And the Winner of the 'Tonight Show' Debacle Is...

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- On Jan. 22, Conan O'Brien finished his abbreviated run on The Tonight Show with his biggest audience turnout ever.

O'Brien averaged 5.3 million viewers in his final week, handily beating chief rival, David Letterman, who could only manage 3.9 million viewers. The Tonight Show also averaged ratings of 2.4 among viewers aged 18 to 49 in its final week, exceeding the kick-off week when O'Brien took over while Letterman fell to a 0.9 rating. O'Brien's final night drew a whopping 10.3 million viewers who tuned in to watch the late night comedian sign-off.

O'Brien left GE's(GE) NBC with a severance package of $45 million for himself and his staff, even though he was only on the show for 11 months. With O'Brien's departure, Jay Leno will return as host of The Tonight Show.

But you already knew all of that. You also presumably knew -- unless you were trapped underneath something heavy for the last month -- that Leno's own weeknight show, The Jay Leno Show, was canceled due to poor ratings and complaints from NBC's TV affiliates about the audience being delivered to their key 11 p.m. local news slot. And that NBC now plans to fill the void left by the cancellation of The Jay Leno Show with new scripted programming. And that the upcoming Winter Olympics will air on NBC and give the network a chance to promote its new lineup for prime-time weeknights. And that Leno will return to host The Tonight Show starting on March 1st.

What you presumably don't know -- because there is no legitimate way to know it just yet -- is who, ultimately, ended up benefiting most from the whole sordid little fiasco?

Rumors have surfaced that Fox, owned by News Corp.(NWSA), is interested in hiring Conan O'Brien and giving him a new talk show. If such a move were to a occur, this would reunite Conan with the network that gave him one of his first breaks in writing for The Simpsons. So Fox might be a winner.