The War for Late Night (49 page)

Graboff had a more urgent concern. If Conan and Ross got this news before NBC broke it to Conan’s representatives, the plan would never have a prayer of coming to fruition. On the other hand, he agreed that if Gaspin called the agents first, it would almost surely get leaked before they had a chance to break the news to Conan—and that could be an unforgivable move as well.

“So what do we do?” Gaspin asked.

Graboff had an idea. “Have Conan and Jeff let you know when they are coming over. And then, when they are on the way, we call Ari and Rick and fill them in.” That was the plan they decided to put in motion.

Back in Beverly Hills, Rick Rosen was just hanging up his jacket in his office at William Morris Endeavor at about nine fifteen when he got word from his assistant that a call had come in from NBC. “You must make yourself available for Jeff Gaspin at nine forty-five.” Rosen had already spoken with Jeff Ross earlier from his car, and Jeff had relayed the rumor about Jay’s getting canceled. Now, Rosen concluded, something was certainly afoot. He called Ross back and said a call was coming in from Gaspin.

“Something’s up,” Ross said. “Gaspin wants to see Conan and me, too.” Conan was just then arriving at the
Tonight
headquarters.

In Gaspin’s office, the NBC Entertainment chief put in another call, this one to New York. It was time to let Lorne Michaels and the staff of
Late Night
know that their show was headed for very late night—a 1:05 a.m. start time. The feedback from Lorne, Jimmy Fallon, and Jimmy’s producer, Mike Shoemaker, was all positive. Shoemaker told him, “We love what we’re doing. Don’t worry about us.”

“I appreciate that, guys,” Gaspin said. “I’m really in a shitstorm out here.”

A few minutes later Rick Rosen’s assistant reported that Gaspin’s office had checked in again, saying the call from Gaspin had been moved up to nine thirty. When Rosen phoned Jeff Ross back quickly with that news, the
Tonight
producer noted that they were supposed to be on their way to Gaspin’s office at precisely that time. Of course, Conan and Ross had no intention of leaving for Gaspin’s office until they knew what Gaspin had just told Rosen over the phone.

The call to Rosen came at exactly nine thirty. Gaspin was on the line, accompanied by Marc Graboff. “This is not a good call,” Gaspin said, leading off. Rosen, taking notes, wrote down a single word: “bad.”

Gaspin explained how important both Conan and Jay were to NBC, and how he wanted everyone to stay.

“What’s your plan?” Rosen asked.

Gaspin played his hand: Jay to 11:35; Conan to 12:05. “We really want to make this work.”

“And how long are we doing this for?” Rosen asked.

“Well, we don’t know. We need to discuss that,” Gaspin said, adding that this was not intended to be a long-term solution. He said he was about to have a conversation with Conan and Jeff.

“I know you are,” Rosen said. “We’ll get back to you.”

Rosen had a client waiting, one he knew was not going to enjoy this news flash. Rosen called Ross and O’Brien to clue them in on what they were about to hear when they got to Jeff Gaspin’s office.

Rosen could hear the dismay in Conan’s simple response: “Oh, boy.”

When Conan OʹBrien walked into Jeff Gaspin’s office at a little after ten a.m. on Thursday, January 7, his face said everything. Marc Graboff saw it and realized at once:
Conan knows
.

Gaspin was not quite as certain, but anyone could read Conan’s expression and realize something was tearing him up, either direct knowledge or anticipation of knowledge. All at once, as he prepared to deliver this blow, Gaspin sensed he might have played it all wrong. Maybe he should have brought Rosen in early, begged him to keep the information quiet, solicited his help in getting Conan on board. Now it was too late. He had a devastated star in his office about to get hit with the official haymaker.

The NBC executives greeted O’Brien and Ross formally and stiffly—there was no call for a bogus show of warmth. Conan sat across from them, but he looked off vaguely toward the window. He did not meet Gaspin’s eyes. Sitting next to him, Jeff Ross could not bring himself to look Graboff in the eye. He had too much history with Graboff, a guy he had always liked.

Gaspin got right to the point. They faced a crisis with the affiliates. The press tour was around the corner. Something had to be done. So he had come up with this plan: half-hour Jay into a later
Tonight Show
. “I don’t want to choose between you,” Gaspin said. Once again he referred to his refusal to make a Sophie’s choice out of the situation.

Conan remained calm, totally professional, which impressed both Gaspin and Graboff. Inside he was churning, of course, but part of him was struck by how surreal—farcical almost—the moment felt.
Sophie’s choice?

Still keeping his eyes averted, Conan responded, “I completely understand the difficult position you’re in,” but he began to lay out his case. If someone had told you six years ago what he was going to do, and you based all your actions on that promise, and then he turned around and reneged on that promise. . . .

He went through the litany of events that flowed from that initial guarantee of
The Tonight Show
. He had sacrificed a lot of money. He hadn’t wanted to go to the competition; he’d wanted to be loyal to NBC.

Gaspin offered no challenge; he saw no reason to. He agreed with Conan’s points.

“I get it,” Gaspin said. “It’s not perfect. I’m offering you both half of what you want. You get to come to work every day, same as always. Not Jay, because he’s got a half-hour show now. He’s the one who’s got to change his habit, a habit he’s had for eighteen years. You make the same money you always made. You work with the same people.”

Gaspin never mentioned the word “ratings,” nor did he bring up a point he himself regarded as an advantage for Conan: At 12:05 he wouldn’t have to face the pressure to broaden out. He wouldn’t have to listen to NBC’s endless notes on bookings and all the rest. And Jay would act as a good buffer between the news viewers and Conan. He hoped to have a chance to have that kind of fuller discussion down the road.

Now Gaspin came back to the need to make this change and his desire to do it the right way. “I want to be fair to both of you,” Gaspin said. “This has been an unfair situation for both of you.”

But Conan was seeing no equivalency on the fairness meter. He could not quite see how the situation could be construed as unfair to Jay. Leno had hosted
The Tonight Show
for seventeen years. He had handed it over and immediately shifted to ten o’clock, voluntarily. How, Conan asked himself, could any of this be construed as unfair to Jay?

“I know how hard I worked for this,” Conan told the NBC executives. “It was promised to me. I had a shitty lead-in.” His tone was soft, but the words were clipped. Graboff knew this was Conan in the raw, speaking from the heart.

Conan asked if Lorne knew; how about Jimmy Fallon? Gaspin said he had spoken to both of them already.

Graboff tried to shift the conversation, move it away from all the emotion. He said to Jeff Ross, “Come on, Jeff. Just do this show for a couple of years and then move back.”

It was the only time in his experience with Ross that he had ever heard the producer really raise his voice. “That’s bullshit, and you know it!” Ross said, directly to Graboff. “The only way Jay leaves now is being carried out feet first!”

Gaspin countered by continuing his soft approach, urging Conan to give the idea some time, take it in, think about it.

Listening to Gaspin, still with a faraway look in his eye, Conan began to perceive an executive who had been in the world of cable, made a lot of money for the company by being in the right place at the right time, and was now under the impression that he was smarter than he actually was—like a guy who happened to live in Texas oil country around the time the internal combustion engine was invented. To the money counters, an executive like this came across as a genius. But unlike the best entertainment impresarios, like NBCʹs own Brandon Tartikoff, Gaspin wasn’t somebody who lived and breathed network television. And so, Conan intuited, Gaspin had little chance to understand how late night worked, the emotions of its performers, the loyalty of its audiences.

As Conan saw it, Gaspin was in over his head. He simply didn’t get what he was doing here: He acted as though late-night shows were just a few board pieces to be moved around. Conan pictured Gaspin as a guy who walked into an atomic bomb factory, had never been in one before, and just started swinging a wrench around.

The one thought Conan had on the spot about the half hour at 11:35 was that it likely would exacerbate the problem he already had with Leno. “So at least now, Jay does his show, but there’s the break of the news, and that’s kind of a reset button,” Conan said to Gaspin and Graboff. “At 11:35 Jay’s going to come out and do twenty jokes. And then what’s he going to do?”

When they replied that it seemed likely he would have only one guest, Conan said, “OK. And then I come out and do what?”

The NBC guys didn’t really have any answer to that other than what Conan had already been doing: his own monologue. That this now seemed like a late-night pileup—three shows with monologues lined up end to end—was the implication no one had really addressed.

Finally Conan did have something he really wanted to say, something that had been almost burning a hole in his chest. “What does Jay have on you?” Conan asked, his voice still low, his tone still even. “What does this guy have on you people? What the hell is it about Jay?”

Neither of the NBC executives had an answer. They cast their heads down. Conan thought they were working at looking sympathetic, following some lesson that had been taught at corporate school.

After a pause, Gaspin suggested again that they take some time to figure out what they wanted to do. NBC would be patient. He repeated the network’s desire to keep Conan in the family.

Conan listened for a bit, then stood up. Jeff Ross followed suit. They walked out. The meeting was over; it had lasted fifteen minutes.

 

The walk back to the
Tonight
offices required less than two minutes. In that expanse of time both Conan O’Brien and Jeff Ross realized the same thing. NBC wasn’t
asking
if this move would be OK. They were simply telling them this was going to be the plan. There was no carrot being offered: no contract extension, no salary bump. And of course it had now become clear that they had been called to this hurried meeting because the news was leaking out.

“Fuck,” Ross said. “Well, we know that Jay knows.”

OʹBrien walked into an office in an uproar. A post on the entertainment gossip site TMZ, “NBC Shakeup; Jay Leno Comes Out on Top,” had basically reversed the rumor—now it was Conan who had been canceled. The first few women on the staff he encountered had tears streaming down their cheeks. O’Brien called a rushed staff meeting, gathering everyone in the studio. He grabbed a hand mic and said he just wanted to address the rumors. It was simply not true that the show had been canceled, Conan said. Yes, he explained, “there is a situation with NBC,ʺ but the show was not being threatened. “We’re all going to be OK.ʺ Relief flooded the room, but did not wash away the uncertainty much of the staff was feeling.

Even more than the meeting with Gaspin and Graboff, the TMZ story upset Conan. The day had begun with sharks circling Jay’s rejected show; now they had suddenly turned in Conan’s direction? How had that happened? Who could have fed the Web site this bogus story? Conan didn’t have to guess much to come up with a suspect. He thought about the 1993 episode when Jay hid in a closet to listen in on his fate, a move that Jay had been conspicuously proud of, seeing himself as simply resourceful, but a move that played to some as evidence of the unholy lengths he would go to in order to protect his position. To O’Brien, the timing of the leak to TMZ—coming so soon after a story that Jay had been canceled—screamed of an attempt at diversionary action.

Soon after Conan got back to his office, Ross walked in with more news. He had e-mailed a contact in New York with a simple question: “Is it true Lorne knows?” The answer had come back: Yes.

“We were the last ones to find out about this,” Ross said. “This is not good.”

“Nope,” said O’Brien. “This is not good.”

Ross was just finished comparing how not good this was with “sticking a big stick up your ass” when his assistant told him he had a call waiting from Allison Gollust.

Out on the studio tour with the Comcast team, Zucker had already checked in with Rick Rosen. “Well, what do you think?” Zucker had questioned him.

“It doesn’t sound very good,” Rick replied.

“How did they take it?” Zucker asked.

“Not well.”

“Well, can I go over and speak to them?”

“Hey, Jeff—you run the place,” Rosen replied. “You don’t have to ask me.”