The War for Late Night (48 page)

Gaspin said NBC was about 75 percent sure he would.

“What happens to the staff?” Jay asked. “Do I stay on this lot?”

“Nothing has to change,” Gaspin said.

But Vickers, thinking about the limitations of a half-hour show, said she probably wouldn’t need a music department anymore.

“No,” Gaspin said. “That is not going to be part of the conversation. As far as I’m concerned we are doing this to you. You shouldn’t have to suffer. You don’t have to make a change.”

Gaspin had already made all the financial calculations. All three late-night shows had budgets in place—for a year, anyway. Getting Jay out of ten and inserting a roster of dramas would surely generate a ratings lift and more revenue, which could offset the extra costs in late night. That would not be the case in future budgets, but Gaspin figured he would deal with that the following year. For now, Jay could do whatever show he wanted in the half-hour format, with everything the staff expected of the show.

“Nobody loses a paycheck?” Jay asked. Gaspin guaranteed that would not happen.

ʺOK,ʺ Jay said. “I’m in.”

Debbie pressed the Conan issue again: Was he really going to say yes? Gaspin expressed confidence that NBC could get him to agree.

Both Leno and Vickers saw logic in that conclusion. Numbers addicts as they were, they could not imagine that Conan and his team could be unaware of the ratings he was scoring. He had to know, they believed, that he wasn’t doing well—and not just because of their own woeful performance in the ten o’clock hour. After all, Conan had started to lose chunks of viewers back in the summer before Jay even came on. Vickers figured neither show was a winner. Why not try to reformulate something while both shows were still on the air? Regroup and come back in some new incarnation; that made sense to Debbie.

Jay translated it in his typical “regular-guy” fashion. He envisioned how things like this went down in the real world:

The boss gives you a job to do and it doesn’t go well. So they send you to the regional office in Des Moines to get your sales up. The half hour at 11:30 for him, and the move to midnight for Conan, those amounted to the Des Moines office. You go, you get your sales up, and when your numbers look good again, you come back to the national office. As Jay saw it, that was how real life tended to work. You’re a salesman. You did gangbusters in one market, so they move you to a new market and it doesn’t work out. Now your old market is filled so you have to prove yourself in a different market.

Vickers did realize that they might be naive, they might be chumps. David Letterman, with his perpetual adversarial relationship with his own network, would never roll over this way. But they really did feel a debt of gratitude to NBC, as pathetic as that made them sound in this day and age.

“If Conan’s in, we’re in,” Vickers said.

They stood up and shook hands on it.

Gaspin wasted no time. Feeling a surge of confidence, he called Jeff Zucker, who had just arrived in LA to help the Comcast team get acquainted with Hollywood. Gaspin told him he thought this was really going to work.

Jeff Zucker was thrilled.

 

Jeff Gaspin had another constituency he needed to reach. The affiliate meeting he had postponed in December was now imminent, set for the following Tuesday, the twelfth. But with the crucial Conan discussion planned for Monday, it seemed impossible to fly out to meet with the affiliates in New York on Tuesday morning. Besides, it only made sense to get all the ducks lined up before facing the stations. They would have their own barrage of questions. If Gaspin could get a deal with all parties buttoned up in the next week or so, all that could be avoided. He needed another postponement.

That Wednesday evening, Gaspin quickly organized a conference call with some members of the affiliate board. He asked for a delay in the New York meeting—just a short one, until the twenty-first. “Look,” Gaspin told the board members. “Call your station guys and tell them we will have an answer for them if they will give us another couple of weeks. And it will likely be something they’re happy with.”

 

Conan O’Brien wrapped up what he considered another strong show on the evening of Wednesday, January 6. The interview with that night’s lead guest, Matthew Broderick, had gone especially well. The overall trend felt right; the shows were getting positive press. This was nothing like those early days on the
Late Night
show when survival seemed to hinge on every guest booking, every joke. All the negative attention in the press was centering on Jay and how his ten p.m. show was wrecking the network. The new
Tonight Show
, hosted by Conan O’Brien, seemed to be a given going forward.

And yet, as he gathered his writing and production group for the postmortem, Conan felt out of sorts. He realized he was coming across as edgy and short-tempered, which was not his intention. So he dismissed the group early. Gavin Polone stayed around. The manager had dropped by the show that night as he occasionally did now that Conan was in LA. Nothing seemed in the least wrong about the show to Polone, but he knew Conan well enough to recognize the clouds circling above his star’s head.

“What’s wrong?” Polone asked. “That was a really funny show. Things are going great. The show is growing; you’re doing good work every night. The numbers aren’t there yet, but that’s because of Jay. If they move him out, they’ll put some other programming in there and, you know, that can only help.”

Conan’s glum expression was unchanged. “I just have a bad feeling,” he said. “I just think he’s going to hurt me in some way.”

“You’re crazy!” Polone said. What could NBC do? Move Jay back?

That was clearly Conan’s fear.

“Why would they do that?” Polone asked. “Jay’s failing. They’re going to move the guy who’s failing back to where he was? It makes no sense! You can’t think about these jobs based on what’s happening this second. You have to think about where you’re going to be in five years. Jay will be nearly seventy. You’re going to have a seventy-year-old man hosting
The Tonight Show
? I just don’t see any of that happening. It would just be the dumbest move ever. I’m not saying these guys are my friends or that they would keep their word. I’m just saying it doesn’t make any sense.”

Now, if NBC somehow had a line on somebody like Jon Stewart, Polone said, there might be some cause for alarm. But they didn’t, and Stewart would never listen now anyway. He was far too successful doing what he was doing to jump into this swirling uncertainty.

Conan nodded unconvincingly. His mood did not lift. The premonition was still there.

When he got home, he had a raging headache. He dropped his things and walked into the spacious country kitchen, where he collapsed onto a couch. Liza found him stretched out there.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I think maybe they’re going to cancel Jay,” Conan said. “I just think that guy is going to hurt me.”

Now Liza stepped up to be reassuring. “I don’t really see how that’s possible,” she said.

Conan got up and gobbled some Tylenol. His head was pounding—it didn’t relent.

Later he went to bed, the headache lingering. Finally, still unsettled and still not sure why, he fell asleep.

At six a.m. Pacific time Thursday, Jeff Zucker was up already in his room at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills, getting ready for his day leading his prospective new bosses on a grand tour of the Universal lot, when he got a call from the room down the hall. His top corporate communications executive and close friend Allison Gollust had received an e-mail that morning from one of Jeff’s own media properties. CNBC wanted a reaction to a story someone there had just seen on an obscure Web site called FTV Live. Had
The Jay Leno Show
been canceled? Gollust reported that she had told CNBC she was looking into it. She and Zucker agreed that was all they planned to say for the moment.

It was about seven fifteen when Zucker walked outside into the crisp California morning and climbed into his limo with Roberts, Burke, and Gollust. As they settled into their seats, Zucker spoke up immediately. “There’s something you might want to know that’s just about to hit the papers,” he said. Recognizing that the two Comcast executives could have no input into NBC’s operations at that point but guessing that the news would interest them anyway, Zucker filled them in on what was happening with Jay and Conan. He also briefed them on NBCʹs thinking and the network’s provisional plan going forward.

Roberts and Burke took the information in as though listening to a ten-day weather forecast. Gollust had the impression that they concluded NBC might be overreacting a bit in anticipation of what was going to transpire.

The car wound its way through the congested morning-rush traffic toward Universal City.

In another part of town, at just about the same hour, Jeff Gaspin was driving himself toward the same destination. Waiting at a stoplight, he heard his BlackBerry ping and quickly checked the message. It was Rebecca Marks, letting him know that the news about Jay had leaked. But she noted that it had been posted on a site that did not attract much traffic. It seemed to be from a blogger who had posted other pieces about local TV stations. Gaspin guessed that one of the affiliates, exuberant over the news that NBC had finally found a favorable solution to the ten p.m. issue, had contacted this guy with a scoop. But the site had the news a bit wrong. The leak suggested that Jay had simply been canceled and was leaving the network. The inaccuracy encouraged Gaspin—maybe nobody else was going to follow this up.

A short time later, Conan OʹBrien slid behind the wheel of his own car in his driveway in Brentwood. By that point the news had made it to the radio. The first newscast Conan heard cited reports on the Internet that NBC had canceled Jay Leno’s show. Conan listened intently—not a word about
The Tonight Show
.

That same morning on the Universal lot, NBC’s corps of executives was arriving early, eager to get to the meet and greet with the new Comcast overseers. A group of about thirty filed into the conference room in the Lew Wasserman Building. At about eight, Zucker strode in, accompanied by Gaspin. Zucker introduced Roberts and Burke. The NBC executives quickly introduced themselves one by one and briefly described their duties. Neither Rick Ludwin nor Nick Bernstein said a word about the morning’s developments, because they were completely unaware of them.

The upbeat meeting broke up a little after nine and everyone dispersed—Zucker and his companions to some waiting golf carts for a spin around the lot. The NBC contingent took off to start their workdays. As soon as many of the network executives arrived at their offices, they perceived a heightened sense of tension. The news began to come at them all at once; reports were breaking everywhere that Jay had been canceled. The executives sped to their computers and phones, seeking to make sense of what was really happening. But they resisted the urge to check with one another, because it seemed no one had any clue what had been confirmed and what was just rampant rumor. It struck one executive as “utter chaos.”

Rick Ludwin had a message waiting when he arrived back at his desk: See Gaspin immediately.

Jeff got right to the point as soon as Ludwin walked in. The plan to make the change with Jay was in progress: no more ten p.m. show; Jay back to 11:35; Conan pushed to 12:05. Gaspin asked Ludwin what he thought of the idea.

Ludwin responded that the other proposal that had been discussed—cutting Jay back to one or two nights—still seemed much better to him, because it would have been far less disruptive. Ludwin stressed that his strong preference was to avoid this kind of shakeup. But Gaspin made it clear he was going ahead with his plan.

At just about that time, Jeff Ross was arriving at the
Tonight
offices inside the auxiliary gate down at the front of the lot. As usual he was at his post before Conan turned up. The show’s staff was buzzing. The rumors were by now aflame all over the Internet, though NBC had not confirmed anything: Jay was supposedly getting canceled.

“Hopefully that’s true,” Ross said, figuring almost anything NBC came up with would improve the ten p.m. hour and help Conan. But he wasn’t really sure what to think. The uncertainty was only compounded a few minutes later when he got a message from his assistant. Jeff Gaspin wanted to see Jeff—and Conan—in his office as soon as Conan arrived. This immediately struck Ross as a curious and worrisome request. To him it should have been right out of Show Business 101: The network boss can order the producer to his office, but he never demands an appearance by the star. That just isn’t done.

A few minutes later Marc Graboff walked into Jeff Gaspin’s office in response to a similar request for an immediate meeting. Gaspin explained that the Jay story had broken because of an apparent leak by an affiliate. It was now imperative that they break the news to Conan immediately. He told Graboff he had already summoned Conan and Jeff Ross. Graboff recognized the good intentions behind everything Gaspin had done, but he wished there had been an opportunity for the same kind of back-channel work he had put in five years earlier when he was able to bring Conan and Ross in on NBCʹs plan to transfer control of
The Tonight Show
. It was too late for that now.