NEW YORK - Late-night mainstay Conan O'Brien is headed to TBS to resume his comedic duties with a talk show expected to debut in November, the network said Monday.

The program will air Mondays through Thursdays at 11 p.m. Eastern, shifting TBS' "Lopez Tonight," starring George Lopez, to midnight.

O'Brien quickly fired out a celebratory tweet.

"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 posted Monday on Twitter.

The surprise announcement hit the same day O'Brien starts a two-month, nationwide comedy tour in Eugene, Ore., amid persistent reports that he was likely to claim Fox as his new late-night home.

Barring Fox, syndication was widely considered O'Brien's most likely option. Few if anyone mentioned TBS as a plausible destination.

O'Brien began serious talks with TBS just last week, the network said.

"In three months, I've gone from network television to Twitter to performing live in theaters, and now I'm headed to basic cable," O'Brien said in a tongue-in-cheek-toned statement. "My plan is working perfectly."

O'Brien left NBC in January after hosting "The Tonight Show" for just eight months, as his ratings plunged from those of his longtime "Tonight" predecessor, Jay Leno, who reclaimed the hour. Until last June, O'Brien had followed Leno as host of "Late Night" since 1993.

After giving O'Brien "Tonight," NBC sought to keep Leno on board with a prime-time show that quickly flopped. An attempt to move O'Brien to a post-midnight slot drew O'Brien's ire, and he walked away with a $32 million settlement package.

Although that put him in play for other networks, the deal barred him from appearing on TV until September.

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TBS is owned by Time Warner Inc

George Lopez pulls no punches as he asks Khloe and Kim Kardashian about dating black guys as well as their men's (Lamar Odom/Reggie Bush) weird eating habits.

Second Sale In Two Weeks Modeled After Debmar-Mercury's Highly Successful Launch of Tyler Perry Sitcoms 'House of Payne' And 'Meet The Browns' Into Distribution And Syndication

SANTA MONICA, Calif. and VANCOUVER, British Columbia - Using the unique model created by Debmar-Mercury for Tyler Perry's House of Payne and Meet the Browns, TBS is teaming with Joe Roth and Ice Cube for ARE WE THERE YET?, a sitcom starring Terry Crews (Everybody Hates Chris) and based on the hit Revolution Studios film of the same name. TBS has ordered 10 episodes of the new sitcom, slated to premiere in June 2010, with the option for an additional 90 episodes. The series is produced by Cube Vision and distributed by Debmar-Mercury, with Revolution's Joe Roth and Cube Vision's Ice Cube and Matt Alvarez serving as executive producers, along with multiple Emmy-winning show-runner Ali LeRoi (Everybody Hates Chris). In addition to executive-producing, Ice Cube will have a recurring role.

This is the fourth television series for which Debmar-Mercury has utilized its groundbreaking approach to launching shows into distribution and syndication, following in the footsteps of Tyler Perry's two hit sitcoms, House of Payne and Meet The Browns, which also air on TBS, and the new Jon Heder sitcom from writer-producers Will Ferrell, Adam McKay and Chris Henchy ordered by Comedy Central last week.

The movie Are We There Yet?, a breakout 2005 hit, told the story of Nick (Ice Cube), a smooth operator who is trying to land a date with Suzanne, a divorcee stuck working out of town over New Year's and miserable because she misses her kids. Nick gallantly offers to make her New Year's wish come true - and his own in the process - by driving her two children to be reunited with their mom. What Nick doesn't know is that Suzanne's children, whom he's never met, hate every man their mom dates on sight. The movie grossed more than $82 million at the box office and was followed in 2007 by a sequel, Are We Done Yet?

In the sitcom ARE WE THERE YET?, Crews will star as Nick, the character Ice Cube played in the film.

Debmar-Mercury's association with TBS began in 2006, when the company devised a groundbreaking distribution strategy for Tyler Perry's House of Payne. Debmar-Mercury offered a 10-episode experiment in select markets that produced strong ratings, leading TBS to order a full-fledged series with an unprecedented 100 episodes. In January 2009, TBS premiered 10 episodes of Tyler Perry's Meet the Browns to strong ratings, leading the network to order additional episodes for a total of 80. So far this year, the two series have ranked as the top television programs in delivery of African-American viewers.

"When we set out to expand on the television comedy model that the amazing Tyler Perry has turned into a runaway success at TBS, we knew we had to be in business with Ice Cube, a cultural icon who can do it all: an acclaimed hip-hop artist, film phenomenon, actor, writer, director and producer," Debmar-Mercury co-president Mort Marcus said.

Debmar-Mercury co-president Ira Bernstein added, "To be back with TBS again and have a dream team of creative partners like Ice Cube, Joe Roth, Matt Alvarez and Ali LeRoi attached to this project, plus a breakout star in Terry Crews, this show has all the elements to be a major hit.

NEW YORK - Comic George Lopez will start a new talk show on TBS next fall, saying he wanted to reach a diverse audience that generally isn't spoken to in late-night television. The hour long show, which doesn't have a title yet, will air Monday through Thursday at 11 p.m.

TBS is moving to establish a new talk show at a time of change in the genre. Jay Leno is moving to prime-time at NBC, Conan O'Brien takes over the "Tonight" show in June and Jimmy Fallon recently started in O'Brien's "Late Night" time slot.

"I'm a pretty visible Mexican-American guy who has managed to cross over," said Lopez, who had a six-year run with his own ABC sitcom. "I'm not a singer. I'm not Antonio Banderas. I'm a guy who came up the hard way on the street, and I speak to people who have the same life story."

Late-night television, and TV entertainment in general, "is a place where everything is geared toward Caucasians," Lopez said.

He said he wants to be inclusive...click to continue reading