The War for Late Night_ When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy - Bill Carter [164]
Marc Graboff was one of the few NBC executives with enough experience and status not to have to be preoccupied with such palace intrigues. He had shared the title of chairman of the entertainment division with Ben Silverman and he remained a trusted lieutenant to Zucker. Now he had to face off against Ken Ziffren, knowing that he held nothing in the way of cards, while Ziffren, armed with the pay-and-play deal he had negotiated for Jay, held a fistful.
Graboff could not guess what to expect when he called Ziffren to follow up on Gaspin’s meeting with Jay. NBCʹs legal department had advised Graboff not to blanch if Ziffren threatened to seek an injunction. Thanks to Leno’s unusual contract, Ziffren might actually have some grounds to try, they told him, though no court was going to give him that. Graboff himself, having observed Leno up close for as long as he had, guessed Jay would have no stomach for a move like that anyway.
But even as Graboff was explaining to Ziffren that they couldn’t be sure yet whether Jay was going to have to switch to a half-hour format, the lawyer expressed an eagerness to make a deal—right there on the phone. For Graboff it was a sign of just how badly Jay wanted the ten p.m. show in his rearview mirror. And that he wanted a new agreement secured quickly.
Graboff made a provisional deal with Ziffren, dependent on whether Jay shifted to a half hour or wound up back in an hour-long show. Ziffren told Graboff to let him know what NBC ultimately decided, and they would go from there.
What Marc Graboff didn’t know was that at least one NBC executive, privy to some of the internal concerns of the Leno camp, had no doubt that Jay would have welcomed any move that might save him from disappearing from television altogether. Dick Ebersol, working the corridors of NBC in his usual fingerprintless way, had a long-established back-channel connection to Jay through Debbie Vickers. They spoke often—easily often enough for Dick to have known, since shortly after Thanksgiving, that Jay expected the worst. From Debbie, Ebersol learned that Jay knew full well the ten p.m. show was not working, and given the unhappiness of the affiliates, he didn’t see how he could survive. The message Ebersol heard from Leno’s camp: Jay expected to be cut off, handed a check, and sent on his way. There was no mention of lawsuits or injunctions.
Ebersol didn’t know when Gaspin was actually going to lower the boom on Leno, but as soon as he did, Dick got word of it. Not more than fifteen minutes after Gaspin left Jay’s dressing area that Tuesday night in Burbank, Debbie Vickers dialed him up. Dick was in Dallas, preparing for NBCʹs coverage of that Saturday’s NFL play-off game. Debbie told him that she had been surprised—not by the news itself, which Dick, too, suspected she had been tipped about by Zucker—but by Jay’s instant embrace of the network’s proposal. Jay had shown a little too much leg, Debbie concluded, wishing he had resisted NBC’s pretty ill-formed ploy of cutting him back to half an hour. “How will I get an audience?” she asked him. “We’re not going to have time for a guest of consequence and we can’t have a music act, because that will destroy Conan when he follows straight up at twelve. What’s our show going to be?”
Wednesday morning, Jeff Gaspin arrived in his office to a message that Jay Leno was on the phone. As soon as the conversation started, Gaspin realized that the tone was different. Jay was waffling. Thinking about it in the hours after their meeting the day before, Jay told him, he had started to question if he could really work in a half-hour format. To Gaspin, this sounded