The War for Late Night

by Carter, Bill

  But overall, according to one of the show’s producers, “It was tense. It was scary.” The biggest break was having a villain to point to so Dave didn’t catch all the heat. Dave was a victim, after all, as well as a perpetrator of “terrible things.” And to his credit, he didn’t pay, but willingly exposed himself to public flogging rather than give in to blackmail.

  As the producer put it, “Dave didn’t buckle. This guy had no idea who he was dealing with. You can’t exert power over Dave that way. He is not the right guy for that.”

  The timing was hardly ideal. While Dave did become the talk of the country again, the show didn’t really need the attention at that particular moment—and certainly not this kind of attention. The day before the scandal broke, the ratings for the week prior had arrived. That week, President Obama had been a guest, marking only the second appearance ever by a sitting president on a late-night show. (Obama had visited Leno earlier.) Letterman had scored the biggest weekly win for his show in fifteen years, topping Tonight by a gargantuan 2.6 million viewers, winning the eighteen to forty-nine category by 3 and taking every night of the week over Conan.

  In retrospect, when Jay Leno assessed how long it had taken him to realize his ten o’clock show was in a little trouble, he concluded: maybe twenty minutes in.

  That represented only slight hyperbole. Within about a month a sense of uneasiness had begun to drift low and slow along the corridors of NBC’s executive offices. Objectively, not much looked shockingly different from what the network had been expecting. Jay finished third at ten most nights, but wasn’t he supposed to have done so for a while, until some repeats came on the other networks? In fact, Jay was managing to beat ABC on several nights, mainly because that network had again handed NBC the gift of some dreadful ten p.m. entries like Eastwick and The Forgotten. On Tuesdays, when NBC was able to deliver a healthy lead-in number to Jay from the nine p.m. hour, thanks to its reality weight-loss hit, The Biggest Loser, Leno was regularly grabbing second place, and often with a demo number that started with a two.

  Jay was on the whole keeping his famous chin above the water line. Admittedly, NBC had set that line as low as credibility would allow. Before the show launched, Jeff Gaspin had publicly established the viability number for Jay at a 1.5 for the eighteen-to-forty-nine audience. By averaging that number, Jay could have made money, but it was still a minuscule performance for a prime-time show, far below what would be grounds for cancelation anywhere else. NBC would have had to import a barrelful of snake oil to convince anyone Jay was a success at that level, no matter what the financial breakdown said.

  Privately, NBC executives conceded they were playing the lower-the-expectations game. In truth, they had been hoping for an ultimate average that started with a two, and they believed they could get there over the course of a year because the indefatigable Jay would produce so many more weeks of original shows than the dramas he was competing against—maybe even twice as many. For that fall, the realistic demo number the network wanted to see Jay average was a 1.8. That looked respectable, especially with ABCʹs expensive new dramas already free-falling below that level; it was also a number Gaspin believed the NBC affiliates could live with.

  The stations had already become pestiferous bystanders, reading every number over the network’s shoulder, offering an occasional nudge and a question: “Is that really all he’s going to do?” Clearly the stations had not believed Gaspin’s 1.5 target. By mid-October, in the big markets that received ratings figures daily, high anxiety was setting in. Some stations were already seeing their eleven p.m. newscast numbers slide. Gaspin and Zucker both started to hear from Michael Fiorile, the head of the affiliate board, which represented the entire body of NBC stations.

  Fiorile, who ran Dispatch Broadcasting, based in Columbus, had backed Jay Leno with the enthusiasm of a true fan leading up to his ten p.m. debut and did not want to send out a message of panic. But Fiorile had no choice but to clue his NBC partners in to the increasing rumbling among the stations.

  Gaspin examined the numbers carefully and concluded NBC had made a wrong assumption going in. The network had expected Jay to be a second choice at ten p.m. If your favored show at that hour, on either network or cable, wasn’t offering a new episode, Leno would provide a pleasant alternative. But the DVR, which was wreaking so much havoc across the medium, seemed to be devastating the ten p.m. hour. Jay didn’t rank as second choice. He was at best third, after the primary drama that a viewer liked at ten and whatever had been recorded on the DVR. Instead of benefiting from the fact that he was DVR-proof (because nobody really recorded the nightly comedy talk shows), Jay was getting hammered by the damn machines. And, ominously, the DVR choice did not figure to vanish when repeats started among the ten p.m. dramas, so it seemed unlikely that Jay would be making any hay against the reruns after all. He would still be second choice.

  Gaspin told Fiorile that he understood the stations’ concerns, but it was still relatively early. What he didn’t tell him was that the network had some incipient jitters as well.

  Conan OʹBrien saw no reason to be nervous yet for himself, but he and his staff certainly had noticed what was happening in the ten p.m. hour and the concomitant fallout during the local newscasts—in other words, his lead-in.

  Before Jay joined the fray at ten, Conan’s Tonight Show had never failed to beat David Letterman by at least two-tenths of a point in that eighteen-to-forty-nine-year-old group NBC so favored. But since Jay had pitched camp at ten (not counting his curiosity-fed first week), Conan had never even once beaten Dave by more than .1 among those younger adults. Dave had won outright three times (including his big Obama week), and the two shows were tying many other weeks. By now Dave was also routinely running away with the mass audience, winning every week by well over a million viewers.

  As Conan’s team saw it, no explanation could account for this scenario other than that the weak performance at ten was infecting everything that followed. Conan also noticed he was no longer getting any calls from Jay.

  Over in Burbank, Debbie Vickers was getting some calls, and they were informing her the affiliates were starting to quaver. She made up her mind not to say anything to Jay—because you don’t burden the talent with extra worries.

  One important NBC observer, however, who had no dog in the fight but an intense interest in seeing the network survive, had, even in early October, already rendered a definitive judgment on Jay’s relocation to ten. “The show is awful,” the influential network player said. “It’s not a case of

  ‘This needs to change, or that part’s not working.’ This is a situation where a nine-year-old at the back of the room stands up and says, ‘It’s awful.’ It’s not ten p.m. or anything else. It’s just not a good show. It’s not going to work. By March, it’s over.”

  Another significant player, Dick Ebersol, equally appalled, did not pin the blame on Jay. After containing himself for a month, he finally let loose during a video conference call with West Coast executives, asking, “Has anybody really looked at the minute-by-minute of what’s going on with Jay’s show?”

  Someone in research said they had determined what was working, and that included the monologue and the late bits, like “Jaywalking.”

  “That’s my point,” Ebersol replied. “You’ve got to move those segments up. The show is losing people because they never get to those segments.”

  It couldn’t be done, he was told; the affiliates were already grumbling. You couldn’t pull a strong segment away from the start of their newscasts.

  Ebersol continued to complain about that and another point: the way the show was using its primary guests. He pointed out that in the Tonight days, when Jay had a guest he clicked with, like Terry Bradshaw, he could keep him around and bounce things off him through the other segments. Here—thanks to some overly polite decision to ensure the interview segments looked different from those on The Tonight Show—he was on for just six minutes and gone. “That’s just fucking
crazy,” Ebersol said.

  But nothing got changed. Outside NBC the situation took on the look of one of those slow-motion implosions of a crumbling old building. A new term got passed around the TV industry: the Leno effect. Beyond its impact on the local news, and Conan, and Jimmy Fallon after that, the decision to replace the full ten p.m. slate with all Jay, all the time, had damaged existing NBC shows, and the hopes the network had for finding new hits.

  Without any ten p.m. slots available NBC had abruptly decided to cancel its best-reviewed new drama in years, a cop show called Southland—even though the series had already finished filming six episodes of a second season and was ready to air in late October. Gaspin, who had not participated in developing or ordering the show, had a sound rationale: The drama was expensive and slated for Friday at nine, where it would almost surely die. (Nothing on Friday attracted much of an audience anymore.)

  Had NBC needed ten p.m. shows, Southland would clearly have received a second shot to try to grow, as earlier high-quality NBC dramas, from St. Elsewhere to Hill Street Blues, had. The decision meant NBC was also turning its back on John Wells, one of the creative forces behind Southland and the man who provided the biggest hit NBC had seen in a generation, ER. A disheartened Wells remarked, “I’m disappointed that NBC no longer has time periods available to support that kind of critically acclaimed series that was for so many years a hallmark of their success.”

  In clearing out Wednesdays at ten for Jay, the network had also transformed a time-period-winning drama into a show finishing dead last in its new time period. That series was Law & Order: SVU, a potent ratings draw for NBC for most of a decade. Sliding the show up to nine had apparently dispersed its loyal viewers, who knew a ten o’clock show when they saw one.

  No one was more dismayed than the show’s loud and proud creator, Dick Wolf, though his comprehensive deal with NBC Universal prevented him from responding publicly to the move. Friends and colleagues who spoke with Wolf knew he was quietly seething, flabbergasted by a network that could undermine one of its dwindling store of hits, leaving him to calculate the damage this ham-handed move would do to his show’s future profits.

  Beyond Wells and Wolf, other producers and studio heads railed in private about how NBC was treating their precious content. The group had a prevailing opinion: In looking to contain costs, NBC was throwing its few remaining floating toys out with the bath water. One longtime producer of several shows for NBC and other networks called the Leno-at-ten decision “one of the biggest con jobs in the history of American business. Their revenues are down 30 percent, and they have destroyed the local news in fifty stations and Conan O’Brien in just a few weeks. They used to be the place you wanted to be. What’s truly horrifying now is their highest-rated show is two hours of disgusting fat people.”

  Taking fire from Hollywood, the press, and even some inside his own network, Jay Leno decided to try to clear the air a bit by granting an interview to the television trade publication Broadcasting & Cable. Sitting down in his greenroom at about ten a.m. on October 29 with the affable but aggressive B&C editor Ben Grossman, Jay offered up a defense of his show to that point.

  Mostly Jay accepted whatever shots the show was taking because his name was on it, though he agreed that some of the anger it had attracted could be tied simply to NBC’s decision to block out five nights at ten o’clock. Jay promised the show had bottomed out, and “we’re not going below that.”

  He declined to take satisfaction in Conan’s falloff from the numbers Jay had previously posted on Tonight, saying, “There’s nothing that kills creativity more than bitterness.” But he did acknowledge again that he would have preferred to stay at 11:35. “I think it’s too soon to say whether I regret anything or not,” Jay added. He also said he was a mainstream guy, not a niche one, that he wasn’t going to whine, and that he liked “being on TV and writing jokes.”

  It was pretty much the standard Jay take, except for his answer to one deliberately provocative question: “Do you want to go back to 11:35?”

  On the page, Jay’s answer read simple and direct: “If it were offered to me, would I take it? If that’s what they wanted to do, sure. That would be fine if they wanted to.”

  He went on to endorse Conan for still beating Dave in the demo. “Personally, I think Conan is doing fine,” Jay said.

  When the piece ran, no one really paid attention to anything but Leno’s assurance that, yes, he would take 11:35 back if offered. Jay and NBC’s PR department both later complained about the interview, insisting that Grossman had hounded Jay with the question over and over until he reluctantly answered it. While Grossman did acknowledge having asked it three or four times in different ways, he explained that Jay was always matter-of-fact in the interview, never pissed off by any of the questions, certainly in no way contentious. And, Grossman pointed out, no one at NBC disputed that Jay had said precisely those words.

  Jay swore he meant to send no signal with the comment. But a signal was received all the same.

  Conan OʹBrien read the interview—and the widespread coverage it received—and could only shake his head. The line didn’t worry or intimidate him but made him reflect on how different he was from Jay. In the same situation, Conan was convinced he would never have said anything like that. He didn’t hear from Leno about it and simply decided to go about his business.

  A short while later, though, Jay’s remark came up again during an interview Andy Richter gave to the online magazine TV Squad. Andy generally had pleasant things to say about Jay in the interview until that business about taking 11:35 back came up. “That was a weird answer,” Richter said. “Because nobody actually asked him if it was offered, the question was just sort of like, ‘Would you like to be back on?’ And he was the one who went on to say, ‘If they asked me, would I take it?’ That’s certainly not the classy answer to that question. The classy answer is, ‘Oh, well, that’s a silly question to ask, because somebody already has that job.ʹ That’s what you say if you’re classy.”

  Richter’s comment attracted none of the attention that Jay’s had—except from Jay himself. Displeased at being called “unclassy,” he called Rick Ludwin to complain. Ludwin took the issue up with Jeff Ross, to see if Andy would call Jay to work it out. Richter hardly relished a chat with Jay on this particular subject, but Jeff Ross asked so he complied. Richter called Jay, who, as always, made an effort to be lighthearted and pleasant. Andy explained that he had said what he did because the job was important to him, and that Jay’s remarks about going back to 11:35 made it seem his job was being threatened. Jay took it equably and told Andy it had been a good idea to call and work things like this out.

  Andy agreed and then, turning Jay’s observation around, asked him if he had called Conan to clear up his intentions in the B&C interview. Jay indicated he had spoken to Conan to smooth things over.

  Richter, of course, checked in with Conan almost the moment he got off the phone. Conan had still received not a single call from Jay since the start of the ten p.m. show. Jay’s attempt at deflection didn’t really surprise Conan; people on the spot often said things like that. But not to realize Andy would immediately run the conversation by him? How does that happen, Conan wondered.

  When Debbie Vickers heard later that the Conan side had taken offense at Jay’s “I’d take it” comment, she had her first small moment of disappointment with the Tonight Show team. To blow that comment up into some kind of sign indicating that Jay was trying to push Conan out seemed to her to be the showbiz equivalent of rabbit ears in baseball: paranoid ears. She believed she knew Jay as thoroughly as any other human being could, and she did not detect a manipulative motive in what he he had said in the interview. If she had perceived he was engaging in any kind of Machiavellian maneuver, she would not have backed it for a second.

  In the wake of the interview a cold front began to descend midway on the 134 freeway between Burbank and Universal City.

  On Jeff Gaspin’s plate,
11:35 remained an untouched side dish. The ten p.m. problem was already so pressing that Gaspin simply couldn’t have cared less about 11:35. His message to the anxious affiliates was: We’re going to give Jay November and then see where we are. That was a risky position to take, because November was a sweep month, one of four annual ratings periods when all the television markets in the country, down to the very smallest, get measured by the Nielsen company. Even with vastly improved techniques for achieving reach, some national advertisers still paid special attention to sweep-month numbers and bought the local markets based on those results. The local station owners considered them vital to their economic survival.

  NBC didn’t really get the breathing space through early November that it had wanted, in any case. The stations that were receiving daily numbers were still there, questioning the network—having noticed, for example, that Leno had played against some repeats during the last week in October, but the ratings hadn’t budged. By now the affiliate noise level was growing loud enough that Zucker started hearing it in New York.

  As Gaspin’s anxiety level began to tick up, he checked his development slate. What did he have? One drama, Parenthood, was ready and looked kind of promising. It could fill one night at ten. But what else? He began to contemplate alternatives. Could Jay go down to four days a week? Three? Would the affiliates accept that?

  Inside The Jay Leno Show the messages were coming fast and confusing. NBC had guaranteed them two years at the start, but Jay and his staff realized that really meant just one for sure. So the show’s strategy, based on advice from the network, had been geared toward getting through the expected rough early patch and into summer, when they could flex some muscle competing against repeats. Then, after the faltering start, the advice had shifted: Focus all your big guns on December. You can score then because the ten p.m. shows would go to several straight weeks of reruns during the holidays.