The War for Late Night_ When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy - Bill Carter [3]
To emcee the festivities, Bass reached out to one of NBC’s most reliable go-to guys, a man who had done so well fronting formal dinners and other special occasions that his name had actually been kicked around in some quarters as a player talented and funny enough to be a potential late-night host himself. This, even though he still filled a rather important day job for the network: anchoring NBC Nightly News.
Brian Williams didn’t mind being part of an NBC Comedy Showcase because he had no problem proving he was funny in front of crowds. He had already scored a coup hosting Saturday Night Live, to widespread praise. Williams had agreed to take that leap only after much concern about whether being in goofy comedy sketches might undermine his credibility as the face of NBC News. By all accounts, it had actually helped his image with viewers, some of whom had previously read his body language on newscasts to mean that he was overly stiff and sober. That hurdle cleared, Williams was now free to let his comedy freak flag fly with abandon, which he did during guest spots in late night, with Leno, O’Brien, David Letterman on CBS, and especially Jon Stewart on cable’s Comedy Central.
When Michael Bass, after clearing the request with Zucker, approached Williams about serving as onstage host for the Comedy Showcase, Brian had the impression the producer was a bundle of nerves, which he took to mean this event was clearly of high importance to Jeff Zucker. Bass warned Williams that this was going to be a different role than playing tuxedoed toastmaster at the Waldorf.
Bass didn’t much doubt what answer he would get. Like everyone else at NBC, he had observed how much Williams enjoyed invading the world of comedy.
“I’ll do as good a job for you as I possibly can,” Williams assured him with anchorman earnestness.
So Williams was backstage hanging with the comedy crowd as the ticketholders filed in to Town Hall, taking their limited-legroom seats inside the eighty-eight-year-old theater while being warmed up by the infectious beat of the Roots, the smoking-hot house band for the Fallon show. The comics themselves were squeezed into an uncomfortable, dimly lit twenty-by-twenty space equipped with some cold drinks, snacks, and a large video screen. The star power was considerable, but even with the formidable Seinfeld on hand, most of those backstage knew who would be playing the top cats on this night: Jay and Conan.
Both Leno and O’Brien had flown in from LA—separately—for this gig, and neither was especially enthused about it. Conan was exactly thirteen days away from his opening night as Tonight host and would have preferred to keep focused on his increasingly intense preparations, which had only recently included the first of four practice shows in his newly constructed studio. But he had put the trip east to good use. With access to the jet NBC had chartered, Conan and his team had touched down in a couple of locations—including Wrigley Field in Chicago—that they planned to use in the elaborate opening of Conan’s Tonight Show: Conan running across the country through various highly American locales. Leno, for his part, didn’t particularly see the need to have to throw a repeat on the air—Jay had always despised going into repeats, for any reason—just so he could cross the continent and do stand-up in front of a group he expected would be largely the same crowd he had worked only three months earlier, when he had been the featured entertainment at a different NBC party. The network had thrown one in February for its affiliate board and some big ad clients prior to its coverage of the Super Bowl, in Tampa, Florida. Conan had been present at that gathering as well, and though he had not performed, he and his entourage had the same reaction as the rest