by Carter, Bill
Jay pointed out that the affiliate managers he had talked to were completely supportive. One, Jim Waterbury from Waterloo, Iowa, thought the show was doing so well he wondered if NBC could run it twice, once in prime time.
That’s great, Klores said, telling him that was the kind of stuff they needed to get out. “Wright is sitting on the fence now hoping the fairy godmother comes along and saves him,” Klores said. “You’ve got to come out and talk about your feelings.” But Klores wondered if that was possible for Jay, who kept his emotions so astonishingly, maddeningly under check.
Klores’s plan was an all-out assault: first a big shot across NBC’s bow in the press, then a whole lot of calls to affiliates to stir them up. Maybe an advertiser or two could endorse Jay publicly. “You’re a guy whose done a good job,” Klores said. “You’ve worked your ass off. You’ve got to talk about it. And it’s okay if you sound angry. The overwhelming point is that NBC is treating you shabbily.”
Leno was uncertain, because he didn’t know how it would play. Would it only make the NBC guys in New York more determined to be rid of him if he challenged them this way?
But he was certainly angry about how unfair it was. And one image came to mind that had some real impact on him. It was the last scene from the Robert Redford movie Three Days of the Condor. The hero, a loyal, true-blue American spy on the run from assassins—unsure who are his friends and who are his enemies, but certain that right is on his side—decides to take the only action he can think of that will ensure that the world knows what’s going on, what’s been happening to him: He calls the New York Times.
When Klores suggested to Leno that he call the Times, Jay finally saw the real wisdom in this plan. He could make his case; the affiliates would read it and come to his defense. NBC would see what a strong constituency backs Jay Leno. He told Klores to set up the phone call.
On the morning of Wednesday, December 23, two days after Bob Wright’s crucial meeting with David Letterman, Jay Leno was the lead story in the New York Times culture pages. In the interview, Jay expressed his “surprise and disappointment” with how he was being treated by the NBC executives. He made his points about how happy the affiliates and advertisers were and asked, “Am I crazy? I feel like a guy who has bought a car from somebody, painted it, fixed it up and made it look nice, and then the guy comes back and says he promised to sell it to his brother-in-law.”
Leno specifically ruled out switching places with Letterman. “I’m not going to do some little happy hour from Omaha at 12:30,” he said. Instead, if Dave got the job, he said, he would “of course” go to CBS. Not that he had anything against Dave personally. As always, Leno acknowledged his great debt to Letterman for boosting his career when he was a frequent guest on “Late Night” in the mid-eighties. “I wouldn’t have this job if not for Dave,” Leno said. “Dave is worth whatever somebody wants to pay him. Anything I can do toward keeping him at NBC, I’d do. Dave is truly a star and terrific, and this is a terrible position NBC is in. But fragging your own soldier doesn’t make any sense to me.”
Leno made his points strongly, but he still sounded more hurt than angry, more incredulous that his good work was going unappreciated. He confirmed the split inside the NBC executive ranks, with the West Coast backing him and the East Coast apparently going for Letterman. “NBC’s West Coast executives have said everything is okay,” Leno said. “But the East Coast people won’t say that.” He added that he had talked with Bob Wright, who did not give him the assurances he wanted. “He said they don’t know what they’re doing yet,” Leno said. “I appreciate the candor, but it does disappoint me. NBC is like a guy with two girlfriends who doesn’t know which one he’s going to marry on January 15. And the longer you wait, the madder they both get.”
Leno said he had received a lot of input from NBC research about what worked on the show and what didn’t, and he was trying to be responsive to that. For example, he was adding more comedy to the show. The bottom line, Leno said, was that the show was clearly working. The numbers proved it. “If you’re saying business is business, this just doesn’t seem like good marketing to me.” Among other things, he said, NBC’s public dithering was bound to hurt him even if they now decided to keep him on the “Tonight” show, because NBC was letting the world know they had doubts about him. “I just want to be judged by my performance,” Jay said, restating his pledge that “if I’m not doing well, I ought to be out.” Leno concluded by saying he really didn’t think NBC would do this to him. But he wasn’t absolutely sure, and “that’s the annoying part.”
If not quite the righteous anger that Dan Klores had wanted, Jay had at least gone public with how annoying it was to be in this shaky position. Jay had gone on the offensive; he had taken his fight to the press—and he was not going to stop there. The next step was to call the many NBC affiliates he knew well, whom he had helped by providing promos or anything else whenever they asked. Once he felt free to express his feelings, Jay was going to express them to anyone who would listen.
In New York, most of the executive group was preparing for their escape for the Christmas holidays; many of them, including Bob Wright, headed to the Rockies for their families’ annual skiing trip, Wright had other plans as well. He knew he would be sharing the slopes in Aspen with an important contact—Michael Ovitz. They had agreed to get together one day during the holidays to talk about a new proposal for David Letterman.
Some of the other New York executives who were backing Letterman began to get a bit nervous as Leno’s PR campaign started rolling in the press. They hoped that Wright would get together with Ovitz fast and get a deal done before some of the added pressure from Jay’s campaign with the press and the affiliates started to erode Wright’s resolve.
At 6:45 on Christmas Eve, Mike Ovitz was in his Aspen condo with his family, getting ready for dinner after an exhilarating day of skiing. They had only just arrived; nothing had happened with Wright, and the two men hadn’t even set a day yet for their meeting. Ovitz didn’t have Letterman or any other business on his mind. Nothing ever happened on Christmas weekend; everyone was away, everything shut down, even in Hollywood.
So when the phone rang, Ovitz immediately thought of trouble. When he heard it was David Letterman on the line, his concern grew. In the back of his mind, he wondered if Letterman had heard something he hadn’t heard from NBC.
But when he got on the line, Letterman greeted him so affectionately that Ovitz knew this wasn’t about a crisis. It was about something else.
“I’m just sitting here at home,” Letterman told him, and Ovitz immediately calculated that it was 8:45 in Connecticut, rather late on Christmas Eve, and Dave was home. He hoped he wasn’t stewing but relaxing. He sounded relaxed.
“I’m here in front of the fire,” Letterman said. “And I decided I wanted to tell you something. I just wanted you to know that I never felt so good in my life. Things are going so well for me. I feel secure and well protected. And I think I have you to thank for it. I just wanted to call and tell you that.”
Ovitz had represented many of the most glamorous and powerful stars in the world. He had been thanked in person by scores of them and even, occasionally, on the stage on Oscar night. But he never stopped appreciating the sentiments; and from David Letterman, a star he hadn’t even known before they started this adventure together, the words were especially affecting.
Ovitz thanked Dave and told him they would be talking soon. They wished each other a happy holiday and hung up.
For all the reasons that Rick Ludwin had for supporting Jay Leno over David Letterman, he made his case most passionately on the different ways the two stars responded to the needs of the network. Ludwin had had personal experience with those differences. In one episode, Ludwin had encountered a vivid example of Letterman’s treatment of NBC executives that he would never forget, chiefly because of what it did, not to him, but to another NBC executive.
Sissy Biggers had been with “Late Night”
for its entire run on the air. She was the network executive as signed to the show, which meant she sat in on the tapings and once in a great while raised a question about some word that was said or some piece of material that crossed a boundary of taste. Biggers was also responsible for “Saturday Night Live,” but that was just once a week in the TV season; “Late Night” was a year-round assignment. For the most part it was a year-round joy for Biggers, who loved working with the show. It meant staying somewhat late in New York every day instead of getting home to her husband and two little daughters. But Biggers had a deep commitment to Letterman. She sat each night on the “back deck,” as the last row of seats in the control room was called, showboating with everyone and marveling at the incredible Letterman talent.
In the early years of the show’s run, Biggers was responsible for putting together the parties that followed each year’s anniversary special. She took great pride in trying to top herself party after party. Dave came to the parties, usually reluctantly, and every year Biggers would look forward to the kind word he always had for her. It was social; it was outside the pressure of the nightly grind; and Sissy Biggers cherished that nice moment with Dave.
In February 1992 the anniversary show was something truly special—a celebration of Dave’s tenth year on the air. Even in the midst of his deep estrangement from NBC—and this was before any of the pitch meetings, when Letterman was still feeling scarred by the rejection of not getting the “Tonight” show—this was an huge network event, set to be one of NBC’s biggest draws in the February sweeps month. The big show was set for Radio City Music Hall, where Dave would do two tapings on a Saturday night, with the broadcast show, to air the following Thursday, a mix of the best moments from each taping.
The parties had been removed from Biggers’s direct jurisdiction by this time; NBC Productions thought they had gotten much too costly and now handled the budget for them itself. They were, of course, much smaller than they had been when under her direction. And the invitations were left to the Letterman people.
Several weeks before the event, Jack Rollins, Dave’s manager, who was then also the executive producer of the show, stopped Sissy one night to tell her that the tenth anniversary party was being held after the second taping at Michael’s Restaurant, and that she should bring along her husband. Rollins also told Sissy to let Rick Ludwin know about the party. Ludwin came into town shortly after that, and Sissy told Rick there would be a party at Michael’s. Both Biggers and Ludwin subsequently got goofy photocopied invitations from Rollins’s office.
The Friday before the taping of the anniversary special, Biggers got a call in her office from Jack Rollins. He clearly sounded uneasy as Biggers greeted him on the phone.
“Sissy, it’s Rollins,” he said. “Um, I really don’t know any other way to say this, so I’ll just come right out and say it. Um, I’m going to have to uninvite you to the anniversary party.”
Biggers’s breath was caught short; she was stunned to silence by the impact of what Rollins had just said.
“I’m really sorry,” Rollins said. “But I was going over the invitation list with Dave and, well, when I got to the NBC people, he felt it was really inappropriate for you and Rick to be coming to the party, that the party is really for the people who really work on the show.”
The people who really work on the show. The words cut through Biggers like a propeller blade. And the pain went deeper when Rollins went on to add that “only Rosemary Keenan would be coming to the party.” Keenan also worked for NBC. She was the publicist assigned to “Late Night,” whom everyone on the show liked enormously. Rosemary was on a lower rung at NBC than Sissy, but she had passed Dave’s test of “people who really work on the show.” Sissy hadn’t. She had been put into the same classification as Rick Ludwin—the NBC enemy.
Biggers knew how she was supposed to react: She was supposed to be polite and professional. She was that kind of person; she was brought up that way. “I see, Jack,” she said. “I understand this is putting you in an awkward position. I will let Rick know. Thank you for telling me.” And she hung up the phone.
It was a devastating slap in the face for Sissy Biggers, who had cared so much about Letterman’s show, tried so hard to see that he was happy, paid the price of being in New York late each night, of being a mother away from two daughters under five years old. But she had paid it happily, because she believed so strongly in David Letterman.
She cried all the way home on the train.
The next day, when Ludwin got to town, he tried to comfort Biggers, telling her he could understand why they would do this to him, but he just couldn’t accept the fact that they would do it to her. He spent the day telling her over and over, “Me, yes. You, I don’t understand.”
That night Bob Wright turned up with his wife, Suzanne, and went to the first taping of Letterman’s special. He found Dave’s assistant, Laurie Diamond, and asked her innocently if there was going to be a party afterward. Diamond realized Wright did not know anything about the showdown over NBC invitations and that she was thus completely on the spot with the president of NBC. Diamond did the only thing she could; she said she had to check with Dave. Letterman, caught up in the pressure of doing two shows at Radio City, just told her to go ahead and invite him. So Bob Wright and Rosemary Keenan would represent NBC at the tenth anniversary party of “Late Night with David Letterman.”
In between Letterman shows, Wright walked over to studio 8H in 30 Rockefeller Plaza to take in that night’s edition of “Saturday Night Live” and he ran into Rick Ludwin. Wright, again innocently, asked if he’d see him over at the Letterman party. Ludwin then told him the story of how he and Sissy Biggers had been disinvited by the Letterman people.
After the party snub, Ludwin would always have an incident he could pull out of his pocket to demonstrate just what NBC had to deal with in David Letterman.
For Biggers the episode provided carte blanche not to give a damn about David Letterman anymore. But she never really felt that way. She never stopped waiting for Laurie Diamond to call up and say “Dave wants to see you,” so she could hear him apologize. Then she could be polite and professional, the way she was brought up to be, and say, “Oh, stop it, Dave. It’s fine.”
Even though they shared a hill in Aspen, Mike Ovitz and Bob Wright did not have their face-to-face meeting until the first of the year, the last weekend they were together in Colorado. There had just been too much going on earlier, with so many other people in the industry in town for the holidays—all the parties and the other social occasions with business associates and friends that had to be attended.
During the whole period, Jay Leno’s campaign for his job raged on. He granted other interviews. USA Today had a story on the subject for three days running. The Miami Herald ran a story that suggested the matter might not be resolved until after the top NBC executives attended a GE retreat at Boca Raton in the second week of January. On December 31, the Los Angeles Times led its “Calendar” section with a story about the near-unanimous affiliate support for Jay Leno. In an informal poll of station managers, all said Jay was doing just great. Most of them echoed with startling precision the arguments Leno himself had made: He was broader-based than Letterman; he had improved the young demographics in the time period; the numbers were there.
And Jay was even using the heavy press coverage of the cold shoulder he was getting from NBC management to excellent use on the air, mocking NBC for their indecision. In one monologue joke, he revealed that NBC really stood for “Never Believe your Contract.” Jay’s feistiness reminded a lot of viewers of shots they had heard another late-night host taking at NBC. But they were playing very well for Jay, and only adding to his increasingly potent case on his own behalf.
At various vacation spots the NBC executives on Letterman’s side exchanged worried phone calls all week about the impact this PR bombardment might be having on Bob Wright. They also began asking who else might be talking to Wright and what they migh
t be saying. They suspected that he was still undecided enough about what to do that the latest information he had might be the information he took to the meeting with Ovitz.
Their suspicions were confirmed soon after the meeting. Ovitz placed a call to Peter Lassally and Robert Morton in New York. They had eagerly awaited this call, hoping it would bring the news that Wright had asked Ovitz what it would take to get Dave to drop the CBS offer and sign on for the “Tonight” show.
But Ovitz said no, he didn’t have a deal offer from NBC yet, but he did have something different to report. He told Lassally and Morton that Wright had brought along a shopping list of sorts, made up of complaints about Dave’s response to various requests by NBC and its executives. It was all about how Dave was generally uncooperative; how he fought over every little thing, even the promos and the guests; how NBC needed to be able to book guests from its shows on the “Tonight” show, and they simply couldn’t have Dave resisting or then agreeing only to go on the air and pick on somebody that NBC needed to promote. And, one tiring Ovitz said Wright really wanted to know: How can NBC be sure Dave will really sell the show and be a team player when he still does things like excluding entry to his anniversary party to NBC executives?
Lassally stared down at the phone in stunned silence. He didn’t know whether to scream or laugh out loud. Refused NBC executives entry to a party? Lassally knew exactly the incident that Ovitz was talking about because he had spoken with both Ludwin and Biggers about it at the time. He had even told Dave that this was a terrible thing to do, that he was wrong to treat people like that and should apologize. But this was what Bob Wright was discussing with Mike Ovitz in their desperate, almost last-minute negotiations on the slopes in Aspen? Lassally was simply dumbfounded.