Conan O'Brien Gets Last Laugh, Poll Says

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- And the winner of The Tonight Show debacle is ... Conan O'Brien -- at least, that's verdict of the readers of TheStreet.

Maybe it's the fact that O'Brien left General Electrics'(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.

Or maybe it's the rumors that Fox, owned by News Corp.(NWSA), is interested in hiring O'Brien and giving him a new talk show.

But for now, O'Brien is, in a sense, homeless; News Corp. executives admitted as much when they said last week that no serious negotiations had taken place yet.

"Certainly if the program-people can show us that we could do it, and be fairly confident of making a profit on it, we'd do it in a flash, News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch said in a media conference call discussing his company's second fiscal quarter.

Certainly, if News Corp. thinks O'Brien can benefit its bottom line, O'Brien could expect to be well compensated -- as News Corp. can apparently afford to so. Rumors have been circulating this week that executives at the conglomerate's Fox show American Idol would be willing to offer Howard Stern a pay package commensurate with his current $100 million-a-year salary at Sirius XM(SIRI) to take over from Simon Cowell when Cowell leaves the show at the end of the season.

So that's the latest on O'Brien -- who seems to have landed on his feet after NBC and Jay Leno did their level best to take his legs out from underneath him. Indeed, some might say that while O'Brien waits to hear back from News Corp., he might as well take a vacation; with all that new money in his bank, he can certainly afford to do so. Also, NBC has freed him to pursue other opportunities only after September 1.

All of which goes a long way toward explaining why readers of TheStreet consider O'Brien the ultimate winner of the Tonight Show farce, affording him more than 37% of the votes in our poll.