The War for Late Night_ When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy - Bill Carter [204]
But NBC executives, representing various corporate departments stuck by this assessment, insisting that Conan’s numbers had fallen to a point where the ad revenues were simply not able to meet the costs—at $23 million, not even close.
Almost nobody else in the television business bought that explanation. Executives at several other late-night shows treated it with derision. Conan’s budget came in at $70 million to $80 million for the year. The other shows knew what NBC was charging for its thirty-second ads, and the revenue simply had to be there to cover that nut—unless the network indeed was throwing in costs like the studio construction or the staff’s relocation.
Even one NBC executive familiar with how the network sold its late-night packages said that prior to Gaspin’s comment (which followed Conan’s departure) there had been no mention whatsoever of NBC’s heading for a loss at The Tonight Show. At each quarterly sales meeting, when such subjects might be raised, this one never was. But as with everything else in television, it all depended on how the books were massaged.
There was no doubt that Conan (and Jay, for that matter) had performed at levels below what NBC had guaranteed to advertisers. Shortfalls like that were made up for with what were known as make-goods—essentially, free ads. Maybe, the NBC executive speculated, the make-good breakdown was responsible for showing that loss for Conan. And who knew what make-goods were being folded into the total? Nothing could be certain, this executive knew, because the sales department never gave anyone a straight answer.
Polone knew just who to blame for this latest insult to Conan. To him, this was one more indication that Jeff Zucker played dirty—and it demanded a response. It was all of a piece, Polone believed. Because Zucker could never engage in long-term thinking, in Polone’s view, all he could do was react. He had never gotten past his news training—see the news; react to it—which had left Zucker lost in a miasma of confusion as he tried to fit the eclectic events of the entertainment business into a news context. Now that Zucker also had Comcast looking over his shoulder, Polone imagined, he first had to act in the interests of self-preservation by shaking up the late-night landscape to make up for his blunder with Jay and Conan. And he also needed to justify the move by sticking a “loser” tag on Conan’s forehead.
For Zucker’s part, the noxious vitriol being spewed at him by some in Conan’s camp (he never blamed either Conan or Ross, or Rick Rosen, for that matter), as well as on some Hollywood blogs, and even by the competition (Letterman displayed Zucker’s picture several nights earlier, launching into a diatribe on NBC pinheads, knuckle-draggers, and mouth-breathers), only added to what was a dark, unhappy experience for him—not that he expected anyone to care.
Jeff Zucker had also never expected to be ranked as some kind of Bond villain of a boss. (Conan would go on to make the white-cat-petting Ernst Stavro Blofeld associations with Zucker ever more specific.) Jeff was generous to and considerate of his staff, engaging socially, and devoted to his wife, Karen, and their four children. He never missed birthday parties or his sons’ Little League games, no matter what the press of business. In private, off the firing line, his likability and decency won him a corps of loyal friends, Jeff Ross being among the most conspicuous.
But the travails of NBC under his leadership had come close to turning Zucker into a caricature, and he was far too intelligent not to be aware of that. He professed to being able