The War for Late Night_ When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy - Bill Carter [158]
He remained open to suggestions and was getting a steady stream of them, most not remotely feasible. Then a New York sales executive contributed an idea—a question, really—and it rang a bell: Could you ever get Jay to do a half hour? Back at 11:35?
The notion that Gaspin had dismissed a month earlier—also from sales—suddenly seemed more worthy of consideration. In a half-hour show Jay could still deliver a monologue, which was what he most wanted to do, wasn’t it? How many times had he said it himself—“All I want to do is tell jokes at eleven thirty at night”? As for Conan, his mantra over the long months and years when he was the gentleman-in-waiting had been how hosting The Tonight Show was his ultimate dream. Maybe these two defining life choices could actually be put together. Gaspin started to work the idea out in his head: Jay back at 11:35, but only for a half hour, leading into Conan, still the star of The Tonight Show, now a half hour later. Jay would sacrifice a half hour but retain the essential daily ingredient of his life—telling jokes on national television every night. Conan would sacrifice his start time, but he would still have an hour-long show, still called The Tonight Show. Wouldn’t that be the fairest outcome for all concerned?
The biggest sacrifice that Gaspin could see in this arrangement would actually have to be made by Jimmy Fallon, who would get relegated to a start time after one a.m. All Gaspin had heard around the office was how fresh and funny Fallon was. How much risk could this entail, for a guy just starting to stir up buzz, to make him start so late? But if it had to be, it had to be.
Gaspin needed ratings estimates and sales projections—fast. When he got them, the results only raised more questions. Two hosts for an hour each graded out better than three squeezed into two and a half hours, but the numbers changed when you factored in the possibility of one of them jumping ship, going somewhere else, and eating into the overall late-night ad revenue. The sales recommendation was to keep all three, take a short-term financial hit, and adjust down the line.
Gaspin kept coming back to the fairness issue. While this proposal would displace Conan by thirty minutes, he would still be on NBC in late night. He had had only seven months in which to adjust to the big show, as Gaspin analyzed it. How fair would it be to cancel his show, send him packing, and just put Jay back there? Not fair at all. And did Jay get a fair shake with only four months on at ten, even though he’d been promised—guaranteed—two years?
Gaspin began to lay out the scenario in more detail. Initially NBC would have to shell out more money—Jay’s salary and program budget, taken together with Conan’s and Fallon’s, would drive late night into the red. But they could expect significant upside in the ten o’clock hour. Even the patchwork lineup Gaspin planned to scratch together figured to top Leno’s numbers just about every night.
The whole reconfiguration could be in place to kick off by March, immediately after the two weeks of wall-to-wall Olympics coverage on NBC—a conveniently timed restart. And surely the revamped lineup would hold firm for the rest of the season, at which point they could figure out something else. Of course, the unspoken but compelling grace note at the center of this improvisation was that it accomplished NBCʹs consummate and fixed goal: holding on to both its late-night stars. This solution would again manage to avoid a repeat of the calamity of 1993.
Gaspin examined it carefully, top to bottom, side to side. He liked it. He had two loyal, hardworking stars in Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien, backed by two classy, dedicated executive producers in Debbie Vickers and Jeff Ross. Not to mention big staffs on both shows. Under this configuration, the staffs stayed