Saturday's Sun-Telegraph took a rip at the divorce settlement between Conan O'Brien and NBC. The tone of the piece brings into question whether talent such as O'Brien should get that kind of money when a relationship goes sour.
In a word, yes.
NBC had a contractual obligation to O'Brien who moved into the Tonight Show spot after Jay Leno announced his retirement, a la Brett Farve. Jay got a new show and frankly.. it stank up the place so bad some num nut at NBC decided that it would be good to put Leno on later and cut his show in half.
O'Brien's show contractually was called the Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien and was contractually obligated to follow the late local news. O'Brien even said if the late local news ended at 12:05 am, he would have gladly accepted the time slot change. In the reported settlement, O'Brien gets 33 million dollars and the remaining 12 million go to his staff as compensation for loss of income and moving expenses to LA from NYC.
With respect to Conan getting paid or taking care of earthquake victims, the Sun-Telegraph also got it wrong. Since the earthquake in Haiti occurred, Conan has been mentioning relief efforts on every show. His efforts have helped to raise more than 10 million dollars for the various organizations that are leading the charge. Referencing Stillerstrong.org and other websites, along with Tom Hanks who was headed to the Hope for Haiti Now telethon on CBS gives a fair indication of what Conan is all about.
In all I would say that Conan is a stand up guy who genuinely cares about the people around him and has a great heart for the human condition. If the Sun-Telegraph wants to make hay over compensation practices vs. feeding the world, they find a more deserving target in GE's CEO Jeffrey Immelt who earned a cool 14.5 million last year.
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