Team Coco has youth on its side.
TBS renewed talk-show host Conan O’Brien’s contract through the end of November 2015, touting his success with a younger generation of Web-savvy viewers.
The median age of a “Conan” viewer is under 40 — by far the youngest in all of late night. Even the relatively youthful Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon clock in at 54.3 and 53.1 years old, respectively.
“Conan has been a hit with TBS’s core audience of young adults, scoring a younger median age than any other late-night talk show,” the cable channel said yesterday.
The network also stressed O’Brien’s social media prowess. With 8.3 million Twitter followers and 2 million fans on Facebook, O’Brien attracts more social media commentary than his rivals, TBS claimed, citing a Bluefin study.
O’Brien’s show airs on basic cable, limiting his audience to about 900,000 a night — another reason why online engagement has become so key for the comedian.
His social media strategy “sets him apart from other more traditional shows,” a person close to his team said yesterday.
The deal should keep him out of the broadcast battle for late-night talent. In 2010, O’Brien left the “Tonight Show” after a blowup with NBC and long-time host Jay Leno.