The War for Late Night_ When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy - Bill Carter [161]
“It’s not fair to Jay,” Dick argued, citing specifically the shift to a half hour, a format Leno had never worked in before in his life. “What’s the show going to be?”
Zucker outlined the plan—a monologue, a second comedy piece, and the occasional guest. It didn’t sound promising at all to Ebersol. He made an alternate suggestion: Go all the way back in the time machine. Put Jay back at 11:35 for an hour and Conan at 12:35. It would screw Jimmy Fallon in the short run, which was a shame, because Ebersol was already highly impressed with him. They would have to figure out something else good for Fallon while keeping him in line for a future in late night. Ebersol justified the move by pointing to the numbers Conan had put up in his seven months—a performance, Dick stressed, that merited demotion if any performance ever had. “Half of the audience was gone in nine weeks,” Ebersol said. “That’s a joke. That isn’t going to change.”
Zucker defended the plan, arguing that Gaspin deserved a chance to make it work. Ebersol kept to himself the decision he would have made had he been in charge: cut Conan out of the package altogether and line up Leno and Fallon. But Dick recognized how nuclear a move like that would be. Conan didn’t seem to have a clue his show was in trouble, as Ebersol read the situation. Even Gaspin’s measured play was going to hit him like a sledgehammer to the temple and enrage him. To lose the whole show, to be canceled outright after seven months, would be like a public execution, Ebersol thought.
Still, he disliked the half-hour move for Jay, which smacked to him of punishment. Ebersol believed that Leno should be cut a break for having taken on the doomed ten p.m. assignment. Jay at least could see the bullet coming. Ebersol found himself astonished that Conan, at forty-six, could be, as Dick judged it, so naive about the business.
One more issue needed clarification before Gaspin pushed the button on the combustible mix he had ready for the NBC blender. Gaspin had to be certain there was no contractual prohibition that might prevent him from executing his vision for a revamped ten p.m. hour and the overcrowded elevator that he was making of the network’s late-night lineup.
The implications of the apparently unprecedented pay-and-play arrangement with Jay had been explained to Gaspin; he concluded he could circumvent that issue, but only by getting Jay’s commitment to play along. Still, he needed unequivocal assurance from NBCʹs legal department that the other part of his scenario would fly. He had to have the right to move Conan and The Tonight Show back a half hour. That right would be available only under one condition: Conan could not have an ironclad time-period guarantee in his contact.
Gaspin pressed the NBC lawyers in Los Angeles and New York: Do I have flexibility here? After some contractual analysis, the answer came back: Absolutely yes. In the deal Conan had signed to host Tonight, the duration (three years) and the salary (about $12 million) were specified. All kinds of other details—producers’ salaries, head writer’s salary, band size, other departments—were specified. Time-period protection was not specified—not remotely specified, the NBC lawyers told Gaspin. As they broke it down for him, the only thing the operative contract contained was boilerplate language about the show’s “being scheduled at the network’s discretion.”
The lawyers also emphasized to Gaspin that they were confident they stood on unassailable ground, because whenever time-period protection was granted in television contracts—and that was infrequently—the issue was clearly spelled out. That had been exactly the case with the previous occupant of The Tonight Show—Jay and Ken Ziffren had negotiated specific, unambiguous time-period protection. That kind of language had become common in contracts with late-night stars, at least ones with a shred of leverage. Letterman had the clause written in from his first day at CBS; Jon Stewart had specified the time period in his deal with Comedy Central; Jimmy Kimmel