The Late Shift

by Carter, Bill

  But the inclusion of the time period in the contract did tell Agoglia something: how important 11:30 had become in this fight over Letterman. It was an issue, he came to conclude, whose importance he may have underestimated. “I really may have misjudged the depth of desire for the 11:30 spot over anything else,” Agoglia said.

  NBC’s initial response to Letterman’s selection of CBS was much as expected. The network’s executives denigrated CBS’s ability to put together a truly national lineup of stations that would carry a Letterman show at 11:30. And they compared the extravagance of what CBS had offered Letterman to that network’s folly with baseball. “It’s the baseball deal all over again,” a senior NBC executive said.

  Howard Stringer laughed at the comparison, but it surely got under his skin. This was a talent deal, for a star who would appear five nights a week year-round, not a sports deal for a product that was worthwhile only in the month of October. It also cost a tiny fraction of the price CBS had paid for baseball. And David Letterman was no journeyman infielder. As Stringer saw him, he was a slugger of rare distinction, truly a wonder to behold in action.

  “This may not be like the baseball deal,” Stringer said. “But I feel like we got Ted Williams.”

  The word started coming back to Peter Lassally from his NBC contacts: There was movement; some people were speaking up for Letterman. It was still just talk, it seemed. But the names connected to it started carrying real credibility, Lassally thought. Amid all the talk from CAA about CBS and how great the deal was, Lassally kept waiting for some word that NBC was still in there as a factor to be considered. He wasn’t hearing that from Ovitz’s people; but he was hearing it from his insiders at NBC.

  Still, that meant Dave wasn’t really hearing it from anybody. And Lassally felt time was too short to let it filter its way down to Dave. Soon after the CBS announcement, he and Morty met with Dave as usual after the taping of a show, dissected what worked and what hadn’t, and settled into a discussion of what the future looked like.

  Lassally decided it was time to bring Dave in on his quiet campaign inside NBC. “It’s an outside chance,” he told him, “But I think the ‘Tonight’ show is still possible.”

  Letterman’s reaction was immediate dismissal, but Lassally pressed on. There are signs of movement, he told Letterman, hints of reconsideration. Lassally described how he had established a contact inside NBC, though he didn’t want to use Ebersol’s name. Now the contact had begun to assemble allies, Lassally said, executives who had never believed fully in the choice of Leno. They’re in there arguing with Wright about how NBC can’t afford to allow that choice to stand if it meant losing a talent like David Letterman, Lassally said. Lassally knew Dave didn’t really want to hear all this because he didn’t want to be let down again. But he told him anyway: There might still be a real fight for the “Tonight” show.

  Letterman listened to this tale of second thoughts and hints of movement and moles inside NBC, and shook his head all the way through it. “You know,” he said, “there’s just no point in considering this, boys, because I don’t think it will ever happen.”

  9

  THE EAST/WEST GAME

  Every day somebody else talked to Bob Wright about David Letterman. The conversations reverberated all through the NBC floors of the GE Building, but nowhere as loudly as inside the chrome-and-glass executive offices on the fifty-second floor. Wright had less than a month to find a way to keep Letterman, and he could feel the options closing all around him. He had come to hate the thought of Letterman walking out the door at NBC, never to return. And the picture of him walking in the door at CBS made Wright almost apoplectic. The situation gnawed at his gut like nothing he had had to deal with in his six years at NBC.

  Every meeting with his executive staff kicked up the familiar questions: Could NBC afford to lose Letterman? Would Letterman’s style of comedy work at 11:30? Was Leno over his shaky period and would his show improve? Were Leno’s strong ratings for real? And the biggest question of all: What would happen to NBC’s forty-year dominance of late night if Letterman went head-to-head with Leno?

  The dispute over which way to answer those questions was intensifying. Pier Mapes, NBC’s head of affiliate relations and sales, told Wright that his two constituencies would start a revolution if the network overthrew Leno in favor of Letterman. But John Rohrbeck, the head of the owned-and-operated stations, argued strenuously that he was truly the number one affiliate since he was in charge of the stations NBC owned and he felt the decision to keep Leno instead of Letterman was putting the financial standing of NBC’s biggest asset, its stations, at risk.

  Wright decided to try to see if a special research study could clear away some of the smoke. In early December he told Eric Cardinal, the executive in charge of research in Burbank, to set up some competitive studies between Leno and Letterman. Cardinal was to ask a batch of viewers to watch each host over a period of time and make the assessment: Which guy do you like better?

  But the research was going to take some time. As he waited, Wright was besieged by opinions. Beyond the established pro-Letterman forces, other influential NBC people began whispering Letterman’s virtues in Bob Wright’s ear. Tom Brokaw, the NBC anchorman and frequent Letterman guest, made it clear how fond he was of Dave’s work. So did Lorne Michaels, who as the creator and executive producer of “Saturday Night Live” was highly regarded both for his acumen at late-night comedy and for his long experience at NBC. Michaels had developed a strong affection for Wright and he felt confident volunteering his views. And his views were based on a sense of self-preservation. Michaels thought the fate of the “Tonight” show tied in directly to the fete of “Saturday Night Live.”

  Michaels regarded the extraordinary clearance levels of both the “Tonight” show and “Saturday Night Live” as true aberrations in contemporary television. The “Tonight” show had held up for almost four decades and “SNL” for more than fifteen years largely on the strength of their near 100 percent live clearance rates on the network. “SNL” was still one of the hottest shows on television, with more viewers in the early 1990s than it had had in its original glory days of the mid-1970s. And its appeal to young viewers was unmatched in network television. But Michaels knew the show was fragile, a true throwback to a lost era of television: It was a live weekly show put on in a studio inside a venerable New York building, a show that required expensive sets to be built by expensive technicians every week. The show turned a huge profit for NBC, but much of that profit was generated by the ultra-high rates NBC could charge in the first half hour of the telecast, when the viewing was highest. Michaels knew how crucial his first half hour was, a period that was always vulnerable to preemption for a syndicated show by a station looking for a quick hit of extra revenue. Michaels was convinced that the powerhouse clearances of the “Tonight” show had protected “SNL” on Saturdays, because if stations started to delay the start of the “Tonight” show by a half hour during the week, they would surely be more disposed toward doing the same thing on Saturdays. Keeping “SNL” alive and healthy meant an enormous amount to Lorne Michaels personally.

  Though he had expanded his career beyond television to include producing theatrical movies, and his Wayne’s World had cashed in over $100 million at the box office, Michaels had a bedrock commitment to “SNL.” He had left the show once, in the early 1980s, feeling burned-out. But the experience of being outside the show turned out to be much worse. He returned to “SNL” in 1985, following Ebersol, and set down roots as deep as they could go. Michaels intended to stay on “SNL” until the end of his career, or until it went off the air, or until the end of the network system of television—whichever came first. That gave him an intense personal interest in seeing that the “Tonight” show, the Atlas of late-night clearances, stayed as strong as possible; and that could only happen if the show had the best host possible. Lorne Michaels told Bob Wright that David Letterman was the best late-night star since Johnny Car
son.

  But if more voices in the East were speaking out for Letterman, the chorus coming from the West Coast was near unanimous: Burbank was Leno country. Those who had been involved in the original decision to choose Leno over Letterman, Warren Littlefield and John Agoglia, had no reason to reconsider at this point. They were rooting heavily for Jay’s ratings to continue to improve; that would validate their programming instincts. For Littlefield that validation was especially critical because the NBC prime-time lineup was showing few signs of resurrection at this point. The usual Hollywood rumblings that accompanied the scent of failure started to include Littlefield’s name. The November sweeps would make or break him, the rumors went; Wright had to be out looking for a new programmer. Littlefield kept true to his nature: He lowered his head and did his job. But he sure wasn’t about to stop backing Jay. After what they’d been through with the separation from Helen, Warren saw their relationship as forged by fire.

  For Agoglia, retaining Leno meant holding on to a vital piece of power. As the head of NBC Productions (NBCP), the network’s in-house production company, Agoglia now had some direct control over the “Tonight” show, which he never had when the show was owned by Carson. Now the ownership had reverted to NBCP, and would remain there if Leno kept the job. Letterman’s deal with CBS gave him ownership of his show; John Agoglia had no reason to want to see the “Tonight” show plundered from his personal fiefdom again.

  But as ardently as Littlefield and Agoglia supported Jay, they were surpassed by Rick Ludwin, the head of the network’s late-night division. When Ludwin and the head of production for NBCP, Gary Considine, would stop in New York to meet with the Letterman producers, Morton and Lassally would take turns browbeating them over the decision to choose Jay over Dave. It was partly sincere, but partly pure entertainment as the Letterman producers jumped around the room, screaming, yelling, telling the NBC executives how foolish they were, how Letterman towered over Jay in terms of sheer talent. Considine laughed at the display, feigning that the assault was killing him. But Ludwin got defensive and terribly offended that they would pick on Jay that way.

  Morton was convinced that Ludwin, who earlier in his career had worked on “The Mike Douglas Show,” considered himself the father of the new “Tonight” show, and with Helen Kushnick out, was now able to fill some of the duties of executive producer. If it had been offered, he believed Ludwin would have grabbed the job.

  But Ludwin’s devotion to Jay was only part of his overall dedication to all his late-night children. One of the producers who worked under Ludwin said: “Rick lives for late night; it’s his whole life.” Ludwin didn’t have a family; he wasn’t married. He put everything he had into his work.

  He was no less vigilant about “Late Night with David Letterman.” Ludwin taped every one of Dave’s shows and watched them the next day—without fail. He was a huge fan of Letterman’s, often telling people he was Dave’s biggest fan. But he had never got close to the show. Partly it was the distance between Burbank and New York—both physically and philosophically. But mainly it was a matter of personalities. Ludwin, who always looked preppy and somewhat square with his neatly trimmed hair, wire-rim glasses, and blue blazers, didn’t mesh with the more renegade sensibilities of the Letterman show. Of course, the fact that he was so clearly one of “them”—an NBC executive—played a significant role in that. Ludwin tried to break through and develop some kind of relationship at “Late Night,” but it never worked out. He wasn’t bitter about it; he simply accepted the situation for what it was, and gave himself “credit for attendance.” That was a standard Ludwin phrase; network executives often had to be satisfied with credit for attendance.

  But clearly Rick Ludwin was getting credit for a lot more than that from Jay Leno. Jay’s warm, welcoming style lightened Ludwin’s day. Ludwin had essentially the same kind of regular, nice-guy personal style that Jay had. Jay was right there every day in Burbank, being pleasant, listening to suggestions, fulfilling every network request for promos or guest bookings or tickets for so-and-so’s Aunt Gladys and Uncle Ed, perfectly willing to bring Rick into the running of the show. Nobody at NBC had more reason than Rick Ludwin to be eager to do the dirty work in the pits for Team Leno.

  The Leno team kept up its own drumbeat in Bob Wright’s ear; Jay is going to win, they told him day after day. Forget about what was being written in the press about Jay being stodgy and not as freewheeling and funny as he used to be. The media, as the pro-Leno forces saw it, were part of the enemy. Most of them were based in New York anyway—Letterman country—and newspaper writers never had the same taste as the people. Trust the everyday people, the West Coast executives told Wright. They’re voting differently from the press.

  And remember, they said, that David Letterman has only done a 12:30 show, a truly late-night, edgy, not everyday-people-friendly show. Littlefield and Agoglia had that image of the nasty Dave branded into their memories. They argued for Jay as the broad-based comedian who could play to the big crowd at the earlier hour, where Dave simply couldn’t.

  Wright was not at all sure of that, not if he could believe what he was hearing from Dick Ebersol, who was his contact into the Letterman show. In phone calls, Lassally had been filling Ebersol in on Dave’s intentions. Dave recognized the need to adjust the show for 11:30, Lassally told Ebersol. He’ll keep the key ingredients of “Late Night,” Lassally said, but will add more mainstream guests. And he’ll be able to get more of those guests if he’s based in Burbank.

  After hearing that message, Wright told the pro-Leno executives that Letterman could change his approach for 11:30. But Littlefield and Agoglia dismissed the possibility. Dave’s not capable of a change that drastic, they told Wright. And then they pointed to the numbers: Jay is doing fine, they said over and over. Look at the numbers. Jay will hold up. Jay is going to win.

  “You don’t understand,” Wright told them. “It isn’t a question of who wins. We lose. When you have two entertainers going after essentially the same audience and the same show and the same time period, you both lose.”

  Wright had a hard time getting that message through. What he heard back was: At worst the audiences for the time period would grow; Jay would win, Letterman would do okay, and NBC wouldn’t be hurt. “That’s a hell of a risk to take,” Wright responded. “If we don’t have to take that risk, I would rather not, thank you. We already have plenty of risks in prime time. We don’t have to test a theory to see whether 11:30 can withstand two big stars going against the same audience, when we’ve been there by ourselves for thirty years. That isn’t a risk high on my list of risks.”

  The answer obviously was to try to keep both men. But to find a way for Letterman to coexist with Leno meant finding a way for him to live happily without the “Tonight” show. Wright felt he could make a strong case to Dave about how he was going to be taking on an enormous risk in shifting to 11:30, where he would surely have to make changes in his show. This was a risk that he could avoid if he stayed with NBC. Wright was prepared to offer Letterman all kinds of options beyond staying in his 12:30 show. NBC could provide much more exposure in prime time, or any other part of the day Dave might want to invade. Dave could test his strength with wider audiences at no real risk, because he’d keep his 12:30 base of operations. Wright had even asked the research department to look into what effect it would have on the late local news on the NBC affiliates if the network ran a Letterman show at 10:00 P.M. each weeknight. Wright was considering offering Dave a weeknight show across the board at 10:00 P.M. as a possible fallback if that was the only way they could keep him at NBC.

  All of these options seemed promising to Wright, but he could get nowhere with them. He had no direct contact with Letterman. He spoke only to Ovitz, and Ovitz simply wasn’t listening, Wright felt. He spun out the options in phone conversations with Ovitz, but Wright came away from most of them sensing that Ovitz was always cutting him off at the pass. Every time Wright reached out, he ran into a wall that h
e believed Ovitz and others around Letterman had constructed to keep NBC out of the deal. All Ovitz could offer Wright in the way of a formula to keep David Letterman was zillions of dollars up front and an eviction notice for Jay Leno.

  Wright suspected that Ovitz had invested something of his own personal reputation in the negotiation, that Ovitz wanted to show the world how CAA could take this big television guy and move him over to CBS. As Wright read it, all Ovitz and the other CAA guys wanted to talk about was how great their package with CBS was. “Our issue is not that package,” Wright said. “That’s a blip in our life. Our issue is retaining David Letterman.”

  Finally he told Ovitz: “You’re asking us to do things we can’t do.” Bob Wright concluded he wasn’t getting anywhere dealing with Mike Ovitz.

  Peter Lassally was having his own difficulty getting a message through to Mike Ovitz. With the CBS deal secured, a deal that Ovitz clearly felt met the criteria he set for Letterman before the negotiations began, Ovitz seemed satisfied. The days passed toward the deadline and nothing seemed to be forthcoming from NBC.

  But Lassally felt Ovitz needed to know just how badly Dave still wanted the “Tonight” show. He and Morton thought that message had been communicated to Ovitz, but apparently he still did not fully appreciate the depth of Dave’s desire. They were wrong. Ovitz knew all about Letterman’s undiminished desire to take over the “Tonight” show. From the beginning Ovitz believed Dave had really come to him wanting Ovitz to get the “Tonight” show back for him. But Ovitz had moved away from NBC very early on, though he had never told that to Letterman. Lassally wanted CAA to know that he was hearing real stirrings of interest from inside NBC, suggestions that it still might happen, that the network still might see the light about Letterman. But he realized the only way for that point to get through effectively was for Dave to make it himself.