The War for Late Night_ When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy - Bill Carter [19]
Beneath that warm surface current, however, frigid waters swirled—at least on one coastline. Some of the Conan brigades continued to vent their frustration on occasion about having to still ride in the caboose, when it ought to have been as clear to NBC as it was to the press and most of the entertainment world that their guy was the comer, the fresh act in late night.
If the Conan side did offer any credit at all to Leno for his continuing success during their honest moments, it was begrudging and tinged with flecks of outright disdain. As one important member of the Conan team put it: “He’s there for all those huge years of prime-time ratings for NBC, and he’s not doing anything to innovate, not doing anything interesting.”
Some on Jay’s staff suspected their host didn’t really “get” Conan or his quirky, non-joke-centric humor. But Jay never expressed that opinion openly; in fact, he never said much about Conan at all. As always, he concentrated on his show, with most of the emphasis on his monologue, which one writer on the show estimated absorbed 80 percent of Jay’s daily attention.
In September of 2002 Conan sent out the most resounding message yet about his growing strength as a performer when he stepped onto a huge stage in prime time as host of that year’s Emmy Awards. Award shows had proved more risk than opportunity for late-night hosts over the years. The most memorable case involved Letterman, when in 1995, at the pinnacle of his fame, he accepted—against his better judgment—an offer to host the Oscars; though he hardly bombed, he misfired enough to embarrass himself into telling the world for years he’d ruined the evening for everybody.
Still, O’Brien went into the Emmys feeling he had something to prove.
“When I went in front of that Emmy crowd,” he said later, “it was like they had marked my height when I was about four years old. Then it’s ten years later and six-foot-four Conan walks in, and they’re shocked. Because their frame of reference is always Letterman or Leno. I don’t think young people were shocked at all.”
Conan opened with a taped segment of him waking up at the house of Ozzy Osbourne’s family, then the stars of the hottest reality show on television. Realizing he was late for the awards event, he rushed out only to stumble onto the set of The Price Is Right instead. The bit scored huge laughs. Later he made killer use of the award-show fetish for finding annoying ways to play long-winded accepters off the stage, warning the nominees that he would cut them off by playing an acoustic version of the worst parts of Jethro Tull’s “Aqualung.” Which he proceeded to do, bringing down the house.
OʹBrien had been right: That evening he shocked anyone at the Emmys who thought late night still meant only Leno and Letterman. The host assignment proved to be a critical smash, a star-emerging performance for the TV historical record.
A year later, in September 2003, NBC cleared out two hours of prime time for Conan’s tenth-anniversary special. (Notably, Leno had always declined the network’s offers to mount big anniversary specials for him, with the comment “Ugh, no!”) Staged at the Beacon Theatre on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, the special was a litmus test for the erupting passion for Conan among fans under thirty years old. They lined the streets outside the theater for hours, chanting Conan’s name and buying Conan merchandise from enterprising street vendors. One college-age guy wore a white T-shirt emblazoned with the message: “I took Conan for my Confirmation name!”
Up in the balcony, waiting for the show to begin and watching the raucous crowd file in, the whole Conan entourage was assembled: Rosen, Polone, and Emanuel, among others. In the row in front of the paid help, Liza O’Brien sat unobtrusively among her husband’s fans. The talk was of how crazy Conan mania seemed to be getting. One of the group shook his head in wonderment: “How on earth can