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“Why? What’s this for?” Conan said.

“TBS,” Ross said, adding quickly before Conan could get too skeptical, “Plepler called me about this guy. I think we should hear him out.”

Steve Koonin did not have a big profile in Hollywood, probably because he lived in Atlanta, where the cable channels that had been part of the Ted Turner empire—and now belonged to Time Warner—maintained their base. But Koonin had a plan for TBS, a cable network that even Koonin conceded had a long-ingrained image in the business: not hip, not cutting edge. “It’s an uphill climb from Andy of Mayberry and the Braves,” as Koonin put it.

TBS had started as a local station in Atlanta that carried Braves baseball and lots of reruns of truly old sitcoms. But because Turner got it on satellite, TBS became one of the first so-called superstations, and thus one of the nation’s inaugural cable channels. As cable matured, with networks as varied as MTV, FX, and AMC acquiring distinctive brands because of signature original programming, TBS had kept its downmarket identity as that rube channel with the Southern accent.

It had plenty of cash, though, thanks to being grandfathered into every cable system in the country, and Koonin set out to sculpt a new identity for it, essentially turning TBS into Comedy Central without the attitude, a comedy channel for older and more middlebrow tastes. He began buying up every hit sitcom that came off its network run, eventually building a stable that included Everybody Loves Raymond, The Office, Family Guy, and, of course, Seinfeld. Under Koonin, TBS’s ratings grew, especially when he moved to what he called a “vertical stack” of programs in prime time: running a show like Family Guy for three straight hours—six episodes—in a row.

The formula was unorthodox, but so was Koonin. A big guy with a slightly nasal accent, he bore a passing resemblance to the Newman character (Wayne Knight) from Seinfeld. He came by his Hollywood-outsider cred legitimately, having spent much of his early career in marketing for another Atlanta-based company, Coca-Cola. Koonin would have appreciated the metaphor perhaps better than anyone else, but he probably never heard the private remarks some NBC executives made about Conan, snidely labeling him “New Coke” (the ill-fated formula that had failed so miserably trying to replace “The Real Thing” in the eighties). But even if Koonin had heard that slam, it was unlikely that it would have deterred him. When Koonin looked at Conan, what he saw was the signature star his channel so far lacked. Koonin and TBS didn’t jump in initially because the Conan-to-Fox scenario had been reported as an all but done deal, but they remained patiently on the sidelines while Fox seemed to dither in its wooing process. With no Fox announcement imminent, it was time to make their own interest clear.

Koonin’s pitch to Conan and his team that afternoon impressed the whole room. TBS had already tried a late-night format with George Lopez; they believed they could now expand by inserting Conan at eleven and sliding Lopez back to midnight. (Koonin assured them he had already secured George’s assent, so they would not have to worry about unfortunate suggestions that Conan was now doing to Lopez what Jay had done to him.)

TBS had exceptional young male demos, Koonin pointed out—perfect for Conan. It also had big-time sports: The baseball play-offs in October would draw a huge audience. They could promote a November launch of Conan to that big crowd. By the time Koonin left Rick Rosen’s office, the Conan group had moved from passively curious to borderline excited. Maybe this really did represent a real possibility for them. They all had great affection for Kevin Reilly at Fox, and Peter Rice had wowed them with his intelligence and British class. But doubts had sprung up as the Fox team struggled to close the deal. Could Conan afford to get into another dicey situation with a network and its stations? Just how low a deal could they accept? Fox