The War for Late Night (52 page)

 

At the press tour on Monday, the Fox executive session was dominated by questions about that network’s interest in acquiring Conan—should there be a divorce from NBC. The two top Fox entertainment executives, Peter Rice and Kevin Reilly, did little to hide their enthusiasm for that idea.

Reilly, who took some special enjoyment in NBC’s latest misery, given his own untimely ouster by Zucker, said, “Conan would be a very compatible fit for our brand. He is one of the few guys on the planet that has demonstrated he can do one of these shows every night.” That, he added, “is probably the hardest form in show business.” Reilly also stressed that he did not believe Conan was “damaged goods in the least” and that, as far as he was concerned, “his show was working.”

Reilly made it clear, however, that acquiring Conan would not be like picking up a used car. The Fox stations had just come through a brutal financial downturn and many had invested in syndicated programs for use in late night. He said he agreed with estimates by NBC executives that the start-up costs for a new late-night show could go as high as $70 million.

Still, the gleam in his eye made him look like a guy about to buy a diamond engagement ring.

If Fox executives had reason to be upbeat that Monday, the mood was even more buoyant in another corner of the television business: NBC’s affiliates, with the official news Sunday that the Leno-at-ten experiment was dead, celebrated quietly all across the country.

Michael Fiorile, the affiliate board head, took some special satisfaction in achieving his goals without having to come to blows with the network. If there was still some uncertainty about what NBC would use to fill the ten p.m. hour, at least whatever NBC came up with promised to be a likely improvement over Jay’s numbers. And the proposed solution of Jay back at 11:35, with Conan moved back past midnight, sounded more than satisfactory.

From his conversations with Jeff Gaspin and Jeff Zucker in December, Fiorile had taken away the impression that NBC saw no problem with keeping Conan at 12:05—or, if it came to that, losing him altogether. As Fiorile interpreted it, NBCʹs position was: “If he wouldn’t take it, they’d program without him.”

Fiorile possessed evidence that the affiliate body did not disagree. NBC had asked him what the local stations’ preference would be at 11:35. Fiorile had quietly polled the affiliate board. The stations had long experience with Jay. (And the age group most of them occupied did not fall anywhere near the core audience of eighteen-to-thirty-four-year-olds that idolized Conan.) So it was little surprise whom the station owners preferred. Not one voted for Conan

As measured in other places, however, the reaction to the proposed move leaned heavily toward Conan. That was to be expected in any form of media that played to a younger audience, like Internet postings. One nerve grew more inflamed as the standoff continued. Resentment raged among the post-baby-boom generation at what they saw as another example of the baby boomers nailing their feet to the stage and not letting go. It would grow into an ongoing theme—even a movement. Readers posting in reaction to press stories took up the theme of Jay as an old hat that should have been shelved: “Geez, Leno, retire already! What a jerk!” ʺNOOOO! What is this obsession NBC has with Leno? The decision shows such little foresight. It’s tomorrow’s ratings that matter. Think of the children!”

Much of the press commentary sympathized with O’Brien as well. Jay was being portrayed as the usurper, the guy who didn’t stand by his pledge to hand the late-night chair to Conan, the old act who refused to leave the arena when his time had passed. Worst of all for Leno, he was again being tagged as a Machiavelli who had possibly set up the entire episode. As in: Give up
The Tonight Show
under protest; assail NBC on the air for years for this shoddy treatment; then accept the ten p.m. move, knowing the pathetic lead-ins it would generate would inevitably undermine Conan and force NBC to dump him. That this would entail the monumental embarrassment for Jay of a public cancelation caused no apparent cognitive dissonance.

But Jay was taking it on his ample chin from all over. Editorial cartoons popped up. In the
Dayton Daily News
, Lincoln had been erased from Mount Rushmore and Teddy Roosevelt was saying to Jefferson, “He did the Leno show last night.” In
The New Yorker
, two parents watching TV were chastising their son, who had gotten up in his pajamas: “Go back to bed or we’ll make you watch Jay Leno.” That kind of elitist commentary was easy for Jay to swat away, pointing out that the magazine had lost about $70 million in a year. “I had a better year than
The New Yorker
. I turned a profit.”

But Conan’s defenders also included many in the comedy world who had never embraced Jay because of his workmanlike style. Even one voice from the Carson camp weighed in. Jeff Sotzing, Johnny’s nephew, who managed all the Carson business activity after Johnny’s death, called Debbie Vickers and told her he agreed with Conan.

Like most others backing Jay, Vickers questioned the logic in the pro-Conan argument, and told Sotzing, “If Conan is doing well and they have to push him back, you go, ‘No, I’m not doing it.’ But if you’re not doing well, don’t you have to look in the mirror and say, ‘What’s my part in this?ʹ ʺ

Jerry Seinfeld provided the sternest defense of his old friend. Speaking at NBC’s press tour about his new reality show,
The Marriage Ref
, Jerry defended Jay’s ten p.m. show as a good idea, worth trying, one that was simply ahead of its time. But he also poked holes in Conan’s defense of his own ratings and how they were damaged by weak lead-ins from Jay. “I don’t think anyone’s preventing people from watching Conan,” Seinfeld said. “Once they give you the cameras, it’s on you.” He added, “Conan had a chance to destroy everybody. Go ahead! You’re out there. You’ve got to hit the ball. They can’t hit the ball for you. They can only give you the bat.”

The commentary back and forth—mostly nasty and mostly directed at Jay—disturbed the NBC executives, who were already getting antsy over the lack of communication from the Conan side. To them, this smacked of Team Conan trying to get a message out there that was intended not to enhance their own position, or even to challenge NBC on its decision, but purely to trash Jay. Certainly that was Zucker’s view. That Monday he picked up anti-Jay threads in the media that he believed could be traced right back to Gavin Polone. This would not do.

 

That same Monday Conan paid a visit to the writers’ room, one of the places he felt most comfortable, surrounded by like minds. He talked briefly about how wretched he felt over this Hobson’s choice he faced. He took his own poll of the room, adding the option that NBC hadn’t given him—at least not officially: Accept the move to post-midnight, or take a hike. This vote was almost unanimous: Tell NBC to shove it.

Conan thanked them, using a line he would dredge up again later: “I think they cured me of my addiction to
The Tonight Show.”

At that evening’s taping Conan walked onstage to thunderous applause that he finally had to stop by saying, “You keep that up, and this monologue won’t start until 12:05.” He had a passel of jokes related to the news on everyone’s mind: “This weekend a 6.5 earthquake hit California. The earthquake was so powerful it knocked Jay Leno’s show from 10 to 11:35.” (Over in Burbank, Jay was firing away as well: “I take pride in one thing. I leave NBC prime time the same way I found it—a complete disaster.”)

After he wrapped that night, Conan dragged himself back upstairs to the conference room next to Ross’s office, where his brain trust had reconvened, this time accompanied by the formidable Patty Glaser.

Conan had found himself more and more beaten down as the days passed. He had learned of Zucker’s blast directed at Rosen, including the threat to keep him from working again. Sure, it was just business, but Conan still found himself shocked by what was transpiring. He had put in almost twenty years at NBC, devoting himself body and soul to the network and its needs, and now he was being told—in effect—that soon they would be posting his picture on NBC’s properties with orders to give him the bum’s rush if he ever showed his face. He recalled how, when
Late Night
had finally burst through and all the heat it generated was pumping cash into the basement at 30 Rock, NBC came and asked him what kind of gift they could give him—probably expecting he’d say a Porsche or a yacht. Instead, he had asked if NBC happened to have a vintage microphone hanging around somewhere; he would like to have something like that. They managed to dig one up, an old-fashioned mic with the letters ʺRCAʺ on it. He had been thrilled and treasured it. Now, suddenly, that was another memento headed for a scrap heap somewhere as this long marriage threatened to be blown to pieces.

It struck Conan that Jay had played it well, in his passive-aggressive way, and wound up winning again. And maybe, in contrast, he himself had simply played it all wrong.

In the conference room, Glaser, accompanied by an associate, sat at one end of the big table with a Bluetooth pinned to one ear. The lawyers, Rosen, Polone, and Ross were all discussing the contract dilemma—how it might all come down to what had been in earlier drafts, and whether they could find something there to at least throw out a charge that NBC was in breach, in order to gain leverage. Conan sat silently listening, slowly getting more and more worked up, until he was all but shaking with emotion.

Finally Glaser, way at the opposite end of the table, looked to where Conan was sitting and asked him, “What do
you
want to do?”

His chest muscles were so constricted, Conan wondered briefly if he was having a heart attack. “What I want to do,” he said, haltingly, his voice rough and raw, “is something that all of you are going to tell me I can’t do.”

He had their full attention now, all eyes pinned to him. “I want to write a statement that says exactly how I feel about it. You guys are going to tell me that I’m giving up all my leverage if I’m supposed to go to another network or something; but I can’t wait. I don’t want to play games here, and the whole power of this thing is that I don’t really know what my options are. That’s what I want to do.”

During the long pause that followed, Conan was aware of the eyes on him, the uneasiness around the table. He expected that the next words he would hear would be, “That’s stupid.” Instead, Glaser, calm, totally in control, asked, “What would you say?”

All his life, Conan O’Brien had lived through periods of debilitating self-doubt and insecurity, knowing that when the moment came to stand up for himself, when he was truly pressed against a wall, he would find a way to push all that aside, straighten his long Irish backbone, and be at his best. He started to speak and a boiling lava of emotion spilled out.

He described how much the show meant to him, the legacy of Carson, the offers he had passed up to get this chance, and how losing it would be crushing—and unfair. Because they were never really given a chance, not with complete lack of ratings support from prime time and the obvious lack of faith on the part of a network pulling the plug only seven months in.

The words came freely; he composed them on the spot. But they flowed, syntax perfect, no hesitation between each sentence. His voice grew softer, even more strained with emotion when he got to the core of his message: He could not accept a postponement in a nightly habit Americans had participated in and shared for six decades; he would not be accomplice to the destruction that this idea of NBCʹs might inflict on the greatest franchise in television history. Not to mention the fallout on the other great NBC late-night showcase, the show David Letterman had created and Conan himself had devoted so much of his life to sustaining. If it truly came to this, if NBC would truly force him to decide whether to give up his dream or play a role in undermining a cultural landmark, then maybe it would be better for him to try to find someplace else to work, someplace that prized the art of late-night television more than NBC now apparently did.

When Conan finished, his group sat silent. Jeff Ross, his eyes welling up, looked around and saw no dry eyes on the Conan team. Throughout Conan’s speech Ross had found himself overcome with discomfort, thinking,
They’re never going to let you do this—so stop. Don’t finish this.
But he knew Conan, and the powerful way he could use words. So he was not surprised at the impact he had on the room.

Patty Glaser finally broke the silence. “I like it,” she said. And then she added, “If you do one thing for me, Conan, don’t quit. But I like this as a statement.” She paused again, then said definitively, “Let’s do it.”

Her quick assent was the last thing Conan expected to hear, but it stunned—and disconcerted—Jeff Ross, who still quaked at the obvious implications if Conan ever went public with those sentiments.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he said. “Really? We’re gonna do this?”

“Why not?” Glaser said. “It’s from his heart. It’s what he feels.” She turned back to Conan. “Why don’t you write it, and we’ll look at it.”

That was all Conan needed to hear. He stood up, ready to leave; Ross put up a hand.

“Wait, wait, wait,” he said. “I love the idea, but let’s all of us in this room understand that if we do this, we’re taking the toothpaste out of the tube, and it ain’t going back in.”

Conan nodded at Ross with assurance. He said, “I get it.”

 

In his car driving home, Conan felt the words burning straight out through his forehead. He knew what he wanted to say: nothing self-pitying, just an honest statement—because you can’t argue with the truth. And it came down to one simple truth: He did not want to be the guy who, accepting a start time past midnight, brought
The Tonight Show
into tomorrow.

At home, he gushed it out almost all at once to Liza before sitting down at the computer to write. But he struggled; the formality of actually typing out the words presented unexpected mental roadblocks, and he kept getting stuck. When he told Liza, she said, “When you talk about it, it’s so clear. So I’ll just sit at the computer and you just walk around and say it.”