by Carter, Bill
And then Hudson said the situation in her mind carried certain parallels to another NBC talent relationship disaster, one that ended up giving NBC an extended scorching in the press and almost destroyed another of its franchise shows. Hudson said this deal reminded her of Pauley/Norville.
It was like opening up a giant scab that everyone had stopped paying attention to and hoped had somehow healed. In the summer of 1989, a move to juice up the increasingly stodgy “Today” show by adding a young, attractive news reader named Deborah Norville had gone humiliatingly wrong for NBC. Norville had been perceived by the press and public as an interloper and threat to the popular cohost of the program, Jane Pauley. Eventually Pauley quit the show, Norville did replace her, and the show went into an immediate tailspin that it only pulled out of after Norville departed and was replaced by a far more popular female host, Katie Couric.
When Hudson invoked the specter of Pauley/Norville, it summoned up images of NBC depicted as callous to its longtime stars, disrespectful of substance, and always looking for something a little sexier and glitzier.
But that imagery truly outraged one of the Letterman supporters, Dick Ebersol, who had been one of the key decision makers three years earlier when Deborah Norville was added to the “Today” show. “Wait a minute,” Ebersol said, stopping Hudson as soon as the names were uttered. “How is this Pauley/Norville all over again? You mean to tell me that Letterman, who’s been here for ten years, whom you shafted by the way this decision was made in the first place, is Norville and Jay is Pauley? How does that work?”
Hudson said that was how the public would see it, but to Ebersol there was no way in the world it would be seen that way. He said one segment of the audience might be upset, but another would be pleased no matter which way NBC decided. “You are not going to have the whole world pissed off at you,” Ebersol said, “like I did in the ‘Today’ show mess.”
Ebersol and the other Letterman backers argued that this decision should come down to what was the better show over the long haul, what works and what doesn’t, and that all the other issues should be tossed out.
But the Leno supporters said the issue of what the host will do and won’t do for his network was very much a major consideration. Ludwin, Littlefield, and Agoglia brought back their arguments about Letterman’s unwillingness to cooperate. He’ll stiff us, they said. He won’t go out and do the hard work to help the network. The Letterman backers asked how they could possibly say this with such certainty when Letterman had never been asked to function as host of the network’s primary late-night show before.
On and on the argument went, with Bob Wright maintaining a scrupulously neutral position, never tipping his hand, just asking for opinions around the table.
One opinion came from outside the basic NBC group. Jack Welch, finished with the other GE meetings, happened to pass by in the hall in the midst of one heated exchange. He and Dennis Dammerman, the chief financial officer for GE, ducked into the meeting for a short time. Welch listened for a few minutes, then contributed just a few thoughts. He was not a regular late-night viewer, so he wouldn’t presume to make a call based on taste in comedy. His essential point was that, as always, he would support the best long-term business deal. However, he said, if the decision seemed to come down to a tie from all angles, he would cast his vote on the side of loyalty.
Jay Leno had hung in there through some tough times, and that made a case for his loyalty. David Letterman’s loyalty was being questioned all over the room by the executives who saw him as either nasty or impossible to deal with.
But Littlefield made a more telling point, as least as the Letterman backers saw it. He asked a question about Letterman’s stability, based on how he sometimes acted even when there was no crisis to speak of. The tales of Letterman’s locking himself in his office after a show, berating himself, and cutting himself off totally from communication with the outside world were well known inside NBC. Now Littlefield and Agoglia wondered out loud: What happens if something goes wrong on the show and we lose contact with this guy? What if something goes wrong for a month? And it always could, of course. There could be technical problems, the lighting could be bad, the camera focus could be off. It was suggested that this could be risky territory in trying to deal with a personality like Letterman.
And the money issue came up. They discussed what might happen if NBC bit the bullet and offered the show to Letterman. What would it really cost? How far did the network have to go to match CBS? And what about Leno? He had told the New York Times he would immediately quit to go to CBS if Letterman got the show. If he did, wouldn’t NBC be out from under the penalty payment of between $10 million and $11 million it was obligated to pay Leno to settle out his two-year contract? If he didn’t quit, would he settle for some smaller increment of the penalty: $3 million, or maybe $6.5 million, his full current salary for another year?
The meeting limped on past midnight. Voices grew softer as they grew tired. Despite all the words the issue still seemed unresolved because Bob Wright had said nothing about which way he was leaning. The voting was clearly heavily on Leno’s side. But Wright hadn’t heard what he wanted to hear. He wanted to hear how he could keep his whole late-night franchise together, not who was better or who would win. To Wright it seemed that the people backing Letterman liked Jay personally and wanted to see him stay if possible. But to Wright many of the people supporting Leno had not bothered thinking about what it might take to keep Letterman as well. Wright still made the point: “The issue isn’t black-and-white. Black-and-white, we lose.” Wright knew he would soon be talking to Mike Ovitz, and he had promised him he would come up with some formula for keeping David Letterman.
The group in the suite, exhausted by the argument and hot from the crowded, close room, began to break up. They signed off over the speakerphone with the two executives back in Warren’s office in Burbank. Ludwin and Cardinal said their good-byes and punched the line dead.
In the next office, Jay Leno was so edgy and excited he had to hold in his urge to leap up and run out of there. He had sat in his tiny room with the photocopier and shredder and listened in on the entire conference in Boca Raton. He had taken notes on all of it, and now he had specific quotes from specific people on what they thought of him and his show. Best of all, he knew exactly who was for him and who was against him, and what all the arguments were. It had been intense and sort of thrilling, Jay concluded, like the Hardy Boys hiding in a cave to figure out a mystery. Jay was proud of himself. He had taken some action—and he had pulled it off. Staying quiet, breathing softly throughout the meeting, he had heard it all as Ludwin and Cardinal listened to the talk over Warren’s speakerphone. At one point the thought had crossed his mind: What if somebody opens the door and finds me in here? But in a second he had laughed that off. “What are they going to do?” he thought, suppressing another laugh. “Fire me?” Jay sat still and quiet right where he was for several long minutes after the call ended. He wanted to be absolutely sure that Ludwin and Cardinal were out the door and gone. He sat there looking over the notes he’d made as best he could in the near-dark of his little hiding place. After what seemed like half an hour—though he realized it was probably a lot shorter than that—Leno decided he could leave. He carefully gathered up his notes, pulled his chair out quietly, and listened at the door. He heard nothing, so he slowly opened the door and peeked out. The offices seemed deserted. Out he came, the host of the “Tonight” show, emerging from his listening post in the shadows.
As he did, a janitor was just walking in through the glass doors of the executive suite. He spotted Leno slinking through John Agoglia’s secretary’s office, and he said, “Hi.”
“Hi,” Jay answered, muttering quickly that he “just needed to get some stuff up here,” while he kept moving right past the janitor, being polite with a “have a nice night, see you,” and then strolling out the door, down the hall, down the stairs, a quick left turn, and finally outside, in the alley
, near the truck, into the truck, and pulling away. Just like that. A neat, nearly flawless spying operation.
Jay Leno laughed himself silly all the way home.
Jay told Mavis all about it when he got home, and they cracked up together at his sheer brazenness. When Jimmy Brogan arrived about midnight to start work on Thursday night’s monologue, Jay told him the story of the closet and included the encounter with the janitor. All the while Jay was laughing, though, Brogan had to wonder if Jay had put himself at more risk than he seemed to realize. It was a wild and strangely thrilling night for Leno. He said, “I know everything. I know who likes us, who doesn’t like us. I heard John Agoglia talk about the contract. I heard Dick Ebersol say why he likes Letterman. I heard Wright say he still doesn’t know what he’s going to do. I heard John Rohrbeck say Dave would beat us in the big cities. I heard it all!” As Leno described it, it sounded like a kid’s prank: listening in on the stairs as the adults revealed their secrets.
The next day Leno couldn’t resist playing with his inside information. When he saw Rick Ludwin, he cornered him and said, “So John Rohrbeck’s a big Letterman fan, huh?” Ludwin tried to bluff his way through it, saying that that wasn’t necessarily true, that there were people supporting both sides. So Leno told Ludwin he knew what Rohrbeck had said about him, and threw a few of Rohrbeck’s lines out just to see Ludwin’s face go ashen in disbelief. He also mentioned that whatever happened he would never just quit this job—and, by the way, he certainly wouldn’t settle for a payout of his salary, making sure to mention the exact figures that had been thrown out as what he might be willing to accept as a settlement. He didn’t tell Ludwin how he knew what he knew.
Mostly Jay wanted to reach Warren Littlefield, but the meetings had resumed in Boca Raton and Warren wasn’t available. Jay kept calling back all day, trying to catch Warren in his room. Much later in the evening he called and tracked Warren down to one of the meeting rooms. He found out he had just missed him; Warren had told people he had to jump back to his room for a minute.
Jay made a supposition, and waited just a minute or two before dialing Littlefield’s room again.
Warren wanted to make use of the first little break in the long day and evening of meetings. He got back to his room, tossed some of his material on his bed, and headed straight for the bathroom. Just as he sat down, the phone rang. There was an extension near the toilet in the bathroom.
“Hi Warren, how’re you doing?” Leno said.
“Okay Jay, how are you doing?” Warren said pleasantly, not really surprised at a call from Jay.
“So Warren,” Jay continued, “you probably just had a long day of meetings and you walked back to your room to take a little break, probably, you know, throw your stuff down, and you walk into the bathroom just to relieve yourself, and God, what do you know? Here it is, I’m on the phone.”
At this point, Warren Littlefield started looking into the mirrors for a hidden camera. “Jay!” he said in total amazement.
But Jay, knowing he’d hit it big time on his supposition, just kept rolling. “I gotta tell you, Warren. I sure hope that GE protects its nuclear weapons better than they protect their late-night secrets.”
Littlefield laughed nervously and asked Jay what he could possibly mean.
“Well, that was quite a meeting you had last night,” Jay said, leading into a series of direct quotes of what each individual had had to say at the previous night’s meeting. Warren knew he’d heard the words said exactly that way the night before—this was no paraphrase or reconstruction of a conversation. This was exact wording.
“Holy shit, Jay,” the stunned Littlefield said. “Where the hell do you get your information?”
“Well, I may look dumb,” Leno said, “but you know, I am Italian. We know how to get information.” Jay was having a field day with poor Warren, thanking him for comments he had made, asking about other comments, laying out the sides in the arguments precisely.
Littlefield was totally blown away. By this point he was looking under the toilet for microphones. Shaken, he started fumbling for words, telling Jay the thing wasn’t over yet, he should hang in; but he should definitely not talk about what he had heard in the meeting with anyone else. Jay thanked him again and hung up.
In his office in Burbank, Leno burst into laughter. He couldn’t believe how perfectly he had hit it with Warren in the john.
But in Boca, Warren Littlefield was in a panic. He didn’t go back to his meetings. Instead he sat in his room and tried to figure out who had leaked this to Jay Leno—and how they did it. Jay knew everything. When Warren checked in with his office, his assistant, Patty, started listing the messages he had received. She told him of some calls made about a potential deal—and Warren suddenly told her to stop talking. “We can’t be sure the lines in this hotel are protected,” he said to his bewildered assistant.
Later Littlefield called home. Theresa wanted to go over the events of the day with him, especially about how the late-night story was totally dominating all the news, in the papers, on the radio, on television. It was all anyone was talking about: Jay Leno, David Letterman, and you guys in Boca. “And so what’s going on?” she asked.
Warren told her he couldn’t discuss it. Theresa was taken aback. What did he mean he couldn’t discuss it? Warren told her he thought his phones had been tapped. “Warren,” she said. “You work for NBC, not the CIA.”
“Listen,” Warren said. “I’ve never been paranoid about anything. But I just can’t discuss this. I don’t know what’s being listened to.”
After he hung up, Littlefield tried to sort it out. How had Jay found out all that? Who was talking to Jay? It was a career-risking move as Littlefield saw it. He didn’t know who to talk to about it, so he chewed it over for awhile, and as he did, he started getting more and more paranoid. Much later that night, he finally decided he had to talk to someone about it, so he called Betty Hudson in her room.
Betty was already in bed when the phone rang. She had just turned out the light, so she sat up in the dark and picked up the receiver. When Warren said hello, she could tell right away he was shaken up.
“Betty, we’ve got a big problem,” he said. He was speaking very low, as though afraid he might be overheard. “I don’t know what’s going on. I just hung up with Jay. We have a leak of such proportions. Jay knows everything. He knows who said what to whom. It was more than just somebody called him and told him about the meeting. It was like a recorded tape being played back.”
Both of them thought of Ludwin, with his intense loyalty to Jay. But Littlefield could hardly believe an executive he trusted like Rick would put his career in jeopardy by giving all this privileged information over to one of the subjects of the meeting. Warren knew he would have to call Ludwin about it. In the meantime all he knew was that he was going to keep anything important about NBC and its decisions completely to himself until he figured this thing out.
At dinner on Thursday night in Boca Raton, the NBC group talked passingly about the late-night question, but not in anything like the depth of Wednesday night. The next day, Friday, they all finished their meetings in Boca with some discussion about what would be on the agenda during NBC’s own management meetings to be held in the Westchester County business retreat in Crotonville, New York, the following month. One concept they were working on was replacing the President’s Council meetings with something called the “Executive Programming Council,” in which a small group representing NBC’s entertainment, news, and sports divisions would get together for a conference call every Monday morning to spill everything active in the network out on the table for quick discussion.
After most of the NBC executives headed for the airport, Wright convened a much smaller group one last time in the hotel business suite for some final thrashing out of late night. A group of the eight highest-ranking NBC executives gathered for about twenty-five minutes and made some final plans. Wright told them he had made a decision: He was going to t
ake a run at keeping Letterman. In not very specific terms, he gave John Agoglia some instructions: Go back to California and make the best deal you can with CAA. The executives knew that Wright had been talking with Mike Ovitz regularly. They assumed Ovitz and Wright would continue talking and that the framework of an offer was going to come together. Wright and Agoglia would be in constant touch. None of the other NBC executives was sure exactly what Bob Wright had going with Ovitz and how the deal would be structured. But something clearly was about to happen. Despite all the talk for Leno throughout the Boca Raton meetings, and the clear majority of NBC executives who had spoken up for Jay, Bob Wright had looked long-term and concluded he could not allow David Letterman to walk out the door. He had stepped up to the decision. He was going to make an offer to David Letterman that included his taking over the “Tonight” show.
That evening, just after 6:30, David Letterman was back in his office with his top staff members, going through the usual postmortem of the show they had just completed. A call came through: It was Mike Ovitz at GAA in Los Angeles. Dave excused himself and took the call.
At 7:20 P.M. the main members of the Letterman staff heard the news. One hour earlier, David Letterman had officially been offered the job as host of the “Tonight” show. The excitement went up and through everyone in the room as if the floor had been suddenly electrified. But what about the terms? The terms, as explained by Ovitz, were strange, a bit vague, and more than a little maddening.