And he makes a lot of sense. Nikki Finke has the full O’Brien statement and more on the NBC mess over on her Deadline.com Hollywood site.

It’s a mess. That’s about the nicest way to describe the situation that NBC finds itself in right now with three of its talk show hosts, Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien, and Jimmy Fallon. Rumors of the demise of Jay Leno’s low rated prime time talk show have been swirling around for a while. Then last week, those rumors, all over the Internet and elsewhere, became a firestorm, fueled by leaks that Leno was headed back to late night.

Today, Jeff Gaspin, chairman of NBC Universal Television Entertainment, made the announcement at the Television Critics Association Press Tour in Pasadena. Gaspin spoke to the media and got right to the point: “… I can confirm what many of you have been reporting: starting February ’The Jay Leno Show’ will no longer air at 10 PM. While it was performing at acceptable levels for the network, it did not meet our affiliates’ needs and we realized we had to make a change.”

If he had his way, Gaspin would have “The Jay Leno Show” start at 11:35 p.m., followed by “The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien” at 12:05 a.m., and then “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” at 1:05 a.m. However, Gaspin admits nothing is confirmed and that the talks with the hosts and their reps are ongoing.  

“The Jay Leno Show” is expected to get the boot out of prime time by February 12,  when NBC begins airing the Winter Olympics. Let me just say here that Leno should have been allowed to stay on the “Tonight Show.” His ratings were high, even during the 2007-2008 writers strike. That’s right, folks were willing to watch Leno even without a great monologue and celebrity guests. It wasn’t broke, but NBC executives decided to fix it anyway. And look what happened!

Nikki Finke has an extensive report on Gaspin’s comments and the NBC debacle on her Deadline Hollywood site.