The War for Late Night_ When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy - Bill Carter [106]
Ebersol had fond feelings toward Conan—almost everyone at NBC did, of course. But Dick’s affection touched another level. When Ebersol and his wife, the actress Susan Saint James, had suffered the shattering tragedy of losing their young son Teddy in a private plane crash—one that had almost killed Dick as well—Conan had handwritten a note to the couple that they remembered as extraordinarily moving. So Ebersol put Conan, as a person, at the highest level.
But this was business, and from a television executive’s perspective he saw Conan as possibly naive, or maybe just too insulated on one of those little islands that seemed to spring up and form spontaneously around every late-night star. Whatever it was, Ebersol meant to break through with some down-to-earth business-reality talk.
After touring the Tonight set, Ebersol, favorably impressed, repaired to Jeff Ross’s still unfinished new quarters upstairs in the adjacent office building, where he sat down with Ross and Conan. Ebersol first laid out some suggestions for how they could team up in Vancouver. The first week of the games Conan would not be preempted by a late-night Olympics show, so he would get a week of regular shows with skaters and skiers providing likely the biggest lead-ins of his life. Ebersol promised to deliver some Olympics guests for the shows—and with those tie-ins NBC would be able to charge a premium to advertisers for Olympics-themed programming.
For the second week, with a late-night Olympics program taking over for The Tonight Show, Ebersol had been mulling a plan for a two- or three-minute Conan feature each night, something that would capture Conan’s take on the big news from the games the day before. They would find a special sponsor and sell it separately. Ebersol would insert the bit somewhere within the first ninety minutes of each night’s coverage.
The proposal sounded great to O’Brien and Ross, and Conan had every confidence he could pull something like that off.
The preliminaries out of the way, Ebersol moved on to the central purpose of his visit. “I want you guys to know, I’m really here to say, one more time, how important it is to broaden out the comedy and think of those Midwest markets.”
Then Ebersol launched again into the story of his 1975 visit with Lorne Michaels to the undershirted Johnny Carson in his Burbank lair, and Johnny’s advice about slotting the best comedy at the top of the show—and playing well in Topeka and Des Moines.
Ebersol believed he detected that both men were well aware of the Carson anecdote, so he presumed Ross had filled Conan in on it.
The conversation remained entirely collegial, but Conan made much the same point he had made on the air on his farewell Late Night show. He had made up his mind to do the things he had always done, to be himself.
“I’m not telling you not to be Conan O’Brien,” Ebersol said. “I’m suggesting things to change at the top of the show.”
None of this advice struck either OʹBrien or Ross as either unusual or new. Broaden your appeal? Conan’s internal reaction was the same as it had always been: OK, good; thanks for that. It didn’t seem that Ebersol was delivering anything like actionable notes. It reminded Conan of typical network chitchat. The meeting didn’t last more than fifteen minutes. As it broke up they all promised to talk more about the Olympics idea when Dick’s plans were further down the road.
After he left, Conan and Ross thought little of the meeting in terms of what it meant for Tonight, other than that Ebersol, whom they both basically liked, came across as someone else professing to know more about their show than they did—and that he was awfully full of himself.
Ebersol, for his part, got into his car and drove off the lot, a riffle of foreboding running through his stomach.
At ABC, Jimmy Kimmel had more than a little natural curiosity about how Conan O’Brien would fare—and some reason to