As their new 11 p.m. TBS talk show gets ready to roll Monday, Conan O’Brien and his staff have started to learn how the other half lives. After 17 years at NBC, they’re adjusting to cable-sized portions.
“We have a lower budget for the show,” Jeffrey Ross, executive producer of “Conan,” said in an interview. “So unfortunately we couldn’t bring everybody with us” from “The Tonight Show,” where O’Brien was unceremoniously dumped and Jay Leno reinstalled as host earlier this year.
And then there’s that 250-seat studio on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, which “Conan’s” designers have rigged up to resemble the kind of mid-sized theaters O’Brien successfully played on a nationwide comedy tour earlier this year. “The studio is a little bit smaller than what we had” at “Tonight’s” studio in nearby Universal City, Ross said.
Full Story: A downscaled ‘Conan’ readies its cable debut – latimes.com