The War for Late Night_ When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy - Bill Carter [107]
If there really had been a might have been, that is.
What Kimmel and a number of executives both inside and outside ABC knew was that back in January, a short time after the announcement that Leno was moving to ten, there had been a frisson of activity surrounding ABC’s late night—activity that surely would have involved Jimmy. Maybe it was just the network’s entertainment division spinning out potential alternatives, having missed out on Leno, as ABC executives later claimed. But executives conversant with ABC’s late-night plans concluded that the network was working on a plan to go after Conan on NBC by moving Jimmy to 11:35. Of course, none of that had been run by ABC’s news division, which would have risen up in righteous anger at another assault on Nightline.
The executives aware of ABC’s planning said that Kimmel and his agent, James Dixon, had had quiet discussions and meetings with ABC executives, and several network insiders presumed that an offer to move Kimmel up to 11:35 was imminent. By that point ABC had some results from the extensive late-night research it had commissioned. One finding was that a Conan OʹBrien Tonight Show would likely be vulnerable to a show on a competing network with another young host. At that point ABC was considering which of three potential moves to take advantage of this situation made most sense: to have Kimmel go for broke and jump ahead of Conan in the 11:35 slot by months, probably starting as early as March; to sneak ahead of him just by a week or so in May, in order to steal some of his thunder; or, alternately, to hold off until October, when, if the research estimates proved out, Conan would be struggling.
“ABC can deny whatever they want,” said a longtime network executive connected to the discussions about Kimmel, “but they met with Kimmel and he really thought he was going to 11:35.”
When word of the possible move for Kimmel leaked, ABC did deny it. Anne Sweeney, the network’s chief executive, wrote the notion off as too unlikely to qualify even as far-fetched—words that comforted the news division.
The maneuvering was complicated by the dysfunctional chain of command at the network. Most staff members (and indeed much of the rest of Hollywood) knew that the entertainment division boss, Steve McPherson, technically reported to Sweeney, but in practice the two didn’t get along at all and barely spoke to one another. “At ABC, there’s Bob Iger, Anne Sweeney, and Steve McPherson,” said one long-serving ABC employee, explaining the network hierarchy. “Anne and Steve hate each other. Bob gets along with both of them.”
One hint of ABC’s possible late-night intentions was revealed when Iger, the Disney chairman, led a little hunting foray into the territory of the E! cable channel in pursuit of that network’s late-night host and signature star, Chelsea Handler. That approach may have been totally serious, or merely a little fun for Iger. The fun theory held that Iger might simply have been messing with—or perhaps doing a favor for—one of his oldest Hollywood cronies, Ted Harbert, a former ABC and NBC Entertainment executive, now the head of the E! channel (and, not coincidentally, the man in Chelsea Handler’s life at that point). What was indisputable was that ABC executives did meet, rather publicly, with Handler at the Beverly Hills Polo Lounge.
Handler, blond, toned, and thirty-five, from Livingston, New Jersey, had made a splash—and a name—with a series of best-selling books about her outrageous (in a funny way) drinking and sex habits. She became immensely important to E! (and Harbert) because her show, Chelsea Lately, was scoring with an audience of women between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four, a demographic that was not being reached in as big numbers by any of the guys in late night.
After the meeting between ABC and Handler and her agents, she was able to land a new, more lucrative contract at E!. Handler later alluded to her dealings with ABC when she acknowledged in a Web interview with CBSʹs Katie Couric that she had, in fact,