night. you said, raise his profile and tbs aren t usually used in the same sentence. rachael, do you see a benefit to conan o brien in not having to chase a mass audience? sure. conan can invent his own ticket here at tbs. and i think crucially what this deal shows is conan gets ownership of his show, and, you know, the potential of launching other properties. i think, you know, i think what this new media world has shown is you have to go to where your audience is. you can t just expect them to come to you at the vaunted appointed hour the way things always were. because there are more choices now and more platforms. the way conan described how his plan is working perfectly is actually evidence of how he s operating intelligently for this new media space because he s adapting. and big on twitter. so aaron barnhart, does this signify he couldn t go to fox because he couldn t make the deal, but does this signify for this kind of entertainer that
the broadcast channels are now old hat and cable is the new hot destination? the late-night market has changed a lot since cbs poured out all those millions of dollars to lure david letterman over to do an 11:35 show for them. the margins are smaller. i don t think i buy nbc s line that conan o brien was actually losing money for them. i think that was some of that famous hollywood accounting we hear from. but leno s audience is now bigger. not as big as it once was before the debacle, but bigger than what conan had been drawing. yeah, but the problem now that nbc has is that jay leno is back and his audience is not bigger than it was before and it s getting older. in fact, it s ageing more rapidly than it would have, i think, if he had just stayed on and not had this mess. and that s going to raise a big issue for nbc in three or four years when it comes to time to renegotiate jay leno s deal. nbc only thinks in terms of five years ago. but rachael, there was a lot of talk o
into a feud with man he had replaced at the tonight show . you can do anything you want in life. yeah. yeah, unless jay leno wants to do it too. you know the rest. nbc brought leno back to the tonight show from his prime-time debacle. conan walked with a $33 million settlement. and everyone figured he would go to fox. but this week came the surprise announcement, conan o brien had signed with tbs. tbs owned by cnn s parent company, time warner, hadn t been on anybody s radar. conan put it this way. in three months, i ve gone from network television to twitter to performing live in theaters and now i m headed to basic cable. my plan the working perfectly. joining us now to talk about whether this move makes sense and whether it signals a cultural shift away from the big broadcast networks. in new york, rachael sklar, editor at large at mediaite.com. and in kansas city, erin
executives and hannity was flown back on his private jet, to be sure, to new york. the plans for that show were canceled. and i think this was a good move by fox kpeexecutives. it seems to have given hannity and other hosts a loose rein. they now plan to keep a tighter reino on hannity and others. it was interesting and we wanted to share it with you. aaron barnhart and rachael sklar, thanks very much for joining us to talk about the late-night wars, which i m sure we ll talk about more once conan makes his debut. coming up next, the sound of sunday. wow, is this. fiber one honey clusters? yes. but it can t have. can t have about half a i assure you it does. i can only taste. only taste the crunchy clusters, honey, and brown sugar. no madam, i don t have esp. (announcer) fiber one. cardboard no. delicious yes.
a major chunk of washington journalism is filled in through the prism of the white house, which is why you see so many reporters standing right here on the north lawn. and a good bit of that coverage involves the man whose job it is to deal with the media. as anyone who s ever watched robert gibbs in the briefing room well knows that can get pretty contentious. didn t expect to have this package within a party about the public option? again, contrived almost entirely by you guys. with all due respect, and i sympathize with you trying to explain the vice president s comments, but that s not even remotely close to what he said. he was asked about if a member of his family said i understand what he said, and i m telling you what he meant to say. gibbs is the man who speaks for president obama. a longtime adviser which must come up with what his boss derives as the speeded up and media culture. i sat down with him right across the alley from the white house. robert gi