The War for Late Night_ When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy - Bill Carter [138]
The risk involved, had that happened, would not have merely made a serious dent in NBC’s late-night dominance—and profits. A defection by Jay would link back directly to Zucker’s 2004 move to ask the top dog in late night to step aside so NBC could guarantee Conan The Tonight Show. Jeff was still on the hook for however that call was going to turn out. But besides that, by almost every external evaluation in 2008, a Jay Leno at ABC figured to more than dent NBC; it looked like he would T-bone them like one of his Duesenbergs ramming a Mini Cooper.
NBC’s own research department had come up with much the same results. At ABC, Jay would do very well, and probably win.
That summer Zucker presented a different argument. With Jay at ABC, Conan still would have won, he said,or at least he would have beaten Jay where it most counted for NBC, in the young demo. Rick Ludwin had assertively made that point to Zucker: Conan was going to take away the younger viewers, while Jay and Dave would be left to divvy up an audience that was largely above fifty years old.
But the idea of slicing the late-night pizza again, with Jay eating up a sizable portion of the advertising dough—which was already being doled out among Letterman, Conan, Kimmel, Stewart, Colbert, Ferguson, etc.—gave Zucker long pause. By NBCʹs calculations, a number of the late-night players already faced diminishing financial futures. The network didn’t think Jimmy Kimmel’s show made money at all, and Craig Ferguson’s, maybe a pittance—a couple of million a year, they guessed. (CBS begged to differ, without offering specifics.) NBC figured that even Jimmy Fallon, who had started up amid diminished expectations, would do no better than OK.
Of course, some measure of Fallon’s fate would depend on how Conan did in the hour preceding. The 11:35 shows were still where the big advertising money gravitated, but they were no longer a source of big earnings. The Tonight Show, a $150 million profit machine less than a decade earlier, had begun to fall below a third of that annual total. NBC believed Conan could keep that level up if he cornered the younger adult viewers. As one senior network executive observed, “We don’t believe Letterman is strong enough to take any advertising money away.”
The real financial opportunity still rested with Jay. NBC concocted all kinds of story angles to put the move in the best possible light—and many did sound valid. For the cost of only one hour-long ten p.m. drama—$3 million an episode—NBC could pay for an entire week of The Jay Leno Show. That didn’t even take account of all the money the network would save by not having to develop new shows for the ten o’clock slot, most of which would fail miserably anyway at a cost of tens of millions. It did mean, however, that NBC would have far fewer at-bats with which to attempt to hit one out of the park, as CBS had done with shows like CSI and NCIS, both of which generated hundreds of millions in syndication sales. There would be no syndication aftermarket for Jay. Still, NBC hadn’t hit one of those grand slam shows in what seemed like eons—and with GE contracting the costs down to the barest of bones, nobody foresaw a slugger-savior popping up any time soon.
Zucker started to like his chances a bit—and his strategic plan even more. In one respect, the play could be seen as something of a coup. The goal all along had been to retain both Conan and Jay, to avoid any replays of the Letterman-Leno fiasco. Here it was, five years after the big dive into the future, and NBC still had both stars. And in a curious twist, both had signed on at significant risk, which could impact their future plans to flee for other pastures. If the ten p.m. plan worked, NBC would get credit for transforming the fundamental economics of the industry; if it didn’t, the network had at least prevented Jay Leno from going up against them—and now he might never be able to.
As one of Zucker’s close associates put it privately, “I do think Jeff made a master stroke here. He’s positioned