The War for Late Night Read online

  In 2004-2005, CBS’s ten p.m. shows had averaged a network-best 4.17 rating in the age group eighteen to forty-nine. The same year NBC’s ten p.m. shows had averaged a 3.9 rating and ABC’s a 2.82. Every year since, the numbers had dropped precipitously, to the point where Wurtzel’s department was projecting the ten p.m. shows in 2008-2009 to fall below a 2.0 rating for both NBC and ABC, with CBS at just 2.43. Those were massive falloffs of approaching 50 percent for each network. And this shrinkage was affecting shows generally among the most expensive in television, cop and medical dramas, with high-cost actors and writers and demanding production values.

  It only figured to get worse. The widespread and increasing use of DVRs was wreaking havoc on network schedules, and nowhere more so than at ten p.m. Viewers had clearly developed the habit of playing back favored shows from earlier in the evening, or earlier in the week, at that hour instead of watching the offerings on the three networks (Fox being an eight-to-ten network only). The last real hit show airing at ten p.m. was CBS’s CSI: Miami, and that had been introduced in 2002. NBC had ridden those warhorses ER and Law & Order almost into the ground. It still had Law & Order: SV U, but beyond that it looked bleak for the new entries that first Kevin Reilly and then Ben Silverman had selected for ten p.m.

  What the data suggested to Zucker was that he might be on the cusp of another paradigm shift. Maybe he could perceive the groundbreaking changes that would have to be made earlier than other network executives precisely because of NBC’s long travails in prime time. As he had often said before, “It’s sometimes easier to see the world when you’re flat on your back.”

  The other flow feeding into the confluence came from Conan’s direction. Zucker had an unsettling nervous twitch regarding Conan. Nothing seemed drastically wrong and yet something felt unmistakably off. Conan had yet to show real signs of transforming his act into something more mainstream. And there were those more competitive numbers that continued to be put up by CBS’s Craig Ferguson, who was never far from Conan now in viewers. Conan always won easily in the contest for the young demos, but taking all these factors into account, it seemed to Zucker that signs were growing that the heat under Conan, so intense in 2004, had been turned down to a simmer.

  Zucker certainly didn’t like continually getting reports from Ludwin that Conan and his team were resisting the notes he was giving them about breaking away from behind the desk, getting out into the audience. Was it arrogance, Zucker wondered, that fed the urge to reject the network’s suggestions? Or maybe just an inability to make the changes because Conan couldn’t perform any other way but the way he already knew?

  Meanwhile, though the internal anxiety about the impending shift to Conan was only increasing, Rick Ludwin and Nick Bernstein, the two executives closest to NBC’s late-night lineup, never lost faith. Bernstein, in his early thirties, had watched Conan with a fan’s fervor beginning in high school. He supported The Tonight Show shift in a circle-of-life kind of way, though he deeply respected and admired Leno. For his part, Ludwin found the second-guessing of the move to Conan all too familiar, reminiscent of the last-minute hedging that went on in the nineties when NBC almost threw over Leno for Letterman. If the network had listened to some strident voices back then, Ludwin concluded, Jay would never have survived to be the dominant force he became. So Ludwin argued forcefully for sticking by the decision that had been so thoughtfully worked out.

  Besides, Ludwin didn’t have any overall reservations about the content of Conan’s 12:35 show. To Ludwin, Conan had long since proved how inventive and creative he could be—and of course how damn smart he was. He knew that Conan considered everything carefully. The last thing that made sense to Ludwin was to try to force something on a host that he believed he wouldn’t execute well, which could easily lead to a performance without conviction.

  Ludwin patiently countered the Conan doubters whenever the discussion drifted toward a suggestion that NBC not go through with the shift, though he knew he didn’t convince all of them. As one top NBC executive described the sentiment being expressed privately inside some offices in New York and Burbank, “I don’t know how with anyone still successful you can be creating a situation where there would be a finite end to that success. I mean, Barbara Walters stays on the air until she’s eighty. You gotta pay Conan off. But Jeff had that relationship with Conan and Jeff Ross.”

  Zucker shrugged off all the under-the-breath questions about whether Conan should be paid off. His stance was simple: He’d made a commitment to O’Brien and he was going to stand by it. With any ousting-Conan option off the table, Zucker was left standing in the middle of his confluence. He decided to go with the flow; he pulled out the ten o’clock solution, ready at last to lay it at Jay’s feet.

  Despite all the on-air jokes about running off to ABC and his serious private comments about how wounded he felt by NBC’s decision to point him toward the door, Jay Leno recoiled from what he saw as the potential consequences of a change of professional address.

  As usual, he had a ready line for it: “The czar you have is always better than the czar you’re going to get.” A new place meant new camera operators, new pages, new everything. Worse, he foresaw an ugly scenario taking shape, with his long relationships at NBC turning hostile the moment he announced he was moving on. “Then the mysterious sandbag falls on your head,” he said. “I’m Italian. I know how this works.”

  Jay elaborated: “Suddenly little stories appear in the papers: ‘The arrogant Mr. Leno refused to . . .’ Or ‘Jay took a private jet to go to . . .’ And you’re like, where did this come from?” Staff members who might have felt slighted by some little incident that had taken place fifteen years earlier would suddenly be out there peddling nasty stories. “You get fragged. Your own troops are shooting at you—that’s the worst thing.”

  While he remained unhappy with what NBC had done, Jay never directed that unhappiness toward Conan. Conan might well become his competitor if he was forced to join ABC, but Jay had long argued that the late-night comics should all get along in spite of their competitiveness. It was all just show business. He wasn’t about to nullify that position now by making it openly personal with Conan, which was a primary reason why he turned down one extremely provocative offer.

  Word got to him from the Letterman camp that a true television event could be set up after he ended his Tonight Show run: They invited Jay to come on the show as Dave’s guest. A chance to relive old times and to begin a rapprochement with Dave—that had great appeal for Jay. But then the Letterman people clarified the invitation: They wanted Jay to sit down with Dave on the very night that Conan premiered. They didn’t consider it a personal attack on Conan, whom all the Letterman people liked. It was simply business, a way to block a competitor right out of the starting gate. Conan would surely be swamped, his debut reduced to rubble by the monster late-night event over on CBS.

  “I couldn’t insult Conan that way,” Jay said, in explaining how he had declined the Letterman bookers. But he made certain they knew he would love to do it any another time, when the damage to Conan—and the chances of igniting a PR backlash against himself—would be dissipated. After all, it looked as though he would be off television for months.

  On October 18, 2008, NBC seized the attention of the nation with the biggest edition of Saturday Night Live in fourteen years: a guest appearance by vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, with Tina Fey on hand to perform her devastating impression of Palin. The show would attract 17 million viewers, a stunning number, far more than all but a few of the prime-time shows on all of television that week—or any week.

  For an event of that magnitude, Jeff Zucker had to be a presence. He would often turn up backstage during the live broadcasts on Saturday night because of his close friendship with Lorne Michaels. For Zucker it was a fun diversion just to sit in on the production of a live show. But this was more like a command appearance. The event had national significance.

  Many of NBCʹs top execut
ives, some in from the West Coast, circulated in the long hallway that led back from Studio 8H. With security forces, Palin handlers, and VIP guests everywhere, the atmosphere crackled with tension and excitement. Zucker, however, floated through the scene with aplomb, greeting people, talking about the expectations for Palin’s appearance, acting the part of host. Shortly before the countdown to the live show, when Zucker intended to repair to his natural habitat, the control room, he gathered a few select executives for a private, hushed conversation.

  “Don’t tell anyone this,” Zucker told the little group. “But Jay’s interested in ten o’clock—and we think we’re going to be able to make a deal.”

  His listeners had to restrain their surprise. To one it seemed near incredible, virtually a 180 from what they had been hearing to that point: that Jay wouldn’t do prime time; that he wouldn’t know how to take on the cops or Dr. McDreamy or whoever else the other networks would throw at him.

  Zucker seemed more than positive; he almost oozed self-satisfaction. But he repeated his warning. “We have to stay quiet about this until it’s done.”

  Staying quiet clearly meant keeping this news to the tight circle Zucker had just informed—and not, say, leaking word to anyone connected to Conan O’Brien. No one was surprised by that stricture. They all knew there was reason to have concern about how Conan would react. But the deal had not been completed. Everyone in television knew of endless numbers of occasions when agreements hatched behind closed doors never came to fruition.

  For Zucker, holding off on informing Conan of his intentions only made sense. This was his final play with Jay. Why disrupt Conan if, in the end, nothing would come of it?

  Zucker had made his pilgrimage to Burbank several more times, armed with new research from Alan Wurtzel. Jay did not embrace even this idea without initial resistance. “I don’t need phony research,” Jay first told Zucker. “I have research that shows I was number one since 1994. My research shows over a billion dollars in sales.”

  But over the course of several meetings, Zucker had been able to make an impression. The ten p.m. hour had become the place where dramas went to die, he argued. ABC kept shoveling show after show into ten p.m. holes—October Road, Cashmere Mafia, Big Shots, Eli Stone, Life on Mars, and on and on—succeeding only in digging the holes deeper and wasting tens of millions of dollars in the process.

  Jay, of course, kept his own eye on the numbers, especially for the shows at ten, because they provided his network lead-in (and Dave’s). He could see what was happening at his own network. Its big new highly promoted entry, My Own Worst Enemy, starring Christian Slater, had been given the plum ten p.m. slot after NBCʹs one newish (though fading) hit, Heroes; but it had already caved in, with barely a 1.7 rating in the young-adult demo. Jay was averaging about a 1.4 running well past midnight, for a fraction of the cost.

  Maybe, he finally concluded, he really could do some business at ten p.m.

  By the late fall of 2008, down to his last three months as host of Late Night, Conan O’Brien felt the pull of history. Not so much from his own show, though the process of going back through highlights of more than twenty-five hundred programs certainly struck an emotional chord. No, what was hitting O’Brien hardest was his imminent change of venue. It had been the same for David Letterman when his days in 30 Rock were melting away. Saying good-bye to the most famous building in the history of broadcasting was more than sweet sorrow, it was gut-wrenching.

  Conan responded by trying to absorb every moment he had left. For him that meant changing a routine he had followed from his first days at NBC, when he would grab a cab from the apartment he rented off the park near Tavern on the Green and jump out on Forty-ninth and Sixth. Close by the entrance was an auxiliary elevator bank that took him up to his office on the seventh floor.

  Now eager to drink in all of 30 Rock that he could, he decided to start his days by wandering in slowly through the ornate entrance on the plaza side of the building. In December that meant weaving through the streams of tourists lined up to take pictures of the giant evergreen, just lit in all its glory in the annual celebration that NBC had turned into a holiday special.

  Even in baseball cap and sunglasses, and with his head down, Conan was always recognized. That profile, the red hair, the storklike gait—who could miss him? “Hey, Conan!” The shouts were predictable: “Conan! What’s going on?” or “Conan! Love the show!”

  OʹBrien always shouted back, “Thanks, great to see you.” He didn’t mind the notice; he still remembered when there hadn’t been any.

  Conan walked into that grand art deco lobby because he wanted to see the murals every day he had remaining, the massive wraparound painting American Progress by Jose Maria Sert, depicting straining men and women building a nation. As he walked by, Conan looked up at the murals and found himself lost in scenes from the movies Quiz Show and My Favorite Year.

  O’Brien, who probably knew more television history than anyone else who’d made a piece of it, could recite details about the 30 Rock-based inspirations for those films, the scandal of the rigged answers on the quiz show Twenty-One and the raucous nights of ninety minutes’ worth of live weekly comedy from Sid Caesar and Carl Reiner on Your Show of Shows that were the model for My Favorite Year.

  He thought about watching Rob Petrie in The Dick Van Dyke Show, a writer for an ersatz Caesar (played by Reiner) whose fictive workplace would have been 30 Rock (though it was never expressly mentioned). And the birth of Saturday Night Live, so essential to his own career. It was from this location that breaking historic news had been broadcast to the nation since the 1930s. Of course, Steve Allen had begun The Tonight Show here, with Paar and Carson following, all commanding America’s attention every night. And this was where Letterman lit the fuse that turned Conan into a late-night host.

  To O’Brien the place was ground zero—the place where television was invented. Walking in through that imposing lobby and looking all around, he could feel it. He was there.

  Having worked sixteen years in the building, Conan felt that so much of his life had been gifted to him through his television show. He had, after all, met his wife because of the show, and now they had two children. In 2000 Elizabeth Ann (Liza) Powel had been working in advertising at the Foote, Cone & Belding agency in New York, at a time when Conan’s show had taken to mocking some truly preposterous local commercials. When they saw one in Houston featuring a store owner who brandished a whirring chain saw while promising to “slash prices,” they knew they had an ideal foil.

  Their idea was to bring this guy to New York to a legitimate ad agency for a commercial makeover. On the segment, Conan walked into the agency with his Houston friend and started riffing with several of the ad execs about what they might be able do for him. Very quickly he noticed the stunning blonde behind one desk. She wound up featured in the bit and soon in his life. (Conan boasted that he was one father who truly could show his kids footage some day of “How I Met Your Mother.”)

  Conan knew NBC was already deep into the construction of his new space in LA on the Universal lot, an investment of $50 million, which certainly spoke to their confidence in him. Given all that was happening to television, OʹBrien found himself wondering how long a building like 30 Rock would still be in use for television, whether within only a few years everyone would be doing television shows out of their own living rooms.

  Even in the hallway outside his studio on the sixth floor, the resonance was unmistakable for Conan. He had only to look at the studio across the hall, 6B, where for years NBC’s local station, Channel 4 in New York, had produced its newscasts. (They had been relocated to NBC News’s state-of-the-art studios on the eleventh floor.) Now 6B was being remade back into a late-night studio, as it had once been for the young Johnny Carson, with new seats and a proscenium-style arch, all for the next tenant.

  It was always going to be up to Lorne Michaels to pick Conan’s successor. Though his day-to-day connection with it had long since en
ded, he still had production rights to the 12:35 show (and still carried an executive producer credit on Conan’s show).

  When NBC signed Jimmy Fallon to a holding deal in early 2007, speculation spread that Michaels, still close to Jimmy from his days as one of the most popular players on SNL, had made his choice. The sniping quickly followed. Fallon had gotten on the wrong side of some Internet snarkmeisters on sites like Gawker and Defamer, mainly for his penchant for breaking up during sketches and for his short-lived movie career.

  But Michaels had supreme confidence in Fallon, mainly because he had a quality that could not be either manufactured or faked. “People really like him,” as Lorne put it. “When he was on Saturday Night Live, he had enormous appeal to young girls. That means young men are going to be a bit ambivalent. But they’ll come around.”

  James Thomas Fallon Jr. was born in Brooklyn in 1974, a year before Saturday Night Live went on the air. Recognizing they had a funny kid on their hands (actually two, counting Jimmy’s sister Gloria), his accommodating parents, who enjoyed SNL themselves, taped segments of the show (the safer ones) in the mid-1980s to replay for their kids, who would try to re-create some of the sketches. The family, just as Irish Catholic as Conan’s (if more black Irish than red), had moved to the upstate New York town of Saugerties, just up the Hudson from Kingston, where Jimmy’s dad, James Sr., worked at the IBM plant. Fallon attended Catholic school (St. Mary of the Snow—not a joke) and was popular and clearly talented. He learned guitar quickly and demonstrated an early facility for voices and impressions.