NBC

Howard Stern Will Host America's Got Talent

Howard Stern

by John Tully

The New York Herald Sun

December 15, 2011

New York City

It’s official: Howard Stern will be the new host of America’s Got Talent.

The longtime radio host announced it this morning on his show at approximately 8:20 am along with his agent Don Buchwald.

Stern will replace Piers Morgan, who quit the variety/talent show in order to concentrate on his CNN interview program.

The show reunites Mr. Stern with his former employer, NBC who he worked for in the mid-eighties and was inelegantly fired from when the radio station and O and O property WNBC decided the King of All Media was too controversial for it’s airwaves.

“Believe me – I didn’t do it for the money” he told Access Hollywood.

Coco Live?

Conan O'Brien


THE WRAP
By Josef Adalian
Published: February 19, 2010

Conan O’Brien contractually can’t do a TV show until September, but there’s nothing to prevent him from doing a tour of live stage shows — which are supposedly in the works, according to The Wrap and the New York Times. (O’Brien’s reps did not respond to requests for comment.) Conan, live and in person? Sign me up, but do it quick.

Team Coco’s fervor is fading, and pretty soon the new story will be how Jay’s doing back in his old timeslot, whether NBC can leverage a post-Olympic ratings bump, if Letterman can turn this into the best ratings of his career. The time for a Conan tour is right now.

I’d hope a live show would tap into everything O’Brien can’t do on TV; broader, smarter, dirtier, and more daring than any network could ever sign off on. I want more sketches, fewer interviews, more interesting guests, and more full-on comedy geekery, maybe a variety show instead of talk show?

Hulu Planning to Charge For Content

Online Video

THE SEATTLE TIMES

By Dawn C. Chmielewski and Alex Pham

Los Angeles Times

Hulu soared to popularity by offering free online viewing of popular TV shows. Now that free ride may soon end.

The Internet-video site is weighing plans to charge users to watch episodes of “30 Rock,” “Modern Family” and “House.” The move would mark a sharp change of course for the venture, which was launched nearly two years ago by a consortium of studios to distribute without charge TV shows and movies over the Internet.

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Anti-NBC Frenzy Continues Over Conan's $40M Firing; Zucker Threatens to Ice O'Brien For Three Years

Ari Emmanuel, Conan O'Brien, Hollywood, Jeff Zucker, NBC

NIKKI FINKE

DATELINE HOLLYWOOD

BREAKING NEWS! EXCLUSIVE! 11TH UPDATE, SUNDAY 8:50 AM: Below is Saturday Night Live‘s cold opening about the festering late night debacle about to end — now possibly Tuesday after the MLK long weekend — with NBC’s $40 million “don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out” payment to Conan O’Brien that also frees him to compete against Jay Leno immediately. Best line of the show was SNL

Weekend Update anchor Seth Meyers’: “This week you didn’t need Cinemax to see someone screwed on TV.” It’s amazing and bewildering that the network keeps vigorously promoting this comedy of errors to the media via video clips of its own employees denigrating and humiliating the beleaguered brand.

(I asked one SNL insider if there was any behind the scenes bitching from the suits because of the NBC bashing. “None at all.”) Perhaps, at this nadir, NBC has to put ratings above its own reputation. Or maybe there’s just no defense possible. Although Jeff Zucker keeps desperately trotting out more and more NBC execs — first entertainment boss Jeff Gaspin, then sports czar Dick Ebersol, then news topper Steve Capus — to give dictation to The New York Times in support of himself. (When did stenography replace reporting there?) In that article, Zucker tries to play the victim of a media frenzy — but it was a self-inflicted wound. Hollywood is now hearing from people around Zucker how he’s “‘wiped out from his Conan ordeal’,” Deadline New York Editor Mike Fleming learned last night, “Zucker apparently scrapped plans to fly to LA with his family for tonight’s Golden Globes broadcast by NBC or the NBC Universal after-party.

At least that is how he is feeling at the moment.” Meanwhile, someone posting O’Brien’s Tonight Show episodes at NBC’s Hulu.com weighed in on the Team Conan vs Team Leno battle. “When you highlight the January 13th Conan clip with your cursor, the tag reads ‘better than leno’,” a tipster showed me. Then there’s this zinger from O’Brien’s longtime rep Gavin Palone. The manager sent an email to CBS mogul Les Moonves, while this mess unfolded, asking whether “a long time ago you planted Jeff Zucker there as a way to destroy NBC from inside.” Ouch!

10TH UPDATE, FRIDAY 5:15 PM: A settlement of NBC vs Conan is close but not yet signed. “There are still issues to be worked out,” an insider reports back to me. This follows all-day negotiations between NBC and its attorneys, and Team Conan and their manager-agency-lawyer reps. “There’ve been some very intense conversations”.

All are under confidentiality agreements. So to what extent did NBC blink? Remember that all week, as I’ve been reporting, NBCU chief Jeff Zucker stuck to an extreme position that threatened to hold Conan to his contract and keep him off the air for 3 1/2 years and not pay him a penny of that $60M penalty fee if O’Brien doesn’t host The Tonight Show as the network promised. Instead of a prolonged and ugly battle, NBC has given in to Team Conan who’ve insisted their guy exits only with a lot of cash and freedom. How much cash?

“Zucker’s NBC spin puts it at $25 million. But it’s a lot closer to $40 million than $25 million,” my insider says. “And Conan was adamant that NBC take care of the people close to him — [executive producer] Jeff Ross and the staff who moved out to Los Angeles.” According to the pact, Conan leaves The Tonight Show on January 22nd. Meanwhile, he’s free to go anywhere and compete with Jay. This is that Ron Meyer-negotiated deal (which I first reported yesterday at 3 PM). The Universal Studios president/COO was asked to step in secretly by WME agents Ari Emanuel when Team Conan and NBC were so far apart they weren’t even on speaking terms. “They [NBC Universal] were lucky to have Ron.” I’m told the deal might close as soon as Saturday. And NBC’s PR nightmare will end. Or will it? In his Friday night monologue, Conan defended himself against NBC sports czar Dick Ebersole’s very public (and inappropriate) takedown: “In the press this week, NBC has been calling me every name in the book. In fact, they think I’m such an idiot, they now want me to run the network.”

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National Broadcasting Company Soon To Be Owned By Cable

Media, NBC, Television, Vivendi

NEW YORK TIMES DEALBOOK BLOG (Sorkin)

Carter / Merced Reporting

November 30, 2009, 8:17 pm <!– — Updated: 8:33 pm –>

G.E. and Vivendi Agree on Value of NBC Universal

Update | 8:28 p.m. General Electric has reached a tentative agreement to buy Vivendi’s 20 percent stake in NBC Universal for about $5.8 billion, helping clear the path to a sale of the television and movie company to Comcast, people briefed on the matter told DealBook.

But much remains to be negotiated, these people warned. The Vivendi agreement values NBC Universal at $29 billion, less than the $30 billion or so that G.E. and Comcast had agreed to last month.

Harmonizing the two values, as in so much of the talks over NBC Universal, may take days to do, and these people cautioned that a deal may not be reached.

Still, many analysts and people close to the talks expect a deal to be forged soon, and with it a reshaping of the entertainment industry.

The groundwork for the tentative pact between G.E. and Vivendi was laid out last week, when G.E.’s chief executive, Jeffrey Immelt, met in person with his counterpart at Vivendi, Jean-Bernard Lévy, in Paris, these people said.

If it holds, the agreement would conclude weeks of hardball negotiations between G.E. and Vivendi over an alliance first forged in 2004. Resolving the issue of Vivendi’s stake is crucial to completing the G.E.-Comcast deal. But the French company took a tough stance, brandishing its option of holding an initial public offering for its stake rather than selling it back to G.E.

Under the current outlines of the agreement between G.E. and Comcast, NBC Universal would be put into a new joint venture, between the two giants. Comcast would pour billions of dollars in cash and its own cable channels for a 51 percent stake, while G.E. would hold an initial 49 percent and contribute about $12 billion in debt.

G.E., which has owned NBC for more than two decades, is expected to eventually sell its ownership interest to Comcast over the next several years.

– Michael J. de la Merced and Bill Carter