The War for Late Night_ When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy - Bill Carter [100]
Conan and Ross had heard that Rick Ludwin was coming to town, maybe something related to Saturday Night Live, which Ludwin always attended when he was in New York.
In fact, Ludwin was scheduled to arrive later in the day to meet with Zucker, but the issue had nothing to do with the SNL of two nights previous. The two of them were going down to visit with Conan and break the news: Jay had accepted NBC’s offer of a five-night-a-week show at ten p.m.
The two executives knew the conversation had the potential to be long, or tense, or maybe contentious. In essence space had been cleared for Jay to move ahead of Conan again. NBC was building Jay a beachfront house right between Conan’s and the shoreline. Certainly they expected Conan to be more than a little surprised—he had not heard anything about this proposal. For all those reasons, and just good business judgment in how to break possibly bad news to a performer, Zucker had resolved to wait until the taping of that day’s show had been completed and Conan had made it back from the stage to his office.
Out on the West Coast, meanwhile, Jay Leno had some business of his own to conduct. His deal now set, Jay felt an obligation of professional correctness. At around midday in LA, during a break from the usual joke rundown, Jay first called Peter Chernin at Fox, thanking him for his generous interest but letting him know he was staying at NBC, because the network was handing him the ten p.m. weeknight slot. Chernin, generally taciturn about all business matters, simply thanked Jay for the call.
Then Jay called Bob Iger at Disney. Clearly the matter had gone farther with Disney and ABC, and Jay had spent a lot of time laying the groundwork with Jimmy Kimmel for a possible tag-team effort. So with Iger he was more expansive, describing how deeply he had appreciated the interest, how impressed he was with ABC’s proposal, and how close he came to accepting. But in the end, NBC had come up with something that he felt he could not turn down: ten p.m. each weeknight.
Iger took the news equably; in truth, he wasn’t all that disappointed. Switching networks was always a crapshoot. Maybe Jay wouldn’t have provided a surefire windfall, and at least he didn’t have to face an immediate confrontation with the ABC news division over Nightline.
By now it was getting on toward evening in the east, and Conan was backstage ready to go on. He had no clue about Jay’s calls, or the ones that followed. Iger was making a few, to notify some of the people who had been with him in the Leno hunt that it was over. These calls, naturally, set in motion talk around the ABC headquarters, and the news of NBCʹs bold move quickly seemed too delicious to withhold.
Around six p.m., Cory Shields, the top corporate communications executive for NBC executive, got a call from The New York Times: They had the information about Jay Leno and ten o’clock.
When Zucker heard the news had leaked, he realized he had to act fast. If Conan happened to read about Jay’s getting ten p.m. on the Times’s Web site before Zucker had a chance to break the news to him, it could become a dreaded “This is how I find out?” moment. Zucker and Ludwin made their way down to Conan’s offices to meet him directly after the show.
In California Rick Rosen, Conan’s principal agent, sat behind the wheel of his car, cruising south on 101 back from Santa Barbara to LA. He had spent the morning checking out a possible new home. No business matters pressed; the drive was lovely. When his cell phone rang he picked up the call, which was from Kevin Reilly, now ensconced as the entertainment chief at Fox. Reilly, of course, had heard the news from Chernin.
“Is this true about Jay and Conan?” Reilly asked.
“Is what true?