It's been more than 24 hours since Conan O'Brien announced he signed a deal to take his late-night show to the cable network TBS -- not  Fox, as many in the industry expected. Now that an entire day has passed, it is time for some deep reflection and analysis, the kind that can only come after taking some real time to look at all the angles in a story.

In today's media world, one day is about all the time we have, so take this for what it is worth.

There is a lot of talk about whether Fox was beaten to Conan by TBS or if it had already passed on him. As Company Town noted early and often, there were always lots of hurdles to Fox getting  O'Brien for late night. The TV stations that Fox owns and the network's affiliates have long-term deals to show reruns of sitcoms late at night, and they make a lot of money from those shows. The affiliates really were not too keen on giving up valuable real estate and revenue to Fox.

Yes, those were real issues, but some two decades (sigh) of covering Fox and its parent News Corp. also tells me that when Rupert Murdoch wants something, he usually gets it. If Murdoch firmly believed that establishing a show in late night was vital to Fox's future (as was the case when the network went after David Letterman all those years ago), he and News Corp. President Chase Carey would have browbeat affiliates into carrying O'Brien on their stations at 11 p.m. across the country. It wouldn't have been pretty, but it would have been done. Crikey, he bought the Wall Street Journal at a time when everyone thinks print's future is, uh -- well, bleak would be the kindest word for it.

Ultimately, signing O'Brien was not crucial enough to Fox for Murdoch and Carey to roll up their sleeves. Fox Entertainment Chairman Peter Rice and President Kevin Reilly may have done a lot of number-crunching, and internally all may have agreed that O'Brien would be a great "get," but the headaches were too great and the rewards too few.

The risks for TBS are much lower. Its "affiliates" are cable operators that already pay the network to receive its programming. If O'Brien delivers an audience (and it doesn't have to be a huge audience, we're talking cable here), then TBS wins more ad revenue and can boost the rates in fees it charges cable operators.

Of course, you know who ultimately picks up the tab for that.

-- Joe Flint

One of the perceived snags of Conan O'Brien going to cable was that he wouldn't get the same kind of big paycheck that he'd gotten at NBC and would probably command from Fox.

But as part of his deal with Time Warner's Turner Broadcasting to host a late-night show on TBS, O'Brien will have ownership of the show. That will give him the potential to make a lot more money than if he were just a hired hand hosting a show owned by a network. O'Brien's deal is for five years.

A deal between O'Brien's camp and TBS was struck in about 72 hours, according to people involved in the talks. TBS had previously indicated it was not interested in O'Brien, but Turner Entertainment chief Steve Koonin said in an interview that was in part because "we assumed he had a deal with Fox."

Koonin reached out to O'Brien's team and then went back to his own late-night host, George Lopez, who was also enthusiastic about the idea of bringing Conan to TBS. O'Brien will have his show at 11 p.m. and Lopez will move to midnight. Though Lopez will have a later time period, he will probably also have a bigger lead-in audience.

With its deal to have Conan O'Brien anchor its late-night line-up, TBS finally seems poised to step out of the shadow of its sexier younger sister TNT. TBS has always been a cash cow for Time Warner but is still primarily known for its reruns of broadcast sitcoms such as "Family Guy" and "The Office."

"We think Conan will of course help us attract other talent," Koonin said.

Fox, meanwhile, has not issued any statement about the O'Brien deal. Interestingly, the network is set to meet with its affiliates at the National Assn. of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas, where the idea of O'Brien coming to Fox was expected to be a topic of discussion.

-- Joe Flint

Photo: Conan O'Brien in his office at Universal Studios last year. Credit: Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times

Conan O'Brien is going to cable.

The former host of NBC's "Tonight Show," who lost the program to Jay Leno earlier this year, has signed a deal for a new late-night program on TBS, the basic cable network owned by Time Warner. O'Brien's show will start in November at 11 p.m. George Lopez, the comedian who currently occupies that slot, will have his show move to midnight.

"In three months, I've gone from network television to Twitter to performing live in theaters, and now I'm headed to basic cable. My plan is working perfectly," O'Brien said in a statement.

The deal with TBS is sure to catch many by surprise. Most industry observers expected O'Brien to land at Fox. While Fox's top entertainment executives Peter Rice and Kevin Reilly were on board with going after O'Brien, persuading Fox's affiliates to carry the show was going to be more challenging. That's because those stations make a lot of money from the reruns they currently run at 11 p.m. This was also an issue for the stations owned by Fox itself.

The talks with TBS heated up in the last two weeks. As recently as a month ago, Turner executives had indicated they had little interest in going after O'Brien. Lopez has given them some solid numbers with younger viewers and is a contrast to Comedy Central's late-night duo of Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert.

But in the last few weeks, Turner's entertainment chief Steve Koonin changed his mind and started negotiating with O'Brien to come to the cable channel. O'Brien was game but did not want to go without Lopez being on board with the idea.

Turner executives huddled with Lopez and Warner Bros.' Telepictures Productions, which makes the show, and got the go-ahead.

"I can't think of anything better than doing my show with Conan as my lead-in," Lopez said. "It's the beginning of a new era in late-night comedy."

-- Joe Flint

Related:

Conan will have ownership of his TBS show