The War for Late Night_ When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy - Bill Carter [131]
“If the shows were bad, we would feel differently,” said one veteran writer-producer. “But Dave’s still very, very good at this. He has to pick and choose now the things that he’s going to work hard on.” And as always, the comparison came out: “Johnny did the same thing.”
That adjusted energy level was something the longtime staff members noticed early in the aught decade. It was part of Dave’s genius, they told themselves, that he was always so smart about his own evolution. He knew when to stop wearing a Velcro suit and jumping into a wall, and when to shut down the remotes that were such a distinctive feature of the show and often inspired him to heights of brilliance. The truth was, Dave always hated doing those remotes—he didn’t like all that attention focused on him. When they simply got too hard on him, he eliminated them. So the remotes disappeared, as he did the cold opens with some shtick involving a guest in his dressing room. Even the regular bits of business with Rupert Jee at the Hello Deli were mostly dropped.
Always averse to doing five shows a week, Dave had early on tried to build a three-day weekend into his life by eliminating Friday as a work-day. He took to taping a second show later on Thursday evening, a move that got him out, free to fly Friday morning to Montana or St. Barts or wherever he desired, for some R & R.
In 2007 he decided that the two shows on Thursday were too taxing. The double assignment made it harder to enjoy fully the next three days off. So he shook up the schedule again, rejiggering the machinery of the show to make it possible to tape the Friday show on Monday. His energy would clearly be higher on Mondays after the three days off, and this way, he could get ready for his getaways after the single show on Thursday, which would be wrapped up by seven or so.
Another network with a different relationship with a star might have raised an objection to this schedule. It meant, after all, that the Friday show would be canned like tuna; so the jokes for Friday would have to be written very carefully. If a joke was made on the air about a certain celebrity on Monday, for example, and by Friday that celebrity had been married, fired, jailed, or was—most horribly—dead, the show would have to be clumsily edited. The comedy, as a result, had to be stepped as far back as possible from topical. And of course, this freezer-burned item would be airing in competition against a show minted fresh that day on NBC with Jay Leno joking away on whatever events were in that day’s news.
Although the advantage being conceded to Jay seemed enormous, CBS went along with the plan. They didn’t have much choice. Not only was Letterman likely to give them explicit anatomical directions for where they could stick their objections, but the network’s hands were effectively tied by its deal with Dave. Because he owned the show—and Craig Ferguson’s behind it—it was up to Worldwide Pants to make most decisions about it, including the production schedule. CBS executives could forward requests, of course, but they could not tell Letterman how to do his show—nor would they dare.
Over time, the impact of the stale-bread Friday episodes became noticeable. CBS, from just about that point on, saw the numbers begin to drop slightly for the Friday editions of Late Show. A few years later, the falloff became precipitous. Jay would bury Dave every Friday, often pulling away in the ratings even during weeks when the other nights had been close.
When CBSʹs researchers asked viewers if they reacted differently to the Friday Letterman shows, they answered no, but the ratings slide made it seem obvious that the perception had somehow gotten through that Dave’s Friday show was, literally, old news. Late-night viewers had likely grown accustomed to checking out the top of each of the programs to see if the opening joke was of the moment—and if it wasn’t, that usually signaled