The Late Shift

by Carter, Bill

  The week after Letterman closed up shop on “Late Night,” he was still in his office at NBC. Lassally and Morton had worked out a deal with some more sympathetic executives at NBC so that the show could stay temporarily in its old offices while CBS worked frantically, around the clock, at the Ed Sullivan Theater to get their new offices finished. Dave had stopped going over to the theater to look around. Every time he went in it seemed all he could see were choking clouds of dust and hundreds of workers and artisans banging, drilling, and producing such chaos that he had to flee in a state of depression.

  That state would soon deepen. The long-awaited letter from John Agoglia arrived early that week. In legal terms it was a demand letter. Citing provisions in Dave’s employment agreement, NBC was saying that it reserved all rights to all elements of the show. All, as in every single thing they had ever done on “Late Night.” The same letter was sent to CBS. The implication was clear: Don’t tread on us—or we’ll sue your ass.

  The Letterman side wasted no time. Jim Jackoway framed a letter in response, which stipulated that the show was well aware of its rights and obligations and that the new CBS show would not infringe on any rights that NBC had.

  In truth, what had been decided was that the items specifically requested in the original letter—Larry Bud Melman and all other fictional characters the show had created, as well as the World’s Most Dangerous Band—would be abandoned. NBC had a legal right to keep those elements, the Letterman legal team concluded. But they still had no expectation that NBC would attempt to block the show from using generic comedy bits such as the Top Ten list. That seemed beyond silly.

  NBC’s executives, led by Ohlmeyer, quickly disabused them of that expectation. Speaking to reporters in July, Ohlmeyer began emphasizing that NBC not only had the right, it also had the obligation to protect what he called the network’s “intellectual property.” His comments were later backed up by Bob Wright in a press conference in California.

  NBC’s position attracted widespread derision in the press: Was the network seriously going to claim that a Top Ten list and “Stupid Pet Tricks” were “intellectual property?” But the derision missed the point. What Ohlmeyer wanted to argue was that Letterman could not go to CBS and do a show that was “substantially the same” as the one he had done for NBC—as he and his staff members had been saying all spring was their intention. Ohlmeyer implied that the Letterman people had started this dispute by trying to convince viewers they would be seeing the exact same show. But NBC owned that show, Ohlmeyer said, and still intended to go out and sell it in the syndication or cable TV market. Ohlmeyer, who had built his career on the skillful presentation of competitions and contests, clearly didn’t mind putting up his dukes on this issue. He never said NBC would sue if David Letterman put a Top Ten list on his CBS show. What he said was that if the new show looked like a carbon copy of the old one, NBC would be obliged to protect its property.

  When Letterman met the press himself a few days after Ohlmeyer held a press conference in Los Angeles, he didn’t pass on the opportunity to perforate Ohlmeyer with a fusillade of wit. He said, “The name of the new show, which is a setback for us automatically, was going to be ‘Late Night with Don Ohlmeyer,’ so we can’t do that.” Then he added, “One of two things will happen. We’ll just do all of the stuff that we want to do and that will be fine. Or we’ll do all the stuff that we want to do and they’ll sue us and that will be fine. By the way, if that comes to trial, get a seat down front.”

  Despite the public bravado, Letterman was in what he called a “blue panic” behind the scenes when it looked as though NBC were going to sue him—which may have been part of NBC’s motivation. Letterman was genuinely worried. “What the hell are we going to do?” he asked his staff.

  What the staff decided to do was to take every legal precaution. A special litigator was hired and told to prepare the case. They came to expect legal action by NBC on the Friday of the first week on the air—after enough time had elapsed for NBC to make some sort of claim that they were doing the same show. The legal staff concluded there was no real chance for NBC to win an injunction, but they were fully prepared for NBC to try.

  Meanwhile the writers, producers, and the star went about the business of planning a new show in a new place. With some lingering trepidation, they moved into their new home at the Sullivan Theater the second week in July. The transformation was nothing short of amazing. CBS, having spent $4 million to acquire the theater, poured another $4 million into its restoration. The costs soared because the theater was declared a landmark building by the local historical society; that mandated that certain original elements, such as some stunningly ornate molding, be fully restored. The CBS effort, led by an administrative senior vice president named Ed Grebow, encountered further unexpected difficulties including the discovery of a stream running under the building and the necessity of exterminating a colony of rats the size of wolverines. Somehow Grebow kept the enormous effort moving, and had the offices ready for Letterman and crew—with air-conditioning in working order to stifle a sizzling New York July—almost precisely on schedule.

  Letterman was truly amazed. He didn’t see how anyone could get a building fixed up that quickly, especially in New York, where nothing was ever finished on time for any amount of money. After just one day of feeling a bit strange in a new office, Letterman fell in love with the place. It was new, fresh, clean, with big windows overlooking 54th Street and Broadway. Letterman quickly grew intrigued by the whole place; the columns, the beams, the piping, the corridors below ground level that were almost like catacombs. He loved everything about it.

  But the work wasn’t coming very easily. From the moment they closed up shop at NBC, it seemed that every pent-up and put-off illness descended on the entire staff. Producer Jude Brennan started getting migraines; people started going lame from running. Letterman himself developed a summer cold that afflicted him for weeks. Everyone seemed to be falling apart physically. But nobody took vacation. The launch of the new show loomed like the opening of a Broadway show—which in one sense was exactly what it was.

  Letterman himself did not feel exhilarated at that point; instead he felt an overwhelming sense of responsibility and obligation. He tortured Morton and Lassally about production items; Rob Burnett, the head writer, about the comedy material; and everyone else about every other detail: guest bookings, camera positions, and CBS’s on-air promotions. He was fitful about every aspect of the project. There was never a sense of “I can hardly wait.” It was all a sense of “We have to do it, we have to do it, we have to do it.”

  They were out of NBC; they were into CBS, and David Letterman still hadn’t stopped feeling he was in the middle of the most bizarre period of his life.

  For the Fox network, late-night had become the black hole in an otherwise rosy success story. Chevy Chase was supposed to end all that. Lucie Salhany, the new head of Fox Broadcasting, had already fashioned one late-night success when she brought Arsenio Hall to Paramount. She made fitting the late-night piece into the Fox puzzle an immediate priority. Salhany put on the full-throttle effort to recruit Chase, who had used his breakout year as a performer on “Saturday Night Live” to build a film career, starring in a long string of comedies. Only a few, mainly his “National Lampoon Vacation” films, had been truly successful. Many others, including Oh Heavenly Dog, had been loud flops. But Chase was inarguably a star, and he had proved once that he could make a mark on television.

  Salhany was seduced by one other factor: Chase had a truly outstanding Q-score. The Q-rating, produced every spring by a Long Island-based company called Marketing Evaluations Inc., had long been used by network programmers as a casting device. It measured a performer’s level of recognition and popularity. But the Q-ratings were based on certain categories, and they did not indicate how a performer would score outside his category. Chevy was in a group labeled “Comedy Actors and Comedians.” He was ranked an exceptionally good fifth place in that
group, trailing only Bill Cosby, Tim Allen, the star of the top-rated sitcom “Home Improvement,” Robin Williams, and Dana Carvey. Chase was even ahead of Billy Crystal.

  Chevy’s Q-score of 39 was well ahead of both Letterman and Leno, who could do no better than a 16. But they were in a different category, “Hosts, Announcers, DJ’s.” The Q-score really could not predict how Chase would fare against the competition in that category. It also could not give any indication whether Chevy could actually do the job of hosting a comedy/talk show.

  Doubts about that extended through most of the television industry. Chevy had been off TV for so long, and he had never demonstrated the skills that made previous hosts successful: He didn’t do stand-up at all, he had never shown he could bring out the best in somebody during an interview, and he had never especially exhibited a taste for long hours and grueling weekly work. Chevy’s one foray into this sort of thing, a shot at guest hosting the “Tonight” show in November 1986, was something of a disaster. His monologue fell flat and he seemed to be trying to top every line tossed out by his guests, who happened that night to include one Jay Leno. Still, television viewers remembered him from that first great season on “Saturday Night Live,” and he had that great Q-score. Fox wanted Chevy.

  Chase’s reasons for wanting the job weren’t hard to fathom either. Late night was one of the biggest paydays any performer could hope for. Fox’s offer came in at about $9 million a year. Chevy signed on.

  For months before Fox mounted the show, speculation was rampant that Chevy would never go through with it. People who knew him well couldn’t see him in the role. They didn’t expect him to have the energy for it, nor the willingness to banter amiably night after night. The group with that opinion did not include his agent, Michael Ovitz, who said Chevy had become a fully rounded human being with his recent devotion to family life. (Chase had a wife and three young daughters.) Ovitz predicted success for Chevy’s show. And as the summer progressed, a writing and production team was put in place. Fox even leased an old theater and named it after Chevy. Chase did the publicity rounds. He admitted he was scared about the prospect, especially with all the hype that was now surrounding the late-night competition. But Chevy said he worked best with his back against the wall.

  In New York Conan O’Brien had no Q-score to rely on. All he had was his winning personality and the underdog factor. Americans always rooted for the underdog, and the idea that a star could emerge from total obscurity had the kind of delightful storybook quality that people seemed to eat up. Even without a Q-rating Conan was popular.

  Conan’s executive producer, Lorne Michaels, was in the midst of the hardest summer of his life. He was readying his film Coneheads for release at the same time Waynes World 2 was beginning production—without a finished script. “Saturday Night Live” needed reinforcements what with Dana Carvey and several top writers gone. And then there was Conan. Michaels knew his latest protégé needed work. Conan had to get accustomed to working with writers to develop material, to finding whatever comedy a guest had to give. He had to get accustomed just to being on camera. A set had to be built back in Dave’s old studio. A band had to be hired. It was like building a house with a pile of wood and nails and no blueprint. Michaels wanted to get a show up and running as early as possible because he knew Conan would need a lot of practice before he dared take on the public.

  One other late-night opening remained unfilled. CBS had its own 12:30 show waiting for the right star. The network’s battle to win clearances from its affiliated stations made it certain that the 12:30 show couldn’t be launched anytime soon. Stations had been pushing their syndicated shows back to 12:30 to make room for Dave. They would not be willing to clear a network 12:30 show for some time—at least until they knew how Letterman was going to fare at 11:30.

  In mid-July CBS made a run at Garry Shandling anyway. At the time of the close encounter with NBC in the spring, CBS had entered the picture late, holding out to Shandling the promise of taking the show after Letterman instead of the show after Leno. But CBS didn’t go through with a true offer then, thinking it might only have been brought in to juice up NBC’s bid. At one point in the summer, Shandling seemed close to making a deal with CBS, but then he backed away. His “Larry Sanders Show” on HBO had won Emmy nominations. Shandling was getting offers to do movies. He was intrigued with the idea of becoming a comedy actor rather than a stand-up. And CBS started to wonder about the mix with Letterman anyway. Would they be too close in style? In August Shandling’s manager, Brad Grey, finally pulled Garry out of consideration for CBS’s 12:30 show, signing up instead for an extended deal to do “Larry Sanders” for HBO.

  David Letterman was on the cover of Time magazine the week before his CBS show was to premiere. He was also on the cover of TV Guide, along with Jay, Chevy, Conan, and Arsenio. The frenzy over the late-night war, the one Letterman said he would rather be exempted from, reached its peak that week. Every newspaper was writing about it. Executives from every side of the industry—networks, studios, advertising agencies—were prognosticating the outcome. The consensus: Jay would continue to win in terms of overall household ratings, but Dave would lead among the more important younger viewers. CBS had sold out its initial batch of advertising in the Letterman show, asking the same $30,000 per thirty-second unit that NBC was getting for the “Tonight” show. CBS guaranteed advertisers a 4.1 rating, with NBC setting a 4.7 figure for Leno.

  The 4.1 guarantee for Letterman was questioned by some who wondered if Dave could attain that figure with the much lower levels of clearances on the CBS stations than Leno had on NBC. The “Tonight” show was still put on the air immediately after the late local news on NBC stations covering 99 percent of the country. CBS’s head of affiliate relations, Tony Malara, had called in every one of his chits and still Letterman’s clearance level on CBS stations was under 70 percent. That meant in more than 30 percent of the country, Jay would go on a half hour earlier—an enormous advantage. In one of the country’s biggest television markets, Washington, D.C., Letterman would be delayed until after Arsenio Hall, a full hour after Jay had started on NBC.

  That advantage accounted for the conviction that Leno would hold off Letterman at least for their first season of head-to-head competition. Of course, some people at NBC didn’t foresee Leno having any real difficulty maintaining the network’s unbroken forty-year string of late-night dominance. Warren Littlefield, in the weeks before the competition commenced, looked forward and pronounced that Letterman would be “a worthy opponent” only initially because of the hype that was attending his defection to CBS. “But a long-term worthy opponent?” Warren asked. “The question is, How broad-based of an audience does he have? It was curious to me to see the press acclaim Dave’s big final show and the level of audience response. And the interesting thing is, it was like a one-night surge. For the quarter he was down from the prior year. The trend has been going down. Jay just finished his best quarter since he took over the show. Those are the trends.”

  Inside CBS, there was a quiet confidence that had nothing to do with the recent ratings trends at NBC. At CBS the confidence was based on just one thing: Dave was better than Jay. Rod Perth, the head of late-night programs for CBS, said of NBC’s decision to keep Jay instead of Dave: “If they’re proved right, I don’t understand television.” In Perth’s estimation, having watched Jay do the “Tonight” show for more than a year, “Jay can’t handle it. I don’t think he’s handled it for a long time now.” Letterman, on the other hand, had already impressed Perth and everyone else at CBS with his clear-eyed vision of what was right for him and for late-night comedy. “He’s demanding, exacting—I think he has a clear understanding of what works for him and what doesn’t,” Perth said.

  But Perth was not ready to forecast an instant sweep to the top for Letterman, leaving NBC out of business in late night. Nobody expected that. But CBS was concerned that all the positive press surrounding Letterman would create the presumption that
he was going to drive Leno right off the air. “We’re scared to death about how it’s going to be reported,” Perth said. “We know we’ll start with this huge initial rating the first week and then it will drop off. We want to make certain everybody knows we don’t expect to knock them off the perch over the short term. We’re taking a very cautious, low-key approach to it. What people don’t understand is the lineup, the distribution mechanism at NBC, is so powerful.”

  The combatants themselves took their usual disparate approaches to the imminent heavyweight showdown. For Jay Leno, all the noise and hype was energizing. The anticipation seemed to have rejuvenated Jay. “It’s very exciting,” he said at an NBC press conference about a month before Letterman’s premiere. “Let the games begin. I think this is great fun. I think late night is suddenly the most exciting part of television. Twenty years ago it was eight o’clock and nine o’clock and the sitcoms. Now I think it’s exciting. This is live television. It’s happening live at CBS; it’s happening live on the ‘Tonight’ show. It’s happening live in syndication. It’s happening live on Fox. I think it’s great,” Jay said. “It’s millionaires arguing at late night, battling for audiences. I just love it. It’s hysterical.”

  For Letterman the hype got to be just a little too overwhelming. He and his staff had made an issue of getting the proper promotional push; then when the CBS promos started airing in bulk, it seemed like overkill to Dave. Everywhere he tuned in for a time, he seemed to see his face. He was floored at the thought that his decision to jump to CBS could be front-page news in the New York Times. The day after the story appeared, he got a call from his sister, who works for the St. Petersburg Times. She said in amazement: “Do you know your picture is on the front page of the New York Times?” Letterman told her he thought it was just nuts. Then came Time, TV Guide, and every other newspaper in the country.