The War for Late Night_ When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy - Bill Carter [179]
Michael Fiorile, the affiliate board head, took some special satisfaction in achieving his goals without having to come to blows with the network. If there was still some uncertainty about what NBC would use to fill the ten p.m. hour, at least whatever NBC came up with promised to be a likely improvement over Jay’s numbers. And the proposed solution of Jay back at 11:35, with Conan moved back past midnight, sounded more than satisfactory.
From his conversations with Jeff Gaspin and Jeff Zucker in December, Fiorile had taken away the impression that NBC saw no problem with keeping Conan at 12:05—or, if it came to that, losing him altogether. As Fiorile interpreted it, NBCʹs position was: “If he wouldn’t take it, they’d program without him.”
Fiorile possessed evidence that the affiliate body did not disagree. NBC had asked him what the local stations’ preference would be at 11:35. Fiorile had quietly polled the affiliate board. The stations had long experience with Jay. (And the age group most of them occupied did not fall anywhere near the core audience of eighteen-to-thirty-four-year-olds that idolized Conan.) So it was little surprise whom the station owners preferred. Not one voted for Conan
As measured in other places, however, the reaction to the proposed move leaned heavily toward Conan. That was to be expected in any form of media that played to a younger audience, like Internet postings. One nerve grew more inflamed as the standoff continued. Resentment raged among the post-baby-boom generation at what they saw as another example of the baby boomers nailing their feet to the stage and not letting go. It would grow into an ongoing theme—even a movement. Readers posting in reaction to press stories took up the theme of Jay as an old hat that should have been shelved: “Geez, Leno, retire already! What a jerk!” ʺNOOOO! What is this obsession NBC has with Leno? The decision shows such little foresight. It’s tomorrow’s ratings that matter. Think of the children!”
Much of the press commentary sympathized with O’Brien as well. Jay was being portrayed as the usurper, the guy who didn’t stand by his pledge to hand the late-night chair to Conan, the old act who refused to leave the arena when his time had passed. Worst of all for Leno, he was again being tagged as a Machiavelli who had possibly set up the entire episode. As in: Give up The Tonight Show under protest; assail NBC on the air for years for this shoddy treatment; then accept the ten p.m. move, knowing the pathetic lead-ins it would generate would inevitably undermine Conan and force NBC to dump him. That this would entail the monumental embarrassment for Jay of a public cancelation caused no apparent cognitive dissonance.
But Jay was taking it on his ample chin from all over. Editorial cartoons popped up. In the Dayton Daily News, Lincoln had been erased from Mount Rushmore and Teddy Roosevelt was saying to Jefferson, “He did the Leno show last night.” In The New Yorker, two parents watching TV were chastising their son, who had gotten up in his pajamas: “Go back to bed or we’ll make you watch Jay Leno.” That kind of elitist commentary was easy for Jay to swat away, pointing out that the magazine had lost about $70 million in a year. “I had a better year than The New Yorker. I turned a profit.”
But Conan’s defenders also included many in the comedy world who had never embraced Jay because of his workmanlike style. Even one voice from the Carson camp weighed in. Jeff Sotzing, Johnny’s nephew, who managed all the Carson business activity after Johnny’s death, called Debbie Vickers and told her he agreed with Conan.
Like most others backing Jay, Vickers questioned the logic in the pro-Conan argument, and told Sotzing, “If Conan is doing well and they have to push him back, you go, ‘No, I’m not doing it.’ But if you’re not doing well, don’t you have to look