The War for Late Night_ When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy - Bill Carter [205]
When he consented to an interview with Charlie Rose on PBS at the height of the late-night blowup, Zucker made a concerted effort to present his case, conceding the late-night plan had not worked out, but arguing that it had made sense to have given it a shot. He noted that the plan—and this was his plan all the way—had managed to keep Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien together at NBC for five more years. It ended in a mistake, he acknowledged, labeling both shows failures, but Zucker defended the overall strategy, at least, as sound.
Still, he seemed to strain in presenting his case, emphasizing a number of times that this was the kind of thing a leader does. (To some of his critics, that sounded like a pitch intended for Comcast ears.) He also introduced a startling new element to the story: He had been subjected to death threats over the Conan business. Again Zucker was undoubtedly making a point—this time to illustrate just how crazy people had become over this issue—but he ended up inviting accusations that he was in some way begging for sympathy. The enmity Zucker aroused in many Hollywood circles, certainly not solely the product of Gavin Polone’s ministrations, had made it almost impossible for Zucker to make a sincere argument—he was always being seen by some as either sinister or manipulative.
Still, others stepped forward to make, in effect, some of his arguments for him. Two principals from competing late-night shows—neither of whom had any reason to hold a brief for Zucker—had reached the same conclusion: Overall, Jeff Zucker might have come out ahead.
“Did Zucker make a mistake?” one competing late-night figure said. “I think he has a good argument—he got five years of revenue out of The Tonight Show and Late Night. I don’t think he’s an evil genius. This wasn’t something he wanted to do; it was something he felt he had to do to keep Jay in the tent. Now as a result Conan is out of the picture. He’s damaged. So it’s a little hard from just a business standpoint to say Jeff Zucker made a mistake here.”
The other high-profile competitor put it more directly. “Jeff Zucker made tens of millions on late night. Then he had to pay $40 million. He can look at it this way: ‘I badly damaged someone who could have been our competitor and made a lot of money. And what did it really cost me? Bad press.’ ” But he’d already survived a ton of that, the competitor added.
Because NBC executives figured they would have had Jay anyway, they did a financial analysis based on what NBC would have lost had Conan bolted for Fox in 2004. The estimate: $235 million. Some of that total the network would have made up, of course, had they chosen a promising host to replace Conan. But that figure easily surpassed the $45 million it ultimately cost NBC to resolve its Conan dilemma.
Zucker didn’t expect plaudits for his perspicacity—it all came down to doing everything possible to keep one or the other of his late-night hosts from bolting. What happened with Leno and Conan would never make its way into MBA textbooks as an example of how to manage talented underlings.
Besides, the way it played out had not only been professionally unhealthy for Zucker, it was also personally wrenching. Zucker felt terrible about the way it had ended with Conan. Though they were never exactly family-dinners close, their relationship went much deeper than just professional contact—at least for Zucker. Only Lorne Michaels truly knew the extent of Zucker’s commitment to Conan, and how Jeff had quietly backed O’Brien when others inside NBC wanted to bail on him.
The Jeff Ross connection went to an unusually deep emotional place for Zucker. Having to make a decision that had the potential of ending a friendship that probably meant more to him than any other he had established during his days at NBC was an almost overpowering burden for Zucker. Almost, because Zucker knew what was expected of CEOs