Coco Spends NBC's D'oh

Coco to Gogo

NBC says it has reached a deal with ''Tonight'' host Conan O'Brien for his exit from the show, allowing Jay Leno to return to the late-night program he hosted for 17 years. The deal is worth a reported $44 million.

Network spokeswoman Allison Gollust confirmed the deal early Thursday but did not offer any other details. Earlier, The Wall Street Journal reported that O'Brien will get $32 million and that the network agreed to pay his staff $12 million in severance.

The announcement comes seven whole months after O'Brien took the desk from Leno.

It's awesome that he stuck up for his crew. But the big payday is a paltry amount when you consider he was probably going to be worth a couple billion. Letterman earns $ 31 million - per year. Don't know if that includes his crew. Seems unlikely. They apparently need to sleep with Dave to see some of that cash.

So they're only paying Conan a tiny sum to walk away. If you consider that Conan could have probably averaged about 10 years on the Tonight Show (assuming a lot of factors, but we're just talking here) Conan would have been worth 310 million in a decade, and that's assuming he would have earned as much as Letterman in 2007 dollars.

Conan got hosed. Twice now.