The War for Late Night_ When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy - Bill Carter [166]
That Wednesday evening, Gaspin quickly organized a conference call with some members of the affiliate board. He asked for a delay in the New York meeting—just a short one, until the twenty-first. “Look,” Gaspin told the board members. “Call your station guys and tell them we will have an answer for them if they will give us another couple of weeks. And it will likely be something they’re happy with.”
Conan O’Brien wrapped up what he considered another strong show on the evening of Wednesday, January 6. The interview with that night’s lead guest, Matthew Broderick, had gone especially well. The overall trend felt right; the shows were getting positive press. This was nothing like those early days on the Late Night show when survival seemed to hinge on every guest booking, every joke. All the negative attention in the press was centering on Jay and how his ten p.m. show was wrecking the network. The new Tonight Show, hosted by Conan O’Brien, seemed to be a given going forward.
And yet, as he gathered his writing and production group for the postmortem, Conan felt out of sorts. He realized he was coming across as edgy and short-tempered, which was not his intention. So he dismissed the group early. Gavin Polone stayed around. The manager had dropped by the show that night as he occasionally did now that Conan was in LA. Nothing seemed in the least wrong about the show to Polone, but he knew Conan well enough to recognize the clouds circling above his star’s head.
“What’s wrong?” Polone asked. “That was a really funny show. Things are going great. The show is growing; you’re doing good work every night. The numbers aren’t there yet, but that’s because of Jay. If they move him out, they’ll put some other programming in there and, you know, that can only help.”
Conan’s glum expression was unchanged. “I just have a bad feeling,” he said. “I just think he’s going to hurt me in some way.”
“You’re crazy!” Polone said. What could NBC do? Move Jay back?
That was clearly Conan’s fear.
“Why would they do that?” Polone asked. “Jay’s failing. They’re going to move the guy who’s failing back to where he was? It makes no sense! You can’t think about these jobs based on what’s happening this second. You have to think about where you’re going to be in five years. Jay will be nearly seventy. You’re going to have a seventy-year-old man hosting The Tonight Show? I just don’t see any of that happening. It would just be the dumbest move ever. I’m not saying these guys are my friends or that they would keep their word. I’m just saying it doesn’t make any sense.”
Now, if NBC somehow had a line on somebody like Jon Stewart, Polone said, there might be some cause for alarm. But they didn’t, and Stewart would never listen now anyway. He was far too successful doing what he was doing to jump into this swirling uncertainty.
Conan nodded unconvincingly. His mood did not lift. The premonition was still there.
When he got home, he had a raging headache. He dropped his things and walked into the spacious country kitchen, where he collapsed onto a couch. Liza found him stretched out there.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I think maybe they’re going to cancel Jay,” Conan said. “I just think that guy is going to hurt me.”
Now Liza stepped up to be reassuring. “I don’t really see how that’s possible,” she said.
Conan got up and gobbled some Tylenol. His head was pounding—it didn’t relent.
Later he went to bed, the headache lingering. Finally, still unsettled and still not sure why, he fell asleep.
At six a.m. Pacific time Thursday, Jeff Zucker was up already in his room at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills, getting ready for his day leading his prospective new bosses on a grand tour of the Universal lot, when he got a call from the room down the hall. His top corporate communications