by Carter, Bill
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
CHAPTER ONE - COMEDY TONIGHT
CHAPTER TWO - SELL-BY DATE
CHAPTER THREE - THE CONAN OF IT ALL
CHAPTER FOUR - LANDSCAPE AT LATE NIGHT
CHAPTER FIVE - SEIZE THE JAY
CHAPTER SIX - THE TEN O’CLOCK SOLUTION
CHAPTER SEVEN - CONAN ROCKS
CHAPTER EIGHT - STILL DAVE, AFTER ALL THESE YEARS
CHAPTER NINE - THE POWER OF TEN
CHAPTER TEN - THE LATE UNPLEASANTNESS
CHAPTER ELEVEN - MANIFESTO DESTINY
CHAPTER TWELVE - MAKE LAUGHS, NOT WAR
EPILOGUE
Acknowledgements
INDEX
ALSO BY BILL CARTER
The Late Shift: Letterman, Leno, and the Network Battle for the Night
Desperate Networks
VIKING
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First published in 2010 by Viking Penguin,
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Copyright © Bill Carter, 2010
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Carter, Bill, date.
The war for late night : when Leno went early and television went crazy / Bill Carter.
p. cm.
Includes index.
eISBN : 978-1-101-44342-2
1. Tonight show (Television program) 2. Television talk shows—United States—
History—21st century. 3. Leno, Jay. I. Title.
PN1992.77.T63C375 2010
791.45’6—dc22
2010034988
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For all the Carters and everyone else who shared the love at Fourth Street and Breezy—and especially in memory of Mom (Grams), who served it up to all of us in such abundance
CHAPTER ONE
COMEDY TONIGHT
By eight thirty on the evening of May 19, 2009, a stream of cabs and limos was snaking slowly down West Forty-third Street, pulling up one by one to the doors of the venerable, somewhat shabby Town Hall. The theater was a fabled Broadway-district house, and everyone from Richard Strauss and Sergei Rachmaninoff to Louis Armstrong and Bob Dylan had played there long ago to sold-out audiences. The newly dark sky over Manhattan was clear but the temperature cool for a mid-May evening—only fifty-seven degrees.
The arriving crowd didn’t want to linger in the night air anyway, preferring to get inside as quickly as possible, if only to avoid the haranguing voices from members of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, who were arrayed in force across the street in an effort to shame the management of their employer, NBC, into offering them a new contract.
Most of the milling guests were specifically in the city on this night because it was the middle of “upfront week”—a long-standing television industry rite of spring during which the broadcast networks trot out their newly selected programs for the fall in hopes of luring cash commitments from advertisers. The gathering swarm outside the theater, arriving in packs of five and six, was mostly under thirty-five and was much better dressed and significantly whiter than the average American population. If they barely paid attention to the noise of the demonstration—or the large inflated rat looming over the proceedings—it was because they had no vested interest in the protesters’ cause. Largely buyers from ad agencies, honchos from the big Hollywood production studios, or executives from NBC’s affiliated television stations—the broadcast stations owned by other companies that carried NBC’s programs—they had turned up at Town Hall to see a night of entertainment—and to get a first look at what NBC had been telling the world was the “new paradigm” for the television industry:
Jay Leno at ten o’clock.
The network had put together the event on short notice, announcing it only a month earlier as NBC’s Comedy Showcase—a night devoted to the great tradition of NBC comedy, as exemplified by shows like Seinfeld , The Office, and Saturday Night Live. In truth, it was all about grabbing some attention during upfront week for what Alan Wurtzel, the head of research for NBC, had labeled “clearly the highest priority for the network” going into the fall television season: the new, five-night-a-week Jay Leno Show.
The evening was built around an appearance by Jay, the perennial late-night leader, now in his final weeks as host of The Tonight Show, doing his thing: classic, joke-intensive stand-up. The organizers had blocked it out so that Leno would walk out onstage precisely at ten p.m.—his symbolic debut at that hour.
The time element was one reason the evening’s show was set to start relatively late—nine p.m.—for a Broadway performance. The other was NBC’s belated entry into upfront week. The network was actually squeezing itself into a day that was technically the property of ABC, and it had to be sure to allow enough time for its advertising clients to take in the ABC presentation, which started at four, and get a little dinner before heading back to midtown for some laughs. (NBC also had to assuage any fears at ABC that it was going to pull people away from its competitor’s event.)
According to the long-established pecking order of upfront week, Tuesday was slated for ABC’s presentation, which was routinely staged at Lincoln Center uptown. CBS owned Wednesday, with Carnegie Hall the somewhat incongruously grand setting. Fox, the newest of the networks, was usually relegated to Thursday and whatever venue that network could scrounge up. In recent years, Fox had turned to the less than ideal City Center after some infelicitous, though memorable, forays to other locations—such as the flight deck of the aircraft carrier Intrepid (hard to get to, hard to navigate around, and hard to hear anything inside the cavernous tent that Fox had erected) and the 69th Regiment Armory, which had established a new low for upfronts in 2006 by being hothouse humid, leaky roofed (it was teeming outside) and redolent of urine. (On top of that, one Fox executive had turned up onstage so drunk that he couldn’t pronounce the word “Tostitos.”)
Monday, by tradition, belonged to NBC, which had the supreme advanta
ge of having its 30 Rock headquarters located right across Fiftieth Street from the pinnacle of Manhattan showbiz arenas, Radio City Music Hall. But the hall went vacant that year because NBC had abdicated its leadoff position in the upfront lineup. That allowed Fox to grab Monday for itself and thereby make a statement: The network was taking its bows first, a post it could legitimately claim it deserved, having clawed its way to the top in the ratings competition that counted most in the TV business—the battle for eyeballs owned by viewers between the ages of eighteen and forty-nine.
In truth, NBC had abandoned the field a year before, when, in another declaration of paradigm upheaval, it had pronounced the upfront era dead, with much the same revolutionary zeal it had when it introduced an even earlier paradigm-buster called TV 2.0, which posited that the eight p.m. hour was no longer a place for high-priced scripted comedies and dramas but should ideally be filled only with low-cost reality fare. As had been the case with the TV 2.0 plan—which had faded quickly into television press-release history—the decision to kill off the upfronts was less a matter of paradigms than piles of dimes. Jeff Zucker, NBC’s chief executive, who announced each successive paradigm shift with the same resolute fervor, had targeted the upfront as a financially extravagant relic of a past era when broadcasters were flush with cash, and no longer relevant at a time when networks were squeezing program budgets for pennies and slashing staffs with broadswords. (NBC was only six months removed from an announcement of five hundred layoffs.)
It was in December 2007, in the midst of a disruptive writers’ strike, that Zucker had pulled the plug on the traditional upfront, “in light of the current business environment,” as he put it. He dismissed the elaborate presentations—which usually featured stars walking out onstage and making inane scripted comments about shows they knew little about because they had only acted in a pilot by that point—as a chore and a bore that induced people to show up only because of the lavish parties that followed them. “It’s a show that everyone wants over as soon as possible,” Zucker proclaimed. “People always say: Can’t we get to the party sooner?”
NBC, a network that had once taken in as much as $800 million a year in profits, was now exsanguinating red ink after years of disastrous prime-time ratings. Under the increasingly green eye-shaded vision of its corporate managers at General Electric, it had done away with both the presentation and the profligate party in 2008, initiating instead something it cutely labeled the “infront.” This consisted of a scaled-down series of presentations to ad buyers—with no fancy after-party. Advertisers would get a chance to offer their own input after an earlier-than-usual look at NBC’s proposed shows, though many would be based only on scripts or sketchy outlines, because NBC also wanted to cut out expensive pilots.
In 2008 NBC staged the infront more than a month before its competitors’ week of upfronts. But in 2009, after another year of dismal results with new programs, the network decided to schedule the process closer to upfront week, holding it in New York on May 4, only two weeks prior. Zucker had added the Comedy Showcase event (again, minus the party) after deciding NBC needed to be a presence during the upfront, what with all those buyers, affiliate managers, and studio heads in town. “It’s another way to reinforce our brand,” NBC’s entertainment division chief Ben Silverman said.
Zucker turned to a man he trusted—and loved like a brother—to put together his comedy night, or as several NBC executives had taken to calling it, the “chuckle-front.” Michael Bass had opened doors for Zucker when both men were at Harvard, and later at NBC; the two had been roommates for a time in New York; both had been producers at NBC’s Today show. (Zucker, as all of television knew, ignited his career there as executive producer during the strongest era in Today’s history.) After a stint running the CBS morning show Bass had returned to the NBC fold, at Zucker’s invitation, to take charge of special events—like hastily arranged comedy nights.
Bass assembled the Town Hall event from familiar NBC parts: He called on Rainn Wilson from The Office, Tracy Morgan from 30 Rock, and Seth Meyers and Amy Poehler from Saturday Night Live, all for brief appearances. Bass had prevailed on one of the network’s greatest stars, Jerry Seinfeld, to drop by as an unannounced guest to toss five minutes of surefire stand-up into the mix.
But the headliners were not in doubt. NBC was eager to show off its new weeknight comedy triumvirate: Conan O’Brien, the incoming host of The Tonight Show; Jimmy Fallon, Conan’s successor as host of the 12:35 a.m. Late Night franchise; and of course, Jay Leno, the centerpiece of the showcase—and the network’s future.
To emcee the festivities, Bass reached out to one of NBC’s most reliable go-to guys, a man who had done so well fronting formal dinners and other special occasions that his name had actually been kicked around in some quarters as a player talented and funny enough to be a potential late-night host himself. This, even though he still filled a rather important day job for the network: anchoring NBC Nightly News.
Brian Williams didn’t mind being part of an NBC Comedy Showcase because he had no problem proving he was funny in front of crowds. He had already scored a coup hosting Saturday Night Live, to widespread praise. Williams had agreed to take that leap only after much concern about whether being in goofy comedy sketches might undermine his credibility as the face of NBC News. By all accounts, it had actually helped his image with viewers, some of whom had previously read his body language on newscasts to mean that he was overly stiff and sober. That hurdle cleared, Williams was now free to let his comedy freak flag fly with abandon, which he did during guest spots in late night, with Leno, O’Brien, David Letterman on CBS, and especially Jon Stewart on cable’s Comedy Central.
When Michael Bass, after clearing the request with Zucker, approached Williams about serving as onstage host for the Comedy Showcase, Brian had the impression the producer was a bundle of nerves, which he took to mean this event was clearly of high importance to Jeff Zucker. Bass warned Williams that this was going to be a different role than playing tuxedoed toastmaster at the Waldorf.
Bass didn’t much doubt what answer he would get. Like everyone else at NBC, he had observed how much Williams enjoyed invading the world of comedy.
“I’ll do as good a job for you as I possibly can,” Williams assured him with anchorman earnestness.
So Williams was backstage hanging with the comedy crowd as the ticketholders filed in to Town Hall, taking their limited-legroom seats inside the eighty-eight-year-old theater while being warmed up by the infectious beat of the Roots, the smoking-hot house band for the Fallon show. The comics themselves were squeezed into an uncomfortable, dimly lit twenty-by-twenty space equipped with some cold drinks, snacks, and a large video screen. The star power was considerable, but even with the formidable Seinfeld on hand, most of those backstage knew who would be playing the top cats on this night: Jay and Conan.
Both Leno and O’Brien had flown in from LA—separately—for this gig, and neither was especially enthused about it. Conan was exactly thirteen days away from his opening night as Tonight host and would have preferred to keep focused on his increasingly intense preparations, which had only recently included the first of four practice shows in his newly constructed studio. But he had put the trip east to good use. With access to the jet NBC had chartered, Conan and his team had touched down in a couple of locations—including Wrigley Field in Chicago—that they planned to use in the elaborate opening of Conan’s Tonight Show: Conan running across the country through various highly American locales. Leno, for his part, didn’t particularly see the need to have to throw a repeat on the air—Jay had always despised going into repeats, for any reason—just so he could cross the continent and do stand-up in front of a group he expected would be largely the same crowd he had worked only three months earlier, when he had been the featured entertainment at a different NBC party. The network had thrown one in February for its affiliate board and some big ad clients prior to its coverage of the Super Bowl, in Tampa, Florida. C
onan had been present at that gathering as well, and though he had not performed, he and his entourage had the same reaction as the rest of the audience that evening. As Conan’s executive producer and closest adviser, Jeff Ross, put it, “Jay killed; he did twenty minutes and he destroyed.”
Pressed to come east for this new comedy event, the reluctant Leno asked Bass, “Is this the affiliates again?” He was told that this would be a significantly different group, though, yes, some affiliates would again be present. From his conversation with Bass, Leno took away the fundamental message: “It’s a night of stand-ups; I want you to do your stand-up act.” So after finishing his Tonight Show taping on Monday night, Jay had gotten up before dawn the next morning, driven to the Burbank airport, and jumped on a private jet for New York—to be, as he saw it, the closing act on a “night of stand-ups.”
As Jay arrived backstage, he was greeted warmly by the assembled comedy talent, including O’Brien, who said a quick hello; the two late-night stars had already seen each other briefly at four that afternoon at rehearsal. One of the other performers was a bit surprised by Jay’s somewhat ragged appearance: “He looked kind of fat, with his hair out of control.” When the makeup artist hired for the night approached Jay and asked if he wanted some work done before he went on, he declined. The performer, who had seen the Tonight host work in clubs many times before, was equally concerned by Jay’s demeanor. “It was striking that he was just sort of showing up and hadn’t bothered to put a comb through his hair,” the showcase participant said, adding, “In his defense, he had just flown across the country.”
In fact, Jay had been in Manhattan for just a few hours by that point. Arriving at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey at about 3:30, Jay had rushed into town for his first appointment. NBC had brought him to a meet and greet with some of the affiliate board managers in the afternoon. Jay had no issue with that assignment, because he appreciated the importance of the affiliated stations as much as or more than any other star—or even executive—at NBC. His committed courtship of the station guys had been a key factor, after all, in his campaign to land the Tonight job back in the early nineties, when he won the fierce competition with David Letterman to succeed that show’s comedy colossus, Johnny Carson.