TV’s longest-running late-night host is officially stepping away from his desk. On Monday, Conan O’Brien announced that his current show, Conan, will be airing its final episode on June 24, after 11 seasons on TBS.
The writing was on the wall that Conan would be coming to an end. Last fall TBS parent company WarnerMedia announced that O’Brien had inked a deal to take his talents to streaming and produce a weekly variety show for HBO Max. O’Brien will continue making his Conan Without Borders specials for TBS, though, as well as the podcast Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend.
“We are winding down our TBS show,” O’Brien said to kick off Monday’s Conan. “The plan is to reemerge on HBO Max sometime in the near future with I think what will be my fourth iteration of the program. Imagine a cooking show with puppets, and you’ll have the wrong idea.”
O’Brien’s departure from late-night television marks the end of an era. A staple of the genre, O’Brien has been hosting a late-night television program for 28 years, since he took over NBC’s Late Night from David Letterman in 1993. He hosted Late Night until 2009, when he briefly took over NBC’s Tonight Show from Jay Leno. That run came to a dramatic end, though, when the network scheduled a prime-time series hosted by Leno to air nightly before O’Brien’s Tonight Show. O’Brien and NBC eventually parted ways in January of 2010, with Leno taking over Tonight once more before eventually passing the torch to current host Jimmy Fallon. The very public debacle launched the hashtag #TeamCoco in support of O’Brien and sent the comedian to cable television, where he would launch Conan at TBS in November of 2010.
“For 11 years the people at Turner have been absolutely lovely to me,” O’Brien said in his announcement, adding that the final weeks of Conan will feature a lineup of special guests, take a “fun look back” at his tenure at TBS, and end with an hour-long finale episode.
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