The War for Late Night_ When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy - Bill Carter [195]
On Saturday the New York Post ran a story saying that Conan’s staffers felt betrayed. They couldn’t believe Conan wouldn’t at least try to live with the 12:05 idea for a while to see if it worked out, so that they could keep their jobs. They had moved across the country to work with him and now, because of his ego, they would be out of work while he basked in some big $30 million settlement.
The story, which O’Brien had no doubt was a direct plant from NBC, infuriated him, because he had worked so hard to ensure some financial security for the staff, and they had seemed to respond with nothing but support—as evidenced by the near unanimous vote of the writers that he should walk. (In truth, there was a small minority of staff members who expressed some anger about Conan’s giving up the show and their jobs with it.)
Again Conan found himself appalled. The NBC people had observed his work for seventeen years and yet they had no clue about his character? Did they really think he had no regard for his staff? Even after he had paid them out of his own pocket during the writers’ strike? Did they really think he would use his last week on the air to go on a trash tour of NBC? Or book himself onto some other shows to assail Jeff Zucker?
When he saw Patty Glaser at one of the meetings, Conan asked her, “Why are these guys so obsessed with this meaningless stuff?”
“These are very small people,” Glaser replied.
On Saturday Gaspin called Rosen and informed him there was a new problem: NBC could not sign off on certain terms in the deal.
“You can’t be doing this now,” Rosen complained, but Gaspin insisted that it couldn’t be helped. A conference call was set for Sunday, the day of the Golden Globe Awards (to be telecast by NBC), and would begin at eleven, early enough for everyone to get into their tuxes in time for the show.
On Sunday Rosen reached out again to Ron Meyer, telling him he needed his help one more time, because things seemed to be going off the rails. Meyer told him he was being iced out a bit by the NBC team, which had come to believe he was too favorable to the Conan side.
Rosen remained in his new home in Santa Barbara, communicating with Glaser and Brecheen, who were in a conference room at Patty’s firm in Century City. The eleven a.m. start time went by, then noon. Gaspin called Rosen saying the call had to be delayed even further. The afternoon dragged on.
Gavin Polone had scheduled a date for that evening. He thought about canceling; but what were the odds something was getting done with the Golden Globes going on? Besides, it was a second date, and he was interested in this new woman.
Rosen called Meyer again; from Ron he learned that GE had now become a bigger factor. Jeffrey Immelt, the GE chairman, had suddenly started to question why they were paying so much money to a guy they were going to allow to run off to another network.
The call was put off until six p.m., meaning the meeting would surely spill into the middle of the Globes show. (It would be nine p.m. in the east.) It also meant that a gaggle of the highest-priced legal talent in LA would be sitting around doing nothing but piling up billable hours.
By six, Polone had picked up his date and was headed for the movies. He wanted to see Avatar in 3D. By the time he got to the theater, it was sold out. The only thing they could get into was The Young Victoria. Twelve minutes into that movie, his BlackBerry buzzed: an e-mail from Jeff Ross. They wanted him to call in. Gavin excused himself and fled to the lobby.
The Conan group discussed the latest developments on their own conference call. Now NBC was asking for concessions they saw as totally crazy—among them, the unilateral right to pull the show on any night of the following week if they didn’t like the content. The Conan forces signed off quickly on that one; they could only imagine how it would play for NBC in the press if they