The Late Shift

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The Late Shift Page 19

by Carter, Bill


  8

  THIS IS … CBS

  Howard Stringer, who had taken the highly visible lead in CBS’s courtship of David Letterman, thought he had found a perfect little memento to keep Letterman thinking kindly of him and his network. In a batch of historical photographs he was looking through, he just happened to see a shot from the Civil War in which a group of Union officers were standing outside a dilapidated-looking tent hospital. The caption identified the bearded, serious-looking man at the center as Dr. Jonathan Letterman, Army chief surgeon. To Stringer he looked incorrigibly grouchy. Attaching a note to a copy of the photo, Stringer immediately had it sent over to Letterman’s office at NBC. The note said: “This man is so grouchy he must be a relative. If you all decide to come to CBS, I can promise you better accommodations than those in the photograph. You will leave the Civil War at NBC far behind.”

  The photo was just a small part of Stringer’s campaign to win Letterman’s heart. His mission was to show CBS to be not only a place where Dave could get the kind of business arrangement he wanted, but also a place that he would find warm, fuzzy, and comfortable, unlike the chilly atmosphere that pervaded his NBC bunker. For Stringer this was the artistic part of the job of talent relations, a part he was unusually skilled in—for a network corporate executive. But then Howard Stringer was an unusual network president, one who had actually been on the firing lines as a producer and director, one who had actually put a television show on the air.

  The pursuit of David Letterman was in many ways a personal quest and challenge for Stringer, who had already helped stabilize what had once been the rockiest ship in television. To land Letterman would mean a chance to establish something CBS had never had through all its storied broadcast history: a late-night franchise. Stringer identified that goal early as worth almost any commitment CBS had to make to Letterman. “You do this in television all the time,” Stringer said. “You gamble on talent. You put money up front. It’s poker. You put your money on the cards you think are going to win for you.” The truth was that Howard Stringer didn’t really know how Letterman would do at 11:30, or on CBS. What he knew was Letterman was good, and good was worth having at CBS.

  Almost no one at CBS knew anything more than that about David Letterman. Stringer himself had only met him twice: once at the Peabody lunch, the other time years earlier at a softball game between Letterman’s show and the “CBS Evening News,” played in a fittingly grand location: Yankee Stadium. There they had met at third base, where Letterman tagged Stringer out.

  In his effort to get as close as he could to Dave, Stringer continued to work his growing relationship with Robert Morton, who was, conveniently, a summer habitué of the Hamptons, as were Stringer and his wife, Dr. Jennifer Patterson, a dermatologist. Morty was only too happy to partake in a regular Saturday dinner at Howards that summer. The food was good, and Howard was nothing if not excellent company.

  In the fall Stringer was eager to keep up the CBS contact with the Letterman show, so he turned to one of the few people at CBS with a genuine connection to Dave: Connie Chung. Chung, one of CBS News’s brightest stars, had been a favorite guest on the Letterman show from her days working at NBC News. They had real chemistry on the air: Dave teased Connie about her husband Maury Povich (whom he usually called “Murray”), her perky image, and her stylish clothes. In one of “Late Night’s” most famous taped sketches, Dave had gone on a hilarious “shopping tour” with Connie, helping her select some new outfits for herself, as well as a gift for “Murray.”

  But the Dave-Connie relationship had cooled a bit since her departure from NBC in 1990. She wasn’t close at hand in the NBC offices anymore. When Connie started “Face to Face,” her prime-time magazine show at CBS, she wanted Dave to appear for an interview and profile, to help supply an early ratings boost. But Dave said no. Chung all but begged Dave to do it, to the point of being in tears, asking how Dave could say no after she’d been such a good friend to his show, after she’d done anything the show had asked, even the shopping tour bit. She was told it wasn’t personal, that they were all still crazy about her, but that she had to understand that Dave simply didn’t do TV interviews like the one she had in mind.

  Even with that little contretemps, Connie was the best link to Letterman that CBS had, so she agreed to make a tape that would further the CBS effort while maybe giving Dave a few laughs. Stringer called Morton and told him, “Wait until you guys see what I’m sending over.”

  When the tape arrived, Morton took it to Peter Lassally’s office and they brought Letterman in for a viewing. Then they popped it in the VCR.

  On the tape, the plucky Chung was doing a hard sell for Letterman: “Hi, Dave,” she said after a few scenes of their famous shopping tour. “Just trying to recapture some of those fabulous moments.” She went on, “Dave, let me be blunt. Tell your people to back off and relax. Robert Morton doesn’t have to spend any more weekends at Howard’s place in East Hampton. I’m handling the deal now. David, I will take care of you. You know, David, there is no problem. Even Maury wants you to come to CBS.” Then a picture of Povich appeared. Chung went on to say she would handle CBS chairman Laurence Tisch. “Carte blanche, Dave. You name it. Stuff CAA never even dreamed of. Are you ready? Okay, first, that GE Building thing really ticked you off, right? Well, I don’t blame you.” Then a picture of GE’s headquarters appeared with a big DAVE written across the top. “That’s right: the Dave Building. Next, an unprecedented prime-time bonus clause. Picture this, Dave. The ‘CBS Evening News with Connie and Dave.’ All right, ‘David and Connie.’ The all-new ‘Circus of Stars’ hosted by Dave. ‘Murder Dave Wrote.’ ” On it went until Chung wound up with her biggest promises. “One: Exclusive rights to Maury—er—Murray material for the lifetime of your contract. Two: You don’t have to do an interview with me. Three: For one year, whenever Maury and I make love, I promise to say ‘Dave! Oh Dave!’”

  Letterman never saw that exciting exhortation. After just the first few moments of the tape, he had made a quick move for the door, saying, “I don’t want to see any more.” Morton and Lassally watched uncomfortably to the end, not blaming Connie so much as wondering about whoever helped put it together for her and how they could misunderstand the comic sensibilities of the Letterman show so badly.

  Later Stringer fared much better when he sent over another tape, a more dignified effort with Charles Kuralt, the sonorous-voiced CBS newsman, narrating a history of CBS that included the great moments of Edward R. Murrow and the famous raid on NBC that brought Jack Benny to the network. Letterman looked at the Kuralt tape—all the way through—and picked up the intended message: CBS was a network with a rich, impressive history. The broadcaster in Letterman had enormous respect for that sense of history.

  As for Jonathan Letterman, the Civil War doctor, he wound up on Peter Lassally’s wall. Letterman looked at it just once and said: “Who cares?”

  In September Stringer tried more hands-on wooing. He got tickets for Lassally and his wife and Morton and a girlfriend to attend the U.S. Open tennis tournament (long a CBS-covered event) in Flushing Meadow. They enjoyed the attention but even during a pleasant September afternoon at the tennis stadium, there were a lot more things to think about than which network had the best tennis tickets or the most storied history. For Morton and Lassally the complicated questions about money, time periods, and station lineups could all be boiled down to: What’s best for Dave?

  CBS was far from alone in the effort to curry favor at the Letterman shop. Other little gifts were arriving. One studio sent everybody hats. Bob Iger at ABC, tuned in to Dave’s taste in auto racing, gave him a tape of the previous year’s Indianapolis 500—as covered by ABC. ABC also had an even more potent ambassador than Connie Chung turn up to make its case: Ted Koppel, the anchor of “Nightline,” a show Letterman had often said he admired, visited with Letterman in his office and tried to sell a Koppel/Letterman double-header as the ultimate late-night package. Letterman was flattered
by the newsman’s attention, but he also had some reason to be disappointed. At one point in the early soundings, ABC had dropped hints that Koppel might be fed up with his “Nightline” role and want out. That would have freed up 11:30, and the attractiveness of ABC’s station lineup and its consistent appeal to younger viewers would have made the network the clear favorite to land Letterman. Letterman was not writing off the possibility of teaming with Koppel and going on ABC at midnight. But without 11:30 to offer, ABC’s other attractions lost some luster.

  Koppel’s visit was part of a savvy campaign to protect his own 11:30 turf. He had made a kind of preemptive strike at that year’s ABC affiliates convention in June when he tied his future commitment to “Nightline” directly to whatever decision the station managers of ABC’s affiliates made about it. Koppel had been frustrated for some time by the growing tendency of ABC stations to delay “Nightline” a half hour in favor of some syndicated show like “Cheers” or “Entertainment Tonight.” The news show’s “live clearance level”—the percent of the country that broadcast the show immediately after the late local news—was at a low point: just 63 percent. “Nightline” had won every honor in television and was consistently praised as the most outstanding program in network news. More than that, the program became a ratings powerhouse any time a big story broke. Still, it was an easy target for an ABC station out to make a quick buck with a syndicated show.

  But Koppel and his boss, Roone Arledge, the president of ABC News, saw an opportunity in Leno’s entry as NBC’s main man in late night. “Nightline” had a chance, if Leno proved less formidable than Carson, to increase its overall standing in the late-night ratings. And if Letterman chose to move into direct competition with Leno and split the available audience for entertainment programming, Arledge figured “Nightline” could begin to be the consistent leader in late night. So both men played a little hardball with the ABC affiliates. They said the program was at a crossroads; without more support from the affiliates, ABC News might decide to abandon “Nightline.”

  Koppel said that if more stations started delaying the program, “We’ll be forced into a slow bleed to death.” Though the program might continue to survive for a time in that weakened condition, Koppel added, he would choose not to be a part of it. “I did not work twelve years on this show to go through a slow dance of death. I will leave the program before I take part in that.”

  In effect, Koppel and Arledge were trying to reestablish “Nightline’s” position by threatening to kill it. The idea that so prestigious a show could be forced off the air because too many ABC stations wanted to cash in on “Love Connection” was intended to seem outrageous and unacceptable. By taking the step when he did, Arledge also hoped to forestall any plan by a rival executive, Phil Beuth, president of early-morning and late-night programming for ABC, to get his hands on the 11:30 time slot in a bid for Letterman that would force “Nightline” all the way back to 12:30—or off the air entirely.

  The Fox network had a potential complication as well. Before Letterman jumped into the open market, Fox had committed to a late-night talk show to star Chevy Chase. Chase, a graduate of another NBC late-night hit, “Saturday Night Live,” had been promised an 11:00 P.M. time period as part of the inducement to lure him away from his movie career. But to get Letterman, Fox would almost surely have to give 11:00 P.M. to Dave. Fox toyed with the idea of moving Letterman up to 10:30, with Chase then set for 11:30, but that was going to raise objections from the many Fox stations that ran an hour-long newscast each night starting at 10:00. And just to add a little extra spice to this mix, Chase was also a client of Mike Ovitz and CAA.

  CBS at least had no encumbrances. The network was filling late night with a patchwork of crime/action dramas that it called “Crime Time after Prime Time.” After Sajak melted away, Rod Perth had developed the idea as a sensible alternative to the programming available on NBC and ABC. In the wake of the Sajak fiasco, CBS needed to come up with something or risk being put permanently out of business in late night. The crime shows were produced on the cheap, shot in Europe in cooperation with European broadcasters who never had enough American action shows to please their audiences. Even cheap American action shows were far superior to the stuff the Europeans shot and called action shows.

  For what it was, “Crime Time” had to be considered a modest success for CBS. The network made a few pennies on the package, thanks to the heavy foreign investment, and the ratings were passable. But the clearances were awful. Most CBS stations simply saw “Crime Time” as an invitation to preempt with syndicated shows.

  That situation only figured to get worse if CBS didn’t resolve a brewing confrontation with its affiliated stations over the issue of “compensation”—the cash payments that networks make to stations for carrying their programs. Larry Tisch, the CBS chairman, thought compensation was a preposterous, archaic notion, and moved to cut it drastically that May. Stringer believed at the time that the move was ill-advised and potentially a disaster if the stations retaliated against the network—as he expected they would. The certain targets: CBS’s fragile morning news show and its barely breathing late-night lineup. Both could be undone by an affiliate revolt. And Stringer couldn’t hope to win Letterman if he couldn’t guarantee him a competitive lineup of stations. Before he could realistically bid for David Letterman, Stringer had to work within his own network to end the feud over compensation. Howard Stringer had confidence he could handle that; he’d survived bigger feuds inside CBS.

  In the Byzantine chess game of network politics, Howard Stringer was a high achiever. He had risen to run a network from the most unlikely of bases: the network news division. But then he was also a British-born Vietnam veteran who wound up serving as the most quoted spokesman for one of the most American of institutions: network television.

  Stringer, a native of Cardiff, Wales, with a degree in history from Oxford, landed in America in 1965 looking to be a journalist. He naively concluded that the fact that he was a permanent resident alien and not a citizen would protect him from the draft; it didn’t. After he was drafted, Stringer could have opted to return to England, but then he could never have had a career in America. He had already landed an entry-level job at CBS. The idea of turning tail and running back to England, abandoning this adventure he’d set upon for himself, seemed unacceptably humbling. Stringer was also convinced he could talk and charm the Army out of drafting this likable Brit.

  Not a chance. Stringer wound up serving in Vietnam for two years, where he managed to win a medal for meritorious achievement. He joined CBS News in 1968.

  Stringer’s career at CBS News was filigreed with successes, first as a director and producer of news specials and documentaries, then as executive producer of “CBS Reports” from 1976 to 1981, during that series’s last great period as the leading source of news documentaries in America. Shows produced under Stringer, including “The Defense of America,” “The Fire Next Door” (about urban decay), and “Teddy” (which undid Ted Kennedy’s run for the presidency in 1980), won virtually every important prize given in television.

  Stringer moved on to become executive producer of the “CBS Evening News with Dan Rather” beginning in 1981, steering that program to a period of dominance among the network evening newscasts. Like many others in the Machiavellian court that was CBS News in the 1980s, Stringer had compelling ambitions. But he also had wit, affability, and a gift for elegant corporate footwork. Physically he was a man of considerable size, as tall and broad as a defensive tackle in football, but not at all imposing-looking. The curly-haired, ruddy-cheeked, bespectacled Stringer was less bearlike than teddy bear-like.

  With tenacious intelligence and charm, Stringer navigated his career clear of much of the chaos that enveloped CBS News in the eighties when two news presidents were fired in quick succession. He emerged as the news president himself in 1986. Stringer was then forced to preside over a period of frightful bloodletting of staff, bureau closings, and other dra
conian cutbacks. As always he managed it splendidly, perhaps too much so for some of his critics in the division who believed he was currying favor with the new CBS boss, Larry Tisch. Certainly Stringer presented himself impressively to Tisch, who then elevated him to president of the CBS broadcast group, the top job in the network, in 1988. It was not a position that news presidents, and onetime news producers, usually attained—or aspired to.

  Stringer’s tenure included some of the worst days in CBS history, with prime time in a shambles and staggering financial losses due to gross overexpenditures on sports rights. Some outside the network saw Stringer at first as the fancy-speaking front man for Tisch, whom many considered a know-nothing nonbroadcaster in the process of wrecking a grand institution. But Stringer never lost his light-footed grace. He remained steady, and eventually his leadership steadied CBS. Stringer put together a solid combination of executives under him, reshaping management in his collegial style. CBS rebounded in 1991, defying the early analysis of the Tisch regime. The network regained prominence in prime time and matched that success in daytime and children’s programming.

  To many, CBS still seemed locked into a hidebound strategy that had narrowed its interests only to broadcasting at the very time when technology was shattering every limitation on what might be available on a TV set. Yet Stringer remained capable of an eloquent defense of that mainstream approach. Under Stringer CBS might not look visionary, but it certainly looked well managed again.

  Peter Lassally had agonized for weeks. Events were moving fast. The pitches had taken place; the other networks and the syndicators were scrambling to get their offers together for Letterman. If Ovitz could come through on finding an escape for Letterman from his entangling contract with NBC, he would soon be liberated from that network forever.

  And that was the whole problem. Because in the quiet moments after the show had ended, or in long phone conversations on the weekends, Lassally would slowly pull the truth out of Letterman: He didn’t want to go. Not to CBS or ABC or Fox or anywhere else. The thing he wanted, still wanted, was to walk out onto a stage as the host of the show he had watched when he was kid: the “Tonight” show. The dream was not dead.

 

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