The War for Late Night_ When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy - Bill Carter [162]
Conan doesn’t have it, the lawyers assured Gaspin. He was guaranteed The Tonight Show. He was not guaranteed that it would start at 11:35 p.m.
The legal interpretation cemented Gaspin’s resolve to go forward. Had Conan’s contract had the same specific time-period protection that all those other late-night stars had, Gaspin knew his course would have been radically altered. He would not have gone through these machinations. Had Conan’s Tonight Show been locked in at 11:35, the options would have narrowed to the elemental choice: Fire Jay or fire Conan.
Gaspin had his assistant set up the appointment for sixish, shortly after Jay finished taping his show on Tuesday, January 5. That evening, with darkness descending, Jeff got in a car with Rebecca Marks, the head of corporate communications on the West Coast (also a close friend of Debbie Vickers), and they made their way east on the freeway, over to Burbank.
The bare bones of the mission could have been delivered as a bad-news /good-news joke: You’re canceled; but hey, you get to go back into late night.
Gaspin had no intention of taking it lightly. The stakes were too high for Jay—and NBC. Besides, it wasn’t his style.
Jay, already in his denims, greeted them in his more spacious, less dungeony private digs in the new studio. Debbie drifted in at about the same time, saying hello a bit tensely to Gaspin and Marks. Gaspin suspected Vickers might know what was coming, thanks to a tip from her producer soul mate, Zucker.
Gaspin initiated a bit of small talk about that night’s show; it was forced, and it was pretty obvious that it was forced. Finally Rebecca Marks bit the bullet, saying simply, “We have an issue.”
“We have a problem,” Gaspin seconded, stepping up to the task. “Our affiliates are incredibly unhappy with ten o’clock. They want us to make a change. If we don’t, they’re threatening to preempt. They’re threatening to talk publicly, negatively, about the performance of the show. We’ve got a real problem here.” Gaspin spoke directly to Leno, and he could read the impact of his words in Jay’s face.
“What do you want to do?” Jay asked.
Gaspin, though feeling terrible, didn’t hold back. “We’re going to pull the show,” he said.
Very quietly Leno said, ʺOK.ʺ
Debbie Vickers grasped the bottom line: We’ve just been fired.
The room fell silent. Finally Jay spoke up again. “What do you want to do?” he said. “How do you want to handle it?”
“I want you to go back to eleven thirty,” Gaspin said.
Jay’s relief, Gaspin noticed, was instantaneous. His face lifted and brightened. “Yeah, let’s do it!” he said, the pitch of his voice almost as high as performance level.
Debbie Vickers, in her quiet but forceful way, got herself in between Gaspin and Jay’s enthusiasm. She suggested that they hear more.
“It’s not that simple,” Gaspin told them. “I only want you to do a half hour.”
Now Vickers jumped all the way in, clearly thrown by the proposal. What did he mean, a half hour? What kind of show is it? Just comedy material? No guests?
“Look,” Gaspin said. “Some days you have guests; some days you don’t.” He described it as monologue, then comedy material, then maybe a guest, maybe some music. “You know that in every hour show there’s a good half hour. You get to do that show every night.”
Gaspin emphasized that Jay would get to do his long monologue every night—just as always. That was the prime selling point, as Gaspin saw it. Like many others, Gaspin had heard Jay’s story about being dumped by an agent who told him he was a good comic but he would never get into the press. Now Jay always had jokes quoted in the press—and he kept track. In the Sunday Week in Review section of The New York Times Jay always counted how many of his jokes made the weekly list. It was another form of competition for him. He almost always beat Dave and he was proud of that.
Starting to put it together, Jay turned to the other obvious lingering issue. “What happens with Conan?” he asked.
“He goes at twelve,” Gaspin said. “Everything just moves back.”
“So