The War for Late Night Read online

  Jay had long held an almost Willy Loman-like belief in the power of the personal sales pitch. “Clean shirt, handshake” was one of his mantras for the process. “You come in, shake hands, meet the local news team. It’s just serving the customers—basic Dale Carnegie stuff.”

  Leno knew some of the customers were uneasy about NBC’s ten p.m. gambit. He had already worked to douse a brushfire sparked when Ed Ansin, the owner of WHDH—NBC’s affiliated station in Boston (Jay’s home city, no less)—announced in April that he simply wasn’t going to run the new Leno show at ten p.m., supplanting it with an hour-long local newscast. “We don’t think the Leno show is going to be effective in prime time,” Ansin said. “It will be detrimental to our eleven o’clock news. It will be very adverse to our finances.”

  NBC had every reason to fear such a move could lead to further defections from local stations fed up with the network’s abysmal performance in prime time for much of the previous decade, and so it had moved a howitzer into position in response: NBC threatened to yank all the network’s programs from the Boston station if it dared take that step with the Leno show. Jay himself stepped up, calling Ansin personally and telling him, “I’ll do what I always do: I’ll do local promos, whatever it takes.” The promise—and the howitzer—did the trick. Ansin backed down.

  Conan, meanwhile, had passed much of the three months between the end of his run on Late Night in February and his arrival in Los Angeles to start work on The Tonight Show hopscotching the country making nice with affiliated stations, doing the same glad-handing of news anchors and smiling through the same promotional copy urging viewers to watch Phil and Denise on Channel 13 or Frank and Diane on Channel 5 that Jay had made de rigueur for Tonight hosts. In January Conan spent a morning in Detroit, visiting an auto show with reporters from WDIV, and an afternoon in Chicago, cutting promos with the anchors for WMAQ. “This is old-school television,” O’Brien told the Chicago Tribune. “You actually go into America and you talk to these people who put your television show on. I really find it fascinating.” By May, after visiting about fifty cities, exhausting had all but replaced fascinating. When he arrived in New York on May 18, O’Brien had been off television for the longest period of time since he had started on Late Night in 1993, but he had had little time for relaxation. He concluded that between the preparation for the new show and the affiliate tour, “It may be the hardest I’ve ever worked.”

  But at least O’Brien’s day in New York would not be taxing: He was doing only the Town Hall gig. NBC, meanwhile, was wringing all it could out of Jay’s drop-in to the city. Besides the affiliate meetings, Jay had been asked to spend an hour or so with another constituency of likely ten p.m. skeptics: the press. At about six that evening, a phalanx of NBC publicity executives, accompanied by many of the network generals, including Jeff Zucker, ushered Jay into a suite at Hotel Mela, where a group of about a dozen reporters was waiting for him.

  Jay arrived looking relaxed and in good spirits, if a little puffy faced, dispensing his usual greeting—“Hello, everybody”—to the room and offering shout-outs to several of the reporters by name. He sprawled his blocky frame into an armchair chair behind a coffee table, settling in for the session with no discernible signs of concern—not even when the first question carried an implied shot about NBC’s decision to try him out at ten.

  Stephen Battaglio, a reporter for TV Guide, wanted to know if Jay had heard what one of his late-night rivals, Jimmy Kimmel of ABC, had said in his comedy monologue at the ABC upfront that afternoon. Jay hadn’t, so Battaglio explained it to him. Kimmel had referenced his fear, before NBC announced the ten p.m. plan, that ABC was going to lure Leno away, place him at 11:35 p.m., and knock Kimmel back from his perch in the midnight hour to a start time of 12:35 a.m. “ ‘But NBC said we will not let Jay go to ABC,’ ” Battaglio quoted the ABC star, “ ‘even if we have to destroy our network to keep him.’ ”

  As the reporters laughed, Jay rolled with it. “As long as it’s funny!” he bellowed in his best punch line voice. “That’s the rule.”

  Most of the subsequent questions covered the obvious territory:

  What would the new show be like? Jay offered few details because he hadn’t started planning it yet.

  Why did he believe this idea might work? “I thought: There’s no comedy at ten o’clock. Maybe we’ll try that,” Leno said, with his characteristic no-big-deal insouciance, as if he were discussing a dinner order rather than a career change. And, as usual, how much of that detachment was real and how much was calculated was impossible for anyone in the room to read.

  How could he compete against expensive dramas like CSI: Miami on CBS and Private Practice on ABC? “Hopefully when they’re in reruns, we’ll catch them,” Jay said, turning to familiar ground: a car metaphor. “We may not get them in the straights. We’ll catch them in the corners.”

  Didn’t he worry about tarnishing his legacy as the longtime winner on Tonight? “I’m not much of a legacy guy,” he said, tossing a scoff. “I hosted the Tonight show for seventeen years. It’s like the America’s Cup. I didn’t screw it up. I passed it off to the next guy—whew! Everything else now is gravy. If this is a success—wonderful. If it’s a huge bomb . . . Well, I hope not.” Jay’s tone rang more with confidence than mere hope.

  What about the notion that staying at NBC and moving to ten amounted to stealing Conan’s thunder? “No, I don’t think so,” Jay said, quickly locating his familiar Conan take. “Conan is terrific. We’ve been friends for a long time. This will be a smooth transition.”

  Then Jay, who at various times in his career had enjoyed performing the role of analyst of other comics’ acts, became expansive on the subject of Conan. “He’s a very funny guy. Conan is all about the material, and that’s what I like about him. When he started, obviously the critics went after him a little bit. He always had a solid writing and comedy foundation. He just needed to learn how to perform a little bit better.” Those first few months, Jay continued, “Conan was a little awkward. But if you thought he was awkward, he still had good jokes. We’d go, ‘That was a funny joke. He didn’t tell it quite right.’ But he’s learned to become a master at it and, obviously, that’s why he’s doing the show.”

  He also weighed in on the early critical reaction to Conan’s 12:35 successor. “I watched the reviews of Jimmy Fallon after one night,” Jay said. “Give the kid six months; give him a year. Conan—give it a year.” Mindful of his own early ratings drubbings at the hands of Letterman, he added, “I mean, Dave was beating me for the first eighteen months or so.”

  What about that little frisson of tension with the Boston station? Was there any reason to worry whether other affiliates might bail on him? “I talk to the affiliates,” Jay said. “You know, there is no NBC. There’s only the affiliates. They’re the customers. NBC is just a bunker in Burbank somewhere, and you have all these affiliates. They buy your product. And if your franchisees are unhappy, they close your restaurant. Simple as that.”

  At this point, Jeff Zucker, who had been leaning against a wall of the suite, taking it all in, stepped forward. He was having none of any suggestion that NBC’s backing of Jay was anything but unstinting. He turned to a reporter who had persisted with a line of questioning about how long the network would hang on if Jay’s initial ratings were lackluster. “We’re completely committed to this,” Zucker said quietly, adding, “This question comes from a very anachronistic way of looking at it. This is going to be judged on a fifty-two-week basis, not on a first-month basis.”

  “There’s a poker player!” a suddenly energized Leno jumped in, pointing to Zucker. “Right there! You know, if it’s not working, kick my ass out! Thank you! I know how it works.”

  By no means did Jay see that as a likely outcome, however. He explained how his ten p.m. show would be much cheaper to produce than those hour-long dramas on the other networks—he could do his show for one-fifth of the cost, he promised. And all he really needed to do was
improve the ratings for the ten p.m. time period over the lame shows NBC had been programming at that hour—like Lipstick Jungle—to be judged an immediate success. “And then you build from that,” he concluded.

  Besides, Leno noted, “You have something of a proven product here. Logically it stands to reason you’ll do better at ten than you did at eleven thirty.”

  In both his words and his air of assurance, Jay was making it clear that he saw this latest transition in much the same way he regarded every move he had made in his career. At bottom, it was all about doing something he had worked on his whole life and now had complete confidence in: telling audiences—in clubs, on TV—jokes. Lots and lots of jokes.

  “It’s like people always say to me: What happens if you go to a club and you just bomb? Well, you know, after a while you don’t bomb anymore. You do better than you might have done, or you do a little worse. But you don’t go out there and just bomb.”

  Just before Brian Williams stepped onstage at precisely nine p.m., he glanced at the big video monitor in the ersatz greenroom backstage, which showed the Roots pounding through their last warm-up number and the faces of the crowd, now settled into their seats. As he looked around, Williams noticed that in this room full of comics, few ever raised their eyes to the screen. Their demeanor reminded him of athletes at sports events, like Olympic skiers closing their eyes and mentally running through the course before being set loose onto the snow—a cross between that and jittery thoroughbred horses right before being loaded into the starting gate for the derby.

  Williams, freshly turned fifty but still youthful looking with his close-cropped hair and lean frame, walked out and greeted the crowd, promising them a fun night with the great lineup that NBC had assembled. He mentioned the big names, leaving out Seinfeld, who was the evening’s surprise. Then he got right to business. One of the men this night was all about, he announced, was the guy about to take his place beside the names of Allen, Paar, Carson, and Leno on the shortest of short lists in television’s pantheon, the next great host of The Tonight Show: Conan O’Brien.

  With his long-legged, loping stride, O’Brien took center stage to warm, enthusiastic applause. Conan, now forty-six years old (like Letterman, Leno, and Seinfeld, his birthday was in April), fit and relaxed in an unbuttoned blue suit, his pompadour of red hair adding even a couple more inches to his six-foot-four height, loomed high above the fans clapping for him in the orchestra seats. After a few thank-yous and a little salute to the Roots—“an amazing band”—Conan settled into his routine, beginning almost conversationally:

  “As you know, folks, I’ve been very busy out in Los Angeles preparing for the June first premiere of The Tonight Show. I have just thirteen days left,” he said, his voice starting to rise, adding a note of mock exasperation. “I don’t have a second to spare. But I definitely wanted to fly across the country and be here tonight for one very important reason. . . .” He took a beat, maybe half a second, setting the fuse.

  “I wanted the chance—just once—to go on before Jay Leno!”

  The laughter rolled down from the balcony and through the orchestra, hitting a crescendo before igniting spontaneous applause. It was a full ten-second laugh, one born of the audience’s awareness of just what the ten p.m. relocation of Leno meant for O’Brien. It was a joke crafted with precision for the occasion—and it killed.

  “It feels real good,” Conan said, extending the joke. Then he shifted into his ultra-high-pitched mock Jay voice for a little coda: “He went, ‘Uh, what’s he talking about?’ ” And Conan was rewarded with a rebound laugh almost as long as the original.

  O’Brien let that settle before moving on. “It’s great to be here, ladies and gentlemen, seriously. I am so proud to work at NBC, one of the world’s oldest and most respected”—pause—“nonprofit organizations.” (Another appreciative laugh.) “Of course the theme of tonight’s event is the history of comedy on NBC. So once we get to 1998, feel free to take off.” The lower register of the laughs that greeted this shot included a chorus of ooohs at O’Brien’s brazen evocation of his network’s futility since that year.

  Feigning nervousness after launching that grenade, Conan scanned the front rows. “Where’s Zucker?” he asked, knowing exactly where the smiling NBC boss was sitting. “Oh, this is going well,” Conan said, shifting into his Ernst Stavro Blofeld impression, with pinched-in face, beady eyes, and, of course, imaginary cat in his lap. “Petting the white cat,” Conan said in his evil genius voice. “Get him off! Get him off! He’s being mean to me!”

  In total command of the audience, Conan did about an eight-minute-long monologue, with steady laughs throughout. He had hit only notes that would resonate most effectively with this particular audience—and it paid off for him. He was bathed in applause as he wrapped up. Then NBC allowed him to serve as the introducer of the night’s “surprise guest,” a man Conan described as “one of the pillars” of the NBC comedy tradition, as well as “one of the best things ever to happen to NBC.”

  That was Jerry Seinfeld, of course, and the audience was appropriately surprised—and thrilled—to see him. Jerry, looking sharp if slightly older (he had just turned fifty-five) than in his sitcom days, with a thinner thatch of hair and a couple of extra pounds, delivered his five sparkling minutes in a routine about the peccadilloes of married life. The centerpiece was his version of marital discussions that take on the flavor of “a game show where you’re always in the lightning round,” trying to work your way through testy categories like “Movies I Think We Saw Together.” Seinfeld arranged the beats of the laughs like an orchestra conductor: a little more, a little less, big finish, thank you very much.

  The other booked acts had a few highs and lows, with Meyers and Poehler scoring with a version of “Weekend Update” from SNL that mocked NBCʹs prime-time machinations. Williams then returned to the stage to set up the next of the evening’s highlights: the latest of NBC’s late-night stars, Jimmy Fallon.

  Fallon had been on the air since March, displaying typically rocky rookie moments but quickly making his mark by hitting the sweet spot for the Late Night audience: the college crowd, which Fallon was expanding by reaching out through his blog and his Twitter account.

  He shambled out in his aw-shucks manner, his suit looking maybe one size too big, underscoring how much younger—he was thirty-four—he was than most of the others who’d appeared onstage. Fallon got a quick laugh with a throwaway line directed at Williams: “Thank you, thank you very much—Anderson Cooper, everybody.” Since he had his house band at hand, Fallon was able to lead the Roots into one of the signature bits from his nascent show, “Slow Jammin’ the News”—only, given the occasion, Jimmy made it a slow jam of the NBC schedule.

  If that routine played a little arcane for this particular audience’s taste, Fallon had something more surefire prepared, a bit he had actually performed at an earlier dinner.

  Grabbing his acoustic guitar, Jimmy explained he was going to do something he did regularly on the Late Night show: lure a member out of the audience to come up onstage, where he would make up a song about him or her on the spot.

  “Any volunteers?” Fallon asked, looking down into the front rows. “You, sir? You want to get up?”

  Jeff Zucker, in his impeccably tailored suit, the fringe of hair around his bald pate buzzed close, clambered onstage, playing his part of looking reluctant.

  “What is your name, sir?” Fallon asked, all innocence amid the laughs.

  “Zucker” came the reply, accompanied by an “as if” look.

  “What do you do, sir?” Fallon asked, pretending to write the information on a card.

  “I’m with NBC.”

  “And . . . straight or gay?”

  After getting the predictable boisterous laugh, Fallon began strumming chords and launched into his song:Going to sing you a song about a friend I know.

  He has no time for a late TV show.

  He ain’t tall, completely bald,


  My friend, Zucker.

  He says his last name’s pronounced Zooker.

  He’s a crazy mother-fooker.

  He’s the man who makes decisions.

  He ain’t got 20/20 vision (he wears glasses),

  My man, Zucker!

  He’s the guy calls all the shots.

  What if he married Courteney Cox?

  They’d be so in love with each other,

  She’d be Courteney Cox Zucker!

  After the biggest laugh of the night since Conan’s Leno joke, Fallon squeezed in his last notes:

  And . . . And, I just got fired!

  It was a wow finish for a performance that made the impression NBC was seeking. Fallon demonstrated compellingly that he was both funny and appealing; as a replacement at 12:35 for Conan, he just might do.

  Backstage many of the comics who had finished their spots lingered to watch their compatriots, but mainly, it seemed to one of the stars that evening, out of “a palpable curiosity about how Leno would perform.” Conan, however, had long since departed. He had been happy to get on the bill early so he could hit the road fast, back to the small jet waiting at Teterboro to fly him back to Los Angeles.

  Jerry Seinfeld had remained, and he had a small concern that he thought about mentioning to somebody in charge. Jerry hadn’t had any problem connecting with the crowd during his crisp five-minute stint, but he was a bit uncomfortable out there nonetheless. What disturbed him was that throughout his spot—and the entire evening, really—the house lights had been kept all the way up, making the audience totally visible to the performers onstage. For a seasoned professional stand-up like Seinfeld, this was “one of the poison darts of comedy.” For Jerry the ideal setup was light on the comic, audience in the dark, preferably laughing. To Seinfeld, this oversight meant that somebody had been incompetent. But in the theater that night, he didn’t raise the issue.