The War for Late Night_ When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy - Bill Carter [123]
Of course, this doctrinal wisdom did not take into account the part where Dave would have refused to work the affiliates, court the advertisers, massage the press, and give succor to his network whenever it was in need. Letterman would likely have shut all that out at NBC, just as he did at CBS—one big reason why he didn’t win the Tonight job in the first place.
Many in the Letterman camp never fully accepted that particular downside of Dave’s persnickety personality. For them, it was all black and white: Dave, a comedy genius; Jay, a machine politician. Dave playing Mozart; Jay playing Salieri.
Or in Rob Burnett’s favored metaphor: Jay equals Coke; Dave equals Pepsi. Burnett’s answer to NBC’s attempted dismissals of Dave’s heroic efforts at CBS was to cite Pepsi’s entering the soft-drink market as rival to Coke. Maybe Coke still outsold Pepsi overall, but there was now a Pepsi where there was none before—which enabled people to let their tastes decide between two more or less equal choices. (It would not be the last time Coca-Cola raised its metaphoric head in the late-night saga.)
But with Jay now bowing out of late night, Letterman’s people were concerned that Conan might well represent an all-new brand of soft drink. Dr. Pepper? Maybe even Mountain Dew? People had grown accustomed to Coke and Pepsi. If Mountain Dew was now going to try to grab some slice of their market, Letterman’s team couldn’t just sit around and let it happen.
The question for the Late Show brain trust was this: How could they best prepare to prevent Conan from doing the unthinkable—beating them?
Initially there was some general discomfort with that entire idea. Dave had always been personally fond of Conan and admired his fresh, impressive comedy work. He had more or less blessed Conan as his successor by appearing as a guest on Late Night in February 1994, when Conan was barely surviving NBCʹs attempts to smother him in his crib. Later, when Conan was finally starting to break through, Dave turned up again as an unbilled walk-on during Conan’s third-anniversary show with some advice for Conan and Andy: “In nine years you guys can switch networks and start making some real money.”
Even though they shared New York and thus had likely booking conflicts, there had never been friction between the two shows. Quietly Dave had even called Conan personally when he was leaving the Late Night show to wish him well, which had meant a lot to Conan. And of course everyone knew the level of Conan’s idolatry regarding Dave.
But leaving aside the issue of not really wanting to go after Conan, the staff had to confront another question: the limitations on exactly what steps Dave might take to elevate his game. He certainly wasn’t going to go back to monkeycams (handheld cameras on the back of chimps), or create some new adventures for “The Strong Guy, The Fat Guy, The Genius,” or take a camera back into the souvenir shop up the street to banter with Sirajul and Mujibur. (For one thing, their Rock America store had long since closed.)
Through the choices he had made in recent years about what he would and would not do on the show, Dave had been sending a clear message: He was no longer the guy breaking new ground in late night. As Burnett put it, “You can’t be on the cutting edge forever or you start to look ridiculous.”
That didn’t mean Dave was any less Dave; it only meant he relied more on the pure essence of wit extracted nightly from his brain. He had taken to building act two largely around a conversation he had with the audience every night from behind his desk. Some nights, when he had a prepared piece of comedy laid out in front of him, he would choose instead to discuss what had happened over the weekend at the house or out on the ranch in Montana. (Most famously, a grizzly bear once made his way into the kitchen for some snacking.) These impromptu asides were often far more hilarious