TBS Announces Official End Date for Conan O’Brien’s Talk Show

Conan O’Brien announced plans to end his TBS eponymous late-night talk show on June 24. The last weeks of the show will focus on special guests, leading up to a special one-hour episode that will look back on the past 11 years of Conan on TBS. O’Brien, 58, will not be gone for long, though, as he will soon host a new show on HBO Max.

After he leaves the show, O’Brien will start working on his weekly HBO Max show and other projects for WarnerMedia. The company did not set a launch date for the project, just teasing that it will be a “departure from his current traditional talk-show format.” Conan already experienced a major change in 2019, when the show switched from an hour to a half-hour format. O’Brien’s departure will leave Full Frontal with Samantha Bee as the only late-night show on TBS.

“In 1993 Johnny Carson gave me the best advice of my career: ‘As soon as possible, get to a streaming platform,’” O’Brien said in a statement in November 2020 when TBS announced he was leaving the show in 2021. “I’m thrilled that I get to continue doing whatever the hell it is I do on HBO Max, and I look forward to a free subscription.”

“Conan’s unique brand of energetic, relatable, and at times, absurdist, comedy has charmed late-night audiences for nearly three decades,” Casey Bloys, the chief content officer of HBO and HBO Max, added. “We can’t wait to see what he and the rest of Team Coco will dream up for this brand new, variety format each week.”

O’Brien will end his reign as the longest-serving U.S. late-night talk show host still on the air for over 28 years. He started his late-night career in 1993 when he took over Late Night. In 2009, NBC hired O’Brien to replace Jay Leno on The Tonight Show, but his time on there lasted just over seven months before he was pushed out in favor of bringing Leno back. After a brief hiatus from television, he returned in November 2020 with Conan on TBS. In 2018, O’Brien launched his podcast Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend.

During his run on TBS, O’Brien launched his Conan Without Borders specials, in which he and his unique brand of humor visit countries around the world. TBS plans to continue airing new Conan Without Borders specials after Conan ends. O’Brien also has his own production company, Conaco, which produces the Adult Swim comedy Final Space. The company also produced TBS’ People of Earth.