The NBC/Conan O'Brien divorce is final.

Expect, though, for Charlie Sheen/Denise Richards-style acrimony to continue in monologues and press releases well into next season - and, perhaps, for years to come.

Early Thursday, O'Brien agreed to end his seven-month tenure hosting "The Tonight Show" Friday.

In return, NBC will give $33 million to make its loyal employee of some 20 years go away. The network will also pony up $12 million more to members of O'Brien's staff and crew, many of whom moved to Los Angeles from New York - where they'd worked on the 16-year run of "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" - for the "Tonight" gig last spring.

Jay Leno, whose weeknight, primetime variety show's ratings failure triggered the late-night crisis, returns to "Tonight" March 1, after NBC's coverage of the Winter Olympics. Leno hosted "Tonight" from 1992 until last May, when he reluctantly but cordially handed over the reins of the 55-year-old late-night franchise to the younger O'Brien.

"Once again, Jay Leno gets what he wants," observed noted television authority Robert Thompson of Syracuse University. "Jay Leno seems to always get what he wants.

"Back in the '90s, he wanted to replace Johnny Carson on "The Tonight Show." David Letterman may have been the better candidate; Leno got it. This time, Jay didn't want to quit "The Tonight Show," he didn't want to do primetime, and by gosh, four months into it, once again Jay's going to get what he wants."

O'Brien's departure had been expected, but an early-morning announcement by NBC signaled officially that Friday night will be the comedian's last time to host the show.

"We're pleased that Jay is returning to host the franchise that he helmed brilliantly and successfully for many years," Jeff Gaspin, chairman of NBC Universal Television Entertainment, said in an official statement. "He is an enormous talent, a consummate professional and one of the hardest-working performers on television."

Under pressure from NBC chief Jeff Zucker, Leno agreed five years ago to leave "Tonight" when he did. But, not wanting him to jump to a competitor - and to save money the ratings-challenged network had been shelling out for more expensive, scripted dramas - NBC came up with the 10 p.m. "Jay Leno Show" gambit, which debuted last September.

It bombed badly, something Leno now claims he believed would happen from the start.

"I said, `That will never work,"' he said Monday on his primetime show, now scheduled to end its run when the Olympics start Feb. 12.

Leno's terrible 10 p.m. experiment was blamed for bleeding viewers from affiliates' 11 p.m. news shows, and also for depressing the lead-in to O'Brien's "Tonight Show" at 11:35 p.m.

But Leno also pointed out Monday that his replacement began losing the lead he had long enjoyed over CBS' "Late Show with David Letterman" almost from the start, nearly four months before "The Jay Leno Show" began.

When a growing affiliate revolt forced NBC to cancel Leno, Gaspin proposed moving Jay to a half-hour show beginning at 11:35. But O'Brien balked at having "Tonight's" start time pushed back to 12:05 a.m. tomorrow, and issued a blistering Internet statement refusing to take part in any such move.

Since then, lawyers and managers have been negotiating a release from his NBC contract.

O'Brien's exit deal prevents him from working for a rival network until the new TV season begins in September. Whether or not that opportunity will present itself is another matter.

Executives at the Fox Network, which currently ends its national broadcasts at 10 p.m., have expressed consistent respect and sympathy for O'Brien's plight. But setting up an 11 p.m. show for him involves complex negotiations with Fox's own affiliates that won't be easy.

Although he's joked about possibly being replaced by a free-agent Coco (and, with vengeful relish, about everything else that's gone wrong at his old stomping grounds NBC), Letterman is firmly entrenched at late night CBS for as long as he wants to be, with his follow-up guy Craig Ferguson the evident heir apparent. ABC, meanwhile, has publicly expressed complete satisfaction with its "Nightline"/"Jimmy Kimmel Live!" lineup.

A move to the lowly CW or cable would be an obvious comedown for Conan. And, of course, any new show he does would have to work in the ratings - and quickly.

"When you change any of the pieces, even somebody who is very successful in one place can fall flat on their face in another," cautioned Tim Brooks, a 40-year veteran televison network executive. "You're, like, breaking the magic combination.

"With Conan, who was beginning to get some traction but wasn't exactly a hyper-runaway star in late night, to kind of break that and put him aside for a while, he might have to pull a Paula Abdul and come back as a judge on `American Idol' to recapture his career. And he could, I suppose."

As for the primetime-damaged Leno, who's not only been characterized as a villain in the scenario but also lost loyal viewers to Letterman during the Conan interregnum, proving that he can reclaim the late-night throne won't be easy.

But, as he's just proven again, never underestimate the power of The Chin.

"For Hollywood's Mr. Nice Guy, Jay Leno seems to be almost robotic in his ability to compete and end up on top of these things," Thompson observed, "even after a trainwreck of a show like that primetime show was."

"I know Conan's lost a lot of his audience," Brooks said. "But this whole thing brings more attention back to Jay and puts him more front-of-mind, and that's very important for any television personality. So, assuming they have a lot of publicity about his return, he'll get a big initial tune-in. Then it will settle down pretty much to where he was, minus maybe 10 percent or something."

Or maybe more, once the temporary ratings-boosting jokes both Leno and O'Brien have been making about the NBC fiasco becomes old news.