Conan O’Brien has lined up a new late-night job, which starts in November, and for this, we can all be grateful. The unemployment rate has declined by one.

TBS is one of the original basic cable networks — essentially Ted Turner’s early attempt to shatter the hegemony of the Big Three with his Atlanta-based “Superstation.” The hegemony continued, but just this week Turner’s legendary flagship got its highest profile on-air employee ever: The former host of “The Tonight Show.”

Good for O’Brien, or bad? Let’s go to the list:

Pros

1. Freeeeedom! He will be able to do whatever he wants, mount whatever show he thinks he can get away with. Expect an even less-encumbered “Late Night.” Not that O’Brien does “dirty,” but there is a bawdy side.

2. No TV stations to worry about. Affiliates have their own needs, demands and problems — sometimes anathema to the talent. O’Brien now has but one boss — TBS and parent Time Warner — not the 200-plus bosses he would have had at Fox.

3. 11 p.m. is a perfect start time. The biggest competition is “The Daily Show” (at 11) and especially “The Colbert Report” (11:30). The stars share fans. But O’Brien will get first crack at topical monologue jokes, before Jay, Dave, Jimmy and Craig.

4. Young audience at TBS. Thanks to all those “Family Guy” reruns, TBS has a younger profile than any of the four major broadcast networks.

Cons

1. Not network TV. Affiliate headaches aside, Fox would have been vastly preferable because it would have represented the big-time, and prestige; TBS feels like a niche within a niche.

2. Weak to poor lead-ins. O’Brien complained about his lead-ins at “Tonight”; wait till he sees what he gets at TBS.

3. No promotional firepower. The biggest drawback, perhaps. Networks promote their shows within their highest-rated show; TBS doesn’t have any highly rated shows, which means it has to search for audiences in other places. Hardly optimal. But good news! O’Brien has started to tweet, and that should help.

4. No Fridays. Friday is hugely important in late-night TV. It’s the kickback end-of-week edition. But, even though Colbert and Stewart take off as well, O’Brien will have to end his week on Thursdays because TBS wants to reserve Fridays for movies.

Will basic cable mean lesser guests?

LOS ANGELES — Conan O’Brien is headed to basic cable. Will Hollywood’s biggest stars follow?

For almost every talk show host, A-list guests set a program apart from its competition. Land the exclusive couch visit from George Clooney, and expect a flood of TV watchers to follow. Rivalries among the current crop of chatterers can be crazily competitive: If you want your biggest clients to grab an invitation from Oprah Winfrey, you better not book them on any other talk show first.

While hosting “The Tonight Show,” O’Brien didn’t always draw strong ratings among TV’s insomniacs, but he did collect a steady stream of pop-culture luminaries, particularly among music acts and up-and-coming actors. With O’Brien (who lost his NBC gig in January when the network returned prime-time washout Jay Leno to his former late-night slot) moving from a big network to cable television’s TBS, his viewership could slip dramatically, even with TBS pledging to promote O’Brien’s November launch aggressively.

This year, TBS is No. 7 among cable networks, averaging 1.7 million prime-time viewers, according to Nielsen Co. figures.

NBC, on the other hand, may be last among the major networks, but it still has an audience that’s more than three times larger.

Studio marketing executives say O’Brien won’t necessarily enjoy the same priority as he did on “The Tonight Show” and his previous talk show, “Late Night,” but he could still be a key destination for younger, hipper performers. Russell Brand, yes. Russell Crowe, no.

The best comparison, some say: Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” whose Jon Stewart welcomes a pretty impressive crop of cultural and political names. Let the booking begin.

— John Horn, Los Angeles Times