The War for Late Night_ When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy - Bill Carter [14]
When he sat down with her in her Tonight office, his presence didn’t raise an eyebrow. Zucker almost always stopped in to see Debbie during his trips west; everyone knew how simpatico they were. Vickers had no reason to expect anything but another casual chat that March day, unless it involved some sort of confirmation that the network had agreed to another extension for Jay. That move was pro forma about eighteen months out from whatever the end date was on the current Leno deal, which was about where they were now. Vickers had every reason to believe things were moving along as normal.
Jeff Zucker, however, had other business to conduct. After some pleasantries he got directly to the point of his visit. He presented his proposal to Vickers in a “what if” sort of way: “What would you think if we extend Jay’s contract now, but at the same time we make it clear this will be his last contract for The Tonight Show?”
A petite redhead in her fifties with a work-hard, stay-humble producing style and a thoroughly winning personality, Vickers had worked for Jay Leno since the beginning of his Tonight Show tenure in 1992 (and for Johnny Carson before that). After witnessing Jay survive his crisis-filled first eighteen months on the show, then having helped steady him, refashion him, and guide his ascension to late-night supremacy, she was able to read the feelings, intentions, and moods of the often impenetrable Leno better than anyone else on the show—or the planet (not counting Jay’s wife, Mavis, at least). Zucker’s proposition, though, needed no penetrating insight.
“I don’t think that’s gonna work,” Vickers told him, thoroughly taken aback by what she was hearing. The idea that NBC was even considering such a move—let alone now running it by her—left Vickers incredulous: Had the network been mounting this plan over the course of weeks? Months? While everybody at the show had been blithely working away? All she could picture was an image of a husband having an affair while his wife remained clueless.
“Jay’s not gonna go for this,” Vickers told Zucker flatly. If anyone knew how unremittingly committed Jay Leno was to The Tonight Show, now and forever, it was Debbie Vickers. “I mean, it’s ridiculous.”
Ridiculous or not, two days later Zucker steeled himself to go face-to-face with Jay himself in his private dressing room. The plan that he had in his (rhetorical) pocket, in fact, involved no “what if” scenario at all: NBC had already decided its course of action over several months of consideration and talks in New York and LA. What Debbie Vickers didn’t know, and what Jay Leno wouldn’t know either (but it probably would not take long to guess), was that NBC had for weeks been quietly back-channeling its plan for the future of The Tonight Show with the representatives of its other late-night star, Conan OʹBrien. And prior to this sit-down with Leno, both sides had already come to an agreement.
Conan O’Brien, after a rigidly specified waiting period, was going to become the fifth permanent host of The Tonight Show—and the fourth, Jay Leno, was going to go gently (NBC hoped) into that good late night.
The plan hadn’t begun on a specific date, nor was there an operation geared to make it happen according to a specific timetable. It happened because NBC wanted to protect its late-night empire—the one part of its entertainment operation that still claimed unchallenged leadership, with Jay at 11:35, Conan at 12:35, and Saturday Night Live