If you have kept an eye on the entertainment blogs this week, then surely you have heard that the late night talk show host beloved by nerds and dorks everywhere, Conan O' Brien, has found a new home at TBS. What is more interesting, however, is the news now coming out about where he might have ended up, which includes a gaming console in many of your living rooms.

A report from entertainment blog deadline.com earlier today reports that “Team Conan”, which included Coco's executive producer, manager and attorney, were thinking “way outside the network box.” This included discussions with Microsoft on a possible XBOX deal for Conan O' Brien's show that would have “broken new ground.”

Those small tidbits are all that we were offered, but it certainly gives the game console fans something for their minds to wander about. What could this deal have possibly entailed? Could it have been a nightly show distributed through Xbox's Live's marketplace? After all, we know that the XBOX is already set up to distribute nightly programming such as Comedy Central's popular late night shows like “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report”.

It is possible though, that this idea could have been taken a step further. After all, we already know that the XBOX is set up to handle streaming video through features such as “Inside Xbox” and the Netflix application. What if CoCo's show had played out live every night on Xbox for an audience watching from their couches?

If you wanted to really go outside the box, look at the type of live setup that Xbox has for a show like 1 vs 100. Could an outside the box idea have involved interactive elements from an audience with Xbox 360 controllers in hand? Imagine it: Press A to bring out the Walker Texas Ranger Lever! Okay, perhaps a little too hokey, but certainly a live audience could be polled about interest in a guests upcoming movie, or possibly submit questions to be asked to the guest.

We may never know all the details of the Xbox and Conan deal, but one thing is for sure-- this probably isn't the last you will hear of Microsoft trying to get into regular programming on it's console, as our gaming consoles slowly evolve into the all-in-one entertainment console. More live content? More interactive programming? Perhaps when Conan was dreaming “In the year 2000....”, some of these predictions weren't too far off.

~RR