The War for Late Night_ When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy - Bill Carter [219]
Conan, his voice strained by weeks of touring—much of the show consisted of singing, which Conan did surprisingly well—welcomed a couple of special guests that night: first Colbert, then Stewart. It was a love fest for the comics, who had also appeared together during the writers’ strike. But it gave some veteran Conan watchers in the audience pause, envisioning the competition to come.
“Can Conan kill Jon Stewart?” one of Conan’s old NBC associates asked. “With intent—I mean, can he stand over the body? Because, you know, that’s what he has to do now. And we know Jon can definitely kill Conan.”
Another longtime New York-based Conanite observed, “The young audience loves Conan—we know that. But they’ll take a bullet for Stewart. It’s not going to be easy for Conan.”
If Conan’s switch to the cable world set up new challenges for him, it had the opposite effect at NBC—at least as far as Jeff Gaspin was concerned. He stated his position point-blank: “Late night’s not my problem anymore.”
Jay was back; he was winning, and while he was down in the ratings, he was back ahead of Letterman, which was all Gaspin cared about. He shrugged off any suggestions that Jay’s numbers were perilously close to what Conan had been scoring. “Where would Conan’s numbers be now?” Gaspin asked.
Best of all from Gaspin’s point of view was that Conan had signed on to move to cable. “That’s over,” Gaspin said of his not so excellent late-night adventure. “Conan’s going to cable. I don’t have to wait for the next shoe to drop.”
Gaspin admitted that had Conan jumped to Fox, it would have again meant daily scrutiny of the late-night numbers. “I would have had the whole Jay versus Conan thing again,” Gaspin said. “Now I don’t have to worry about that. Now it’s Conan versus Jon Stewart. So I’m out of that game.” And he reinforced the competitive point: It was less a question of ratings than it was of who was winning, or at least who could be widely identified as winning. “Leno is beating Letterman. I don’t care if his ratings are a third of what they are, as long as he’s beating Letterman.”
All in all, Gaspin judged the late-night cup to have come out half full; maybe, in the long run, as he explained, “It’s better for Conan. It’s better for all of us.”
While it was surely better that Jay Leno had escaped his exile in the Siberian wastes of ten o’clock, as he resumed the routine of his life, monologues every night, was it really all back to normal for Jay? Just like that? Hadn’t Jay been part of NBC’s ritual of human sacrifice? How many pieces of his spirit had the experience carved away?
In his appearance on Oprah, Jay had looked almost shattered—puffy faced and profoundly sad. Was that the real Jay? Nobody masked emotion better than Jay; he was so good at it, many people accused him of having none to mask. How much of that flat, emotionless disposition was real and how much was just another part of the persona he presented to the world? Even many of those close to him had trouble sorting out that question.
One NBC executive who was truly fond of Jay called him “a strange, strange guy.” Dick Ebersol called him “almost guileless,” while competitors used words like “conniving” and even “diabolical.” How could one guy fit two such opposite descriptions?
Jay seemed to defy Carson’s central maxim about hosting a late-night show: Whoever you truly are comes out eventually. Even after thousands of hours behind the desk, Jay defied that transparency; few viewers had a clue who he really was.
What Jay had to say about the rough ride of 2009 sounded at once sincere and somehow calculated, depending on who was doing the listening. He expressed surprise that things had turned so bitter on the Conan side and said that he found it