NBC adds second ‘Deal’ to lineup

After returning “Deal or No Deal” to the schedule with a five-night run last week, NBC was planning to make the game show a once-weekly affair. Then it saw the ratings.

Thanks to strong Nielsen numbers, the network has added a second “Deal” to its lineup. It will air Fridays at 8 p.m., beginning tonight, as well as Mondays at the same time.

On Friday, it replaces “Most Outrageous TV Moments,” which occupied the spot for a few weeks prior to the Winter Olympics.

Conan’s big Finnish

Conan O’Brien will devote his entire “Late Night” show tonight (NBC, 12:35 a.m.) to recapping his recent trip to Finland, where he is surprisingly popular – thanks largely to his remarkable resemblance to the Nordic country’s equally carrot-topped president, Tarja Halonen, whom he met.

Thousands greeted him at the airport, and he was mobbed wherever he went.

“When you see a telephoto lens shot taken from some bushes by (the) paparazzi, what you’re used to seeing is Brad Pitt making out with Angelina Jolie or Michael Jackson being rushed through a mall in a weird disguise,” says O’Brien. “But the shots of me were of this very pale guy starring sadly at the Baltic Sea.”

Richter returns

Thanks to Conan O’Brien, former “Late Night” sidekick Andy Richter will star in an NBC pilot for a detective comedy, “Andy Barker P.I.”

O’Brien co-wrote and is executive producing the show.

Richter, who appeared on “Late Night” for seven years before leaving in 2000, starred in two Fox sitcoms that were canceled after only one season: “Andy Richter Controls the Universe” and “Quintuplets.”