The War for Late Night_ When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy - Bill Carter [105]
Rosen had quickly called Ari Emanuel and Gavin Polone to discuss the issue. Ari told Rick he thought NBC was fucking Conan over, pure and simple. Gavin believed it was partly the result of Conan’s always agreeing, “OK, I’ll play ball”—a pattern he had long established with his employer: OK, I won’t take the Fox offer because I want to chase The Tonight Show. OK, I’ll hang around for five more years and take way less money even when they do give me The Tonight Show. Now, Polone concluded, Conan was swallowing the network’s latest bow to Leno because it was all still worth it to host The Tonight Show.
NBC continued to insist that the show Jay would be doing had no chance to affect Conan’s show, because it would be so different. Polone and the others didn’t buy this disingenuous portrait of Leno, how he would steer clear of conflict with Conan over guests or content.
Conan did worry about it anyway despite the network’s assurances. Conan told Polone he suspected NBC might still try to pay him off the $45 million and give the show back to Jay. Polone was accustomed to glimpses of Conan’s darker side, when he would get down and start worrying about things that weren’t really about to happen. Polone simply dismissed the payoff idea as absurd. How could anybody think of doing that? Only a complete idiot would think of doing that.
Rosen, for one, didn’t write off NBC’s potential for possessing an idiot factor. When he pressed Zucker on the payoff issue, Zucker flicked away the notion. “It’s never going to happen,” he told Rosen. The people talking about it were just “those Hollywood people.” Zucker repeated, “It’s never going to happen to you guys. There’s nothing to worry about.”
Conan did his best to embrace the idea that ultimately this Jay stuff didn’t matter. What mattered was hosting The Tonight Show. His representatives would assure him: of course, that was true. But among themselves, with Conan out of earshot, they all agreed: Jay at ten was bad, and it was going to stay bad. Not one of them could offer a single positive note about NBC’s plan—other than that Jay wouldn’t be at ABC at 11:35, of course. Sure, it might be better to be in the same boat with Jay, rather than on opposing warships; but it would be better still if Jay sailed away entirely.
For Jeff Ross, the situation was much more complicated. He had to get a show—and his guy—ready to knock America dead, so it did no good to waste time stewing over getting leap-frogged by Leno.
He had made his own discomfort plain to his pal Zucker and then moved on. For the sake of the show, and Conan, Ross allowed himself a few sips of the Kool-Aid.
Maybe it would mean a broader audience for Conan, Ross told himself. Who the fuck knows?
On May 12, less than a month before Conan’s premiere, and only a week before Conan’s trip to New York for the comedy showcase for the advertisers, Dick Ebersol, in LA for some other business, dropped by the new Tonight studio. The ostensible reason for the meeting was to nail down ideas for Conan’s participation in NBC’s coverage of the Winter Olympics from Vancouver, set for February 2010. Ebersol was more than just the executive in charge of the Olympic telecasts—he would personally produce every hour of prime time for the games. Both Conan and Jeff Ross were enthusiastic about the additional exposure Conan was sure to get during those hugely watched events.
But Ebersol had another message he wanted to convey, one he had told Jeff Zucker he was determined to get across to Conan. Since his lunch with Jeff Ross in April 2008, Ebersol had only grown more worried about whether Conan & Co. grasped the nuances of difference between shows at 11:35 and 12:35. Ebersol became especially worried after he watched Conan’s farewell show on Late Night in February and heard him promise, straight out, in his closing address to his fans—one that, to Ebersol, seemed to ring of defiance—that he didn’t care what people suggested, he wasn’t about to change.
A conversation