The War for Late Night_ When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy - Bill Carter [150]
Without any ten p.m. slots available NBC had abruptly decided to cancel its best-reviewed new drama in years, a cop show called Southland—even though the series had already finished filming six episodes of a second season and was ready to air in late October. Gaspin, who had not participated in developing or ordering the show, had a sound rationale: The drama was expensive and slated for Friday at nine, where it would almost surely die. (Nothing on Friday attracted much of an audience anymore.)
Had NBC needed ten p.m. shows, Southland would clearly have received a second shot to try to grow, as earlier high-quality NBC dramas, from St. Elsewhere to Hill Street Blues, had. The decision meant NBC was also turning its back on John Wells, one of the creative forces behind Southland and the man who provided the biggest hit NBC had seen in a generation, ER. A disheartened Wells remarked, “I’m disappointed that NBC no longer has time periods available to support that kind of critically acclaimed series that was for so many years a hallmark of their success.”
In clearing out Wednesdays at ten for Jay, the network had also transformed a time-period-winning drama into a show finishing dead last in its new time period. That series was Law & Order: SVU, a potent ratings draw for NBC for most of a decade. Sliding the show up to nine had apparently dispersed its loyal viewers, who knew a ten o’clock show when they saw one.
No one was more dismayed than the show’s loud and proud creator, Dick Wolf, though his comprehensive deal with NBC Universal prevented him from responding publicly to the move. Friends and colleagues who spoke with Wolf knew he was quietly seething, flabbergasted by a network that could undermine one of its dwindling store of hits, leaving him to calculate the damage this ham-handed move would do to his show’s future profits.
Beyond Wells and Wolf, other producers and studio heads railed in private about how NBC was treating their precious content. The group had a prevailing opinion: In looking to contain costs, NBC was throwing its few remaining floating toys out with the bath water. One longtime producer of several shows for NBC and other networks called the Leno-at-ten decision “one of the biggest con jobs in the history of American business. Their revenues are down 30 percent, and they have destroyed the local news in fifty stations and Conan O’Brien in just a few weeks. They used to be the place you wanted to be. What’s truly horrifying now is their highest-rated show is two hours of disgusting fat people.”
Taking fire from Hollywood, the press, and even some inside his own network, Jay Leno decided to try to clear the air a bit by granting an interview to the television trade publication Broadcasting & Cable. Sitting down in his greenroom at about ten a.m. on October 29 with the affable but aggressive B&C editor Ben Grossman, Jay offered up a defense of his show to that point.
Mostly Jay accepted whatever shots the show was taking because his name was on it, though he agreed that some of the anger it had attracted could be tied simply to NBC’s decision to block out five nights at ten o’clock. Jay promised the show had bottomed out, and “we’re not going below that.”
He declined to take satisfaction in Conan’s falloff from the numbers Jay had previously posted on Tonight, saying, “There’s nothing that kills creativity more than bitterness.” But he did acknowledge again that he would have preferred to stay at 11:35. “I think it’s too soon to say whether I regret anything or not,” Jay added. He also said he was a mainstream guy, not a niche one, that he wasn’t going to whine, and that he liked “being on TV and writing jokes.”
It was pretty much the standard Jay take, except for his answer to one deliberately provocative question: “Do you want to go back to 11:35?”
On the page, Jay’s answer read simple and direct: “If it were offered to me, would I take it? If that’s what they