The War for Late Night

by Carter, Bill

  What most NBC executives presumed was that Comcast had a plan; they just didn’t know what it was or who would be affected. Upon examining the broad spectrum of NBCU, they would have seen cable channels running at high efficiency, a news division that remained a dominant leader, theme parks that seemed about to post big results thanks to a new Harry Potter attraction, and a broadcast network on the skids but showing a few glimmers of financial turnaround.

  How any of this would affect Zucker’s future, no one inside NBC ventured to guess. Jeff himself seemed serene; he spent a lot of time with Roberts and Burke, selling NBC’s strengths—and by extension his own.

  Two weeks before the end of The Jay Leno Show, Debbie Vickers returned to her office after completing a taping and found a message waiting from Rob Burnett of the Letterman show, simply stating, “It’s not bad.” Vickers had remained an unabashed admirer of Dave, through all her years of work with Jay—but then again, Debbie knew, as others on the show did, that deep down Jay himself remained an unabashed Dave admirer.

  “Dave has an idea,” Rob said when Vickers returned the call; and he presented it to her. When Debbie finished laughing, which required several minutes, she took the idea directly to Jay—in private. She was already on board with the need for total secrecy.

  “Remember the Super Bowl ad that Dave did with Oprah?” she began, as she outlined Letterman’s concept for Jay.

  They were back on the phone with Burnett within five minutes.

  On Tuesday, February 2, 2010, Jay Leno boarded NBC’s jet for New York. He had run the idea past Jeff Zucker, who embraced it just as quickly and enthusiastically as Jay had. It did mean canceling that night’s edition of the ten p.m. Jay Leno Show, which nobody gave a second thought.

  Jay landed at Teterboro in New Jersey. A waiting car contained a disguise that a Letterman producer had prepared for him: fake mustache, glasses, hooded sweatshirt. They had worked it out that Jay would arrive at Letterman’s theater when Dave was in midshow so no audience hopefuls would still be lingering outside. Jay was escorted in through the Broadway entrance, under the big marquee, because crowds always lined up across from the entrance on Fifty-third Street, in case the show did some bit out on the street.

  Jay was reasonably sure nobody saw his arrival; if they did, all they noticed was a guy in a hoodie. The producers brought Jay upstairs immediately, stashing him on the thirteenth floor in an unused room where he relaxed and snacked for about thirty-five minutes, listening to the distant laughter down in the theater. Then the door opened and Oprah Winfrey walked in. This was less than a week after Jay had sat down with Oprah for his much-talked-about interview, and they greeted each other warmly. Now all they had to do was wait for the show to end.

  When it did, and every audience member had been cleared from the theater, Rob Burnett appeared and greeted his guests. He led them out and down to a secluded area of the building where a fake living room had been created on a set that the show used to pretape segments. And here was David Letterman. It was the first time Dave and Jay had laid eyes on each other in person in eighteen years.

  The greeting wasn’t exaggerated or grand, but routine, like two guys who used to hang out a bit now happening to run into each other at somebody’s party. Handshakes, not hugs.

  The conversation didn’t even touch on the issue that had dominated entertainment news for the previous month, nor the transcontinental punch lines they had exchanged. Instead it was all “Have you seen this guy and that guy from the old days at the Comedy Store?” To Jay it seemed he was picking up with Dave exactly where he had left off in 1992—and that this Dave, though a bit older and grayer, was still the exact same guy he had always known.

  Right away Jay fell into the pattern he had always followed with Letterman: He tried to make him laugh. He knew Dave’s formal way with language and how certain turns of phrase amused him, so he pulled up a line that had worked on Dave before, saying, “The old Manson place has really changed.” The interaction felt so right to Jay that he relaxed totally—this was going to be a snap, just like the old days on Dave’s show.

  Dave’s idea was simple: a fifteen-second segment, a promo designed to run in the second quarter of the game that Sunday night. The concept was the worst Super Bowl party ever.

  They arranged themselves on the stage couch: Dave far right, Oprah in the middle, Jay far left. It would start with a one-shot of Dave complaining about the party, expand to a two-shot to show Oprah, and then the big reveal with Jay at the other end of the couch. Jay’s line: “Oh, he’s just saying that ’cause I’m here.” And Oprah would tell them both to be nice.

  Dave asked for input. Jay suggested Dave not have his arm around Oprah in the first shot, because that might make it seem that he was complaining about her being there.

  They shot it, needing only a couple of takes. It seemed to play perfectly, with both Dave and Jay looking miserable on either side of Oprah.

  “Jay, you happy with this?” Dave asked. “You want to do this again?”

  “No, looks good to me,” Jay said.

  And then the two rivals stood and exchanged another handshake. Dave thanked them both for being so generous to show up and do this for him. He hoped it would have the impact they all expected.

  Dave and Jay talked just a bit more, nothing of consequence, two comics shooting the breeze. Then they said their good-byes. Jay was back in Teterboro and on a plane in time to get into LA for a late dinner.

  The circle who knew the secret was small and tight at both networks. Still, somehow the same Web site that had gotten wind of the change coming for Jay’s ten p.m. show, FTV Live, posted news of some kind of “secret taping” that had taken place at Letterman’s studio. One of the writers on Jay’s staff approached him at rehearsal with the rumor about the taping. “Why don’t you try to find out more?” Jay said, enjoying the tease.

  The night of the game, those in on the secret were barely distracted by the action on the field. They knew the promo was set for the first commercial break in the second quarter. Even Jay, who didn’t give a hoot about sports, was at home glued to the set.

  As soon as the spot appeared—Dave, then Oprah, then . . . Jay?—phones began ringing and e-mails began flying. Jay was contacted by e-mail from the White House—David Axelrod, the senior adviser, wanted to know, was that real? He had been watching with the president, and they all had instantly asked themselves: Could that possibly have been real?

  So amazed were viewers that hordes on Web sites and chat rooms immediately speculated that Leno had somehow been “green-screened” into the picture. Surely these two guys who had so recently ripped each other with such abandon had not sat down together for a gag promo?

  They had indeed—and it delighted Jay Leno. The whole experience had been great fun, but also something else. Jay had been moved by it. For all the competition, the endless ratings measuring out their worths on a weekly basis, Jay had never really stopped holding out hope that he and Dave could one day just get together, be guys again. For Jay, the Super Bowl promo, as elaborate and secret as it had been, really came down to that: He had gotten together with Dave again. And the years, the jokes, and the animosity melted away in an instant.

  Jay acknowledged that he may have been naive, but he thought maybe Dave sensed he had gone a little too far. Dave was never going to stop by, say he was sorry, and offer to shake hands; comics didn’t do that. Instead they did this: They appeared together in a bit. This was how you conducted a late-night feud. Jay decided to believe it was Dave offering an olive branch. It didn’t really matter to him whether that was true or not. It felt good to believe it was.

  If Letterman had had his way, the bit might have been even better. Before he invited Jay, Dave had had Rob Burnett reach out to one other potential participant: But Conan didn’t get the joke. More precisely, he didn’t find anything funny in the situation. Jeff Ross got the call from Burnett and brought the idea to Conan, by now out of the show and already growing his
scraggly red beard.

  “So, Burnett called. Dave wants to know if you want to be in a Super Bowl ad with Jay and Dave.” Ross had little doubt what the answer would be.

  Conan fired it back instantly. “No fucking way I’m doing that,” Conan said. “It’s not a joke to me—it’s real.”

  Conan was sure that NBC—which, according to the release Conan had just signed, held the lock on his TV appearances until May—would have been only too happy to grant a onetime permit for this little foray with Jay. Of course NBC would be all for it, Conan guessed. It could only help rehabilitate Jay in the nation’s eyes: all the late-night warriors, cozying up. The message, Conan believed, would be: See? It’s all just smoke and mirrors, folks. Or, as Jay himself had put it, it would be “big-time wrestling”—all fake, all a game. Ross sent back word: Conan was a no.

  One other late-night host strongly disapproved of the promo. Watching the game that night at a party at his house, Jimmy Kimmel couldn’t believe his eyes. Dave was throwing Jay a life preserver. He later went on Dave’s show as a guest and tweaked him about it, after Dave said how much fun he’d had bashing Jay. Jimmy said Jay had been drowning; they could have finished him off. The two of them had a laugh about it all.

  Kimmel had thought about it a lot and realized the ad represented Dave sending a message: This is still about two guys at the top; I don’t need these other hangers-on cluttering up the late-night stage. When Letterman had slammed Jay with the joke comparing him to Americans stealing the Indians’ land, it had thrilled Kimmel; it was television with a real edge. Jimmy had even admired Jay for coming back with nasty stuff about Dave as well, though, as might be expected, he didn’t think it was as funny as Dave’s hits on Jay.

  For Kimmel, the late-night war had been pure joy. There was something primally funny about it, something that played to his own instincts. His haranguing of Jay on Jay’s show had been, in his estimation, the best thing that had ever happened to his own show. He had broken through into a story being dominated by two other late-night network stars, with Dave guest-starring as the outside agitator. Thrusting himself into the discussion had made Jimmy a host of new fans. Previously, he knew, Conan’s fans had viewed him as something of a lummox: Conan was the smart guy; Jimmy was the jack-off. Now he was being flooded with messages and e-mails from Conan’s people. Writers on Conan’s show, on Letterman’s show, and on The Simpsons, congratulated him, as did big names like Will Ferrell, Martin Short, and even Paul Shaffer, Dave’s bandleader.

  Kimmel at first denied Jay’s charge (to Oprah) that he had sucker-punched Jay with that “10 at 10” appearance. Then, to Dave, he acknowledged that, having checked the dictionary, yeah, he had sucker-punched him. But he had to quibble with Dave’s ultimate assessment that it was all fun and “nobody got hurt.”

  “I think Conan might disagree,” Jimmy said.

  In the days before his return to The Tonight Show on March 2, Jay Leno and his staff found themselves treading lightly. They were all feeling the heat of Team Coco and the blasts still coming over the Internet. Jay and Debbie Vickers both accepted the likelihood that they would face some damaged-goods issues. And they feared that Letterman had built up a wave of momentum that might be hard to break. Maybe it would take another eighteen months before Jay returned to the top—if he ever reached there.

  Rebuilding the show seemed less challenging than rebuilding Jay’s image, because they all knew how to do a Tonight Show. Debbie had already returned the better comedy bits to act two. The guests would come back; the familiar routine would be reestablished.

  During the three-week break for the Olympics, they fiddled with the set, brought in a desk and chairs for the old panel look. The studio still had the overall ambience of The Jay Leno Show, because there wasn’t time to make it look radically different.

  One big question was how to play the return—obviously it had to be for laughs. The Dallas promo had been ditched, but they all kicked around that idea and eventually turned it into a Wizard of Oz parody: Jay would have hit his head and gone to a strange land—ten p.m.—but had now come home. It might be a screamingly obvious idea, but those were usually the kind that had the broadest appeal, and reinstalling Jay was all about recapturing that broad appeal.

  Another question demanded to be addressed: Would Jay say anything in the first show about Conan, salute his efforts on the show, again toast him for being a good guy? Nick Bernstein, among others, pressed the case for some kind of mention of Conan. The issue had resonance for Jay, because one of the deepest regrets of his career had been not citing Carson on the first night when he assumed The Tonight Show in 1992. That had been his manager Helen’s demand, though of course Jay could have overruled it had he been willing to defy her. Not mentioning Johnny had invited immediate charges that Jay was an ungracious slug who didn’t deserve the job.

  Jay certainly didn’t want to go through anything like that again, but this situation was clearly different. Conan at seven months obviously wasn’t Johnny at thirty years. But more than that, Jay was now facing a torrent of acrimony from Conan’s fans. To give Conan even a tiny nod of recognition would surely be seen by some as shameless pandering.

  They felt damned either way, so they decided to pass.

  Other than that bit of awkwardness, Jay slipped comfortably into his old seat at Tonight. In a real way, the show was his baby, his only baby. His family—other than Mavis—was the staff. His personal relationships outside the show remained minimal.

  Just before he resumed his old position, Jay stepped back to consider the events of 2009. One rationalized way he looked at them: He had been off the air for eight months. That other show? Somehow, that didn’t constitute being on the air for Jay—not when matched against being on The Tonight Show. From that perspective, Jay realized he was back home in less than a year.

  The numbers for the first night back reflected the continuing fascination with the rumble in late night. Jay pulled in 6.6 million viewers, a massive bump over Conan’s average (but nowhere near the 10.3 million who turned out to blow Conan a kiss good-bye in January). What was notable, of course, was how big Jay’s margin was over Letterman, who attracted 3.8 million that night. Of course, there was curiosity value in Jay’s return, but he won the week as well, with 5.58 million viewers to Dave’s 3.66. Jay cleaned up among those precious viewers eighteen to forty-nine as well, landing 1.94 million to 1.3 million for Dave.

  As the weeks passed, Jay’s margin held. It looked a bit like a replay of two years earlier: Jay won every week and most every night. “It’s as if a collective erase button was pushed,” said Robert Thompson, professor of television at Syracuse University, “with the usual suspects back in their usual locations—except Conan is gone.”

  Week by week Jay’s total audience numbers remained about 50 percent higher than what Conan had been scoring. But he was down sharply from his own previous performance on Tonight two years earlier, and the edge in the younger audience groups was far less impressive. The evidence was quickly overwhelming: NBC had exchanged a smaller, mostly younger audience for a larger, mostly older audience. The median age of the Jay viewer, just over fifty-six, represented growth, virtually overnight, of more than a decade over what it had been for the Conan viewer.

  The results played more ominously for Letterman. In a flash, with Jay back as his chief rival, Dave lost the number one status he had enjoyed during Conan’s brief run. And a sizable slice of the additional audience he’d collected during Conan’s tenure seemed to drift away and not come back. The erase button had wiped out the short, happy reign of David Letterman in late night.

  Conan O’Brien had once read a story about Lyndon Johnson. After he had decided not to run for reelection and was spending his days down at his ranch in Texas, the former leader shared a day with a journalist, who noticed almost immediately that Johnson had not been able to shake the mantle of the presidency. He was no longer tackling problems of poverty or ordering the carpet bombing of Cambodia; inste
ad he was applying the same energy and authority to fixing a small water pump that filled a cattle trough.

  Though he hardly qualified as an ex-president, Conan, in the first weeks after being untimely ripped from his Tonight Show womb, found himself similarly diminished. Accustomed to heading a staff of people all devoted to a single cause—getting a show on the air every day—he now found himself sitting outside, waiting for his daughter’s school bus, thinking in some instinctive, hostlike way: Where is that bus?! I want nine people over here right now!

  He had things do to, like taking care of remaining issues with the staff and, more than anything, planning the live tour that would get him back to doing what the fire in his blood demanded: standing in front of people and making them laugh. One small task, writing a daily Twitter feed, had come to amuse and inspire him a bit. Though initially dismissive of the trivial nature of most items on Twitter, O’Brien could not help but be impressed by the impact of its social connections, and he came to enjoy the discipline of writing something funny every day in 140 characters or less. As long as the tweets stuck to jokes, he was able to continue doing them; NBC monitored Conan’s daily messages to make sure he was not sprinkling them with anti-NBC or anti-Jay material, because its deal with him included no Internet presence for several months. But they weren’t going to enforce that for a stream of funny lines.

  “I just celebrated the end of Lent by eating twenty-two sleeves of Peeps. My religion rocks!”

  Conan needed to flex his comedy muscles because his psyche was still lacerated. It was too soon to have any perspective on what had just transpired in his life, but he had no uncertainty about the choices he had made, dating all the way back to his turning down Fox in 2001. Chasing The Tonight Show had been something he had to do. Giving it up had been the hardest thing he had ever done—or likely would ever do—professionally, but that sacrifice was better than holding on to a compromised version of it.