Days ago, Tonight Show’s host Conan O Brien refused to host the show when NBC told him that it would be moved to a later night time slot.

This caused a lot of tension among Tonigh Show’s viewers and fans which is evident by the surge of discussion among blogs and in twitter.

According to the latest AC Nielsen data provided by the network NBC themselves, about 42% more viewers between the ages of 18 and 49 watched the “The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien” Tuesday compared to a day earlier when the turmoil did not happen yet.

The Tonight Show attracted 1.7% of viewers in the 18-49 group, up from 1.2% the night before, and 1.1% the previous week.

Obviously, Tonight Show’s boost in ratings in terms of viewership came after Conan O’Brien rejected NBC’s plan to effectively demote him in favor of comedian Jay Leno.

Tonight Show’s ratings boost also comes as Mr. O’Brien is developing a legion of online supporters. On social networking site Facebook, more than 52,000 people had marked themselves fans of a page dubbed “I’m With COCO” as of late Wednesday. The page displays a campaign-style poster that portrays Mr. O’Brien with a shock of orange hair.

People familiar with the situation say Mr. O’Brien doesn’t plan to quit Tonight Show, but he doesn’t plan to accept a later time slot either, suggesting he is holding out for a generous settlement.

One of the people close to NBC said the network could decide to pay at least part of Mr. O’Brien’s contract without putting him on the air-effectively blocking him from jumping to another network for that period. That person said Mr. O’Brien’s salary could be in the range of $10 million to $14 million a year.