Conan has had fans well before the Leno debacle. 
And Conan is very funny, just in the right context. His skits are very well written.
You missed the point of my post.
My statement was not that Conan did not have fans before the Leno debacle, my statement is that TBS grossly overestimated the ratings draw of bringing in Conan to their network. In fact, the estimates were so far off that it killed another late night talk show in collateral damage from their miscalculation. TBS overestimated those ratings because of the internet hype of Team Coco; they assumed that they would draw in millions of permanent TBS viewers at this time block (given internet trends), with some of those ratings pumping up the ratings of George Lopez. It is even stated in the article:
The network had hoped to create a popular two-hour block of late-night comedy. But after a strong start, Mr. O’Brien’s ratings began to fall off and Mr. Lopez’s audience fell sharply. Recently his audience has hovered around an average of 400,000 viewers a night, with just a 0.2 rating among the 18-to-49 year old viewers sought by most advertisers. Both figures were the lowest among late-night shows with the familiar desk-and-guests format.
TBS's scheme was to bring on Conan, have the millions of Twitter followers of Team Coco watch the show (after all, they made such a big deal about it that they would be faithful watchers amirite?), and then have some people remain to watch Lopez. What they forget is that Twitter trends don't mean much in the long term, ratings for Conan "began to fall off" and it killed another show.
They're not the first ones to fall for internet hype (the White House has fallen for it several times). That is the point of my post. Except my personal opinion about Conan's stuff. I've laughed at some of his stuff but I don't find it uproariously funny.
