TBS Is With Coco!

In news that's being described with words like "surprising," "shocking" and similar open-mouthed adjectives, CONAN O'BRIEN has announced plans to resume his late-night comedy career on . . . TBS.

There aren't many details yet, but here’s what we know:

Yesterday, Conan posted a Twitter message . . . saying, quote, "The good news: I will be doing a show on TBS starting in November! The bad news: I'll be playing Rudy on the all new 'Cosby Show'."

He later added, quote, "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 is working perfectly."

It's not a joke. His new show - which is still untitled - will run from 11:00 P.M. to midnight, Monday through Thursday. It will take the place of GEORGE LOPEZ'S talk show, "Lopez Tonight", which will be bumped to midnight.

Obviously, this situation brings up a lot of parallels to the NBC Late-Night Mess . . . when Conan refused to bump "The Tonight Show" back to midnight to make room for JAY LENO'S return to late-night. But Conan isn't Leno-ing George.

Conan's manager, Gavin Polone, said, quote, "That sounded very similar to [what happened at NBC]. Conan said, 'We're not putting ourselves in the position of shoving somebody out of his show.'"

TBS boss Steve Koonin made his initial pitch to Conan less than two weeks ago . . . but ONLY after getting George's blessing first. Then, George called Conan personally to invite him on board. Polone said, quote, "It really was George who made this happen." At that point, negotiations reportedly progressed very quickly.

To make sure there's no doubt about how he feels, George released the following statement yesterday: "I can't think of anything better than doing my show with Conan as my lead-in. It's the beginning of a new era in late-night comedy."

There's no specific debut date yet, aside from it happening sometime in November.

Jeff @ NOW2K