Conan O’Brien said he was rescued by social media after his unceremonious firing from NBC’s “Tonight Show.”
He explained at a Cannes Lions session with Anderson Cooper, “The grass roots nature of the movement that rescued me when I was in so much trouble a couple of years ago, that was so pure, I had nothing to do with it. It was an online rescue of younger people who said, ‘We like this guy, we don’t like what happened to him,’ and that swept me through a tour and took us to TBS.”
Conan admitted he was a tech “luddite” a couple of years ago: “I didn’t know what Twitter was at the time, I thought it was something obscene.”
He explained, “Just before leaving the ‘Late Night Show’ for my illustrious career as a ‘Tonight Show’ host . . . my website was in the stone age. Then I went through a period of upheaval with NBC, I left and I had no way to communicate with my fans and overnight this social media happening occurred. I had no outlet . . . so overnight a Twitter following and Facebook following grew and social media really embraced me. Now I have 8 million something followers.”
Conan joked, “Advertisers are scum. They need to be told what to do and when to do it. I call the shots.”
But there were more lighthearted moments. After O’Brien and Anderson were introduced as “icons” by Time Warner Inc. chairman and CEO Jeff Bewkes, Cooper said, “We were trying to figure out why they picked us to come here and I realized they picked out the two palest people at Time Warner Corporation.”
Conan continued, “They bought the two palest people to the South of France for everyone to laugh at. I don’t know how many people here even understand us.”
Anderson added, “To be honest we are not entirely clear what this event is.”