• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, December 9, 2024

The TV Blog wishes to thank Conan O’Brien for stepping up to host next year’s Oscars on ABC.

Why thank him? Because the job is thankless, except for the money, which hopefully is well north of scale.

For Conan, 61, the gig represents another feather in his cap and notch on his belt. Imagine -- he went from writing anonymously for “The Simpsons,” then worked for 30 years on other stuff, and now, here he is poised to host the Academy Awards. Well, Conan, look at you!

The question that sits there like the proverbial elephant in the room: Does Conan have the muscle to stop potential on-stage assaults, especially if Will Smith is in the audience?

It is said by others that Conan O’Brien is a man of many talents, but Conan O’Brawny he is not.

The TV Blog helpfully suggests that he hire Mr. T, 72 -- former nightclub bouncer on Chicago’s Rush Street and later, a celebrity bodyguard -- to be stationed nearby on the Oscar stage.

Conan has known Mr. T since 2000, when the “Rocky III” star took pity on the “Late Night” host and agreed to do his show for the first time. 

The two clicked and Conan went on to use Mr. T in countless bits (they aren’t really “countless” in the literal sense; I just don’t feel like counting them).

To get the details out of the way, Conan’s hiring as the next host of the Oscars was announced in November by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and ABC. It will be his first time. Next year’s 97th Oscars are scheduled for Sunday, March 2 on ABC.

As if to prove that Barnum-like, show-business promotion is not dead, the press release had three prepared statements from five people -- Academy CEO Bill Kramer and President Janet Yang in a joint statement that read as if they recited it in unison, Disney Television Group President Craig Erwich, and Oscars executive producers Raj Kapoor and Katy Mullan, who also stated their prepared statement in one voice.

Taken all together, the adjectives and phrases applied in praise of Conan are breathtaking. The statements called him “incomparable,” “brilliant,” “distinctive,” “remarkable,” “incredibly witty” and “charismatic.”

They described him as the “perfect person to lead our global celebration of film,” “a preeminent comedic voice” and “a master of live event television.”

He may, in fact, be none of those things, but his qualifications for membership in the Hollywood movie community are undisputed by virtue of his many movie credits.

Who can forget his uncredited cameo in “Pootie Tang,” his cameo appearance in the “Bewitched” movie (credited this time), and the credited role of “Farley” in 2023’s “Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain”? I can’t!

So, why is the Oscar hosting gig so thankless? For years, it was just the opposite -- a gig for a comedy star (it was almost always a comedian) that represented the very pinnacle of show business.

In recent years, however, it has often seemed as if the Academy and ABC were exhausting their Rolodexes (translation: list of contacts) every year to call everyone they knew until someone --   anyone -- said yes.

This year, the one who said yes was Conan O’Brien. He is a great choice -- “Simpsons” writer, late-night star, world traveler, podcast powerhouse, and now host of the Oscars.

Thank you, Conan, and don’t forget to bring Triumph, the Insult-Comic Dog. Just tell them he’s your service dog.

Photo courtesy of Conaco/Max, from the Max travel-comedy series “Conan O’Brien Must Go.”