NEW YORK, NY – Conan O’Brien has gotten a little retribution over “The Tonight Show” debacle!
The hair has beaten out the chin for the Emmy nomination. Conan O’Brien’s short stint as host of “The Tonight Show” has earned him an Emmy nomination in the Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Series category. Jay Leno is nowhere to be found on the ballot.
O’Brien will compete against “The Colbert Report,” “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,” “Real Time With Bill Maher,” and “Saturday Night Live.”
O’Brien has certainly taken the high road in the wake of “The Tonight Show” fallout. He might not be the one to shove this in Leno’s face, but we can rest assured that the news brought a big smile to his face – for many reasons. Most importantly that NBC’s master plan of bringing Leno back isn’t producing the expected ratings and bringing in the Emmy nominations.
The man with a great head of hair has 14 previous Emmy nominations as a writer on his former show, “Late night With Conan O’Brien,” and one win, in 2007. Leno is no stranger to the Emmy Awards. Between 1992 and 2005, his “Tonight Show” received 40 nods and four wins. Many of those nominations were in technical areas, however.
The Emmy nod has to be considered another punch in NBC’s stomach. It seems as though they will never be able to live down the way they handled the late-night situation. O’Brien’s ratings soared as he approached his final show, and then he took over Twitter and launched a successful summer road show. Leno, meanwhile, just delivered the lowest second-quarter “Tonight Show” ratings since 1993.
Rest assured that NBC played no part in O’Brien’s Emmy nod. It was TBS, O’Brien’s new TV home, that paid for his “Tonight Show” Emmy campaign.
The 62nd Emmy Awards will be held August 29.
