The War for Late Night_ When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy - Bill Carter [48]
“Yeah, we got a problem,” Agoglia finally admitted to Polone. “We’re going to be picking him up week to week.”
“Week to week!” Polone exploded. “You told me we were picked up for the twenty-six weeks. You lied to me!”
Agoglia, all business, never thrown by high emotion, shrugged that off. “What are you gonna do?”
Polone called in to New York and broke the news to Ross, who didn’t share it with Conan until after the show that night, honoring a fundamental rule of good show business: Don’t rattle your star before a performance. None of them could believe NBC was pulling this. Week-to-week renewals? No one had ever heard of such a thing. O’Brien, Ross, and Smigel met in Ross’s office after the show and put the speakerphone on the floor. The three of them—partly to hear better, partly just worn down from another week of shows and more disrespect from NBC—sprawled themselves on the rug surrounding the phone as they put in a call to Cancun.
Ross argued that Polone had to make a counter to NBC right away. “If they aren’t going to give us the six-month pickup, we can’t give them week to week. The blood’s in the water then. Everyone will take it that we’re being canceled.” How many people—writers, segment producers, publicists for the guests, anyone—would stick with a show that was on a weekly deathwatch? “We gotta get them to go up to thirteen-week renewals,” Ross insisted.
That was the plea that Gavin made to Don Ohlmeyer, appealing to Don’s sense of fairness. Polone had always been impressed that Ohlmeyer, who started in the business as a sports producer (most famously of Monday Night Football in its heyday), was not a typical network executive. “In the entertainment industry,” as Polone assessed it, “you very rarely sit down with someone and have a bacon cheeseburger and then light up a smoke afterward. You’re on a different planet when that happens.”
Ohlmeyer listened to Polone’s plea and granted a reprieve. NBC would extend Conan in thirteen-week increments. At the same time, he set some ratings targets Conan would have to reach. Instead of a vote of no confidence, they now had a vote of minuscule confidence.
To Ross, NBC’s moves felt cheesy—and personally shitty. Conan was making so little by late-night host standards—only about $1 million—that it would have been a minimal risk to NBC to extend him the full six months and pay him off if he didn’t cut it. To make them grovel like this had an edge of purposeful nastiness to it.
Now it was a matter of Conan’s putting in the hard work and somehow finding some magic—along with a dose of good luck—as he churned out shows night after night. Whether Conan had studied a little Samuel Johnson in a British Lit class at Harvard and knew the famous quote or not, he was certainly living it:
“Depend on it sir: When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”
Ross had good enough contacts inside the network to know that if Greg Kinnear decided he wanted a long-term career as a late-night star, they were toast. Then he heard Kinnear was reluctant. Maybe he wouldn’t do a test for a 12:35-style show; maybe he wanted to be a movie star instead. It could all be posturing, but whatever it was, it seemed to be buying them some time.
The ratings demand set by Ohlmeyer was the looming noose. Get there or they were done. Conan pictured himself as a farmer who had been told, “If it doesn’t rain within a month, we’re taking your farm.” So what was the farmer supposed to do? “Work hard and pray for rain.”
The drought went on, through late 1994 and into 1995. But good things were happening elsewhere, namely in Kinnear’s movie career. He won the third lead in a Harrison Ford movie, Sabrina, leaving NBC without another obvious option in late night. And there was luck on another front. Letterman, who in his CBS deal controlled the 12:35 time period as well, passed on choosing a young comer for the slot and decided on one of his personal favorites, Tom Snyder.
As good—and often unpredictable—as Snyder was as an interviewer, he was