The War for Late Night_ When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy - Bill Carter [5]
But at least O’Brien’s day in New York would not be taxing: He was doing only the Town Hall gig. NBC, meanwhile, was wringing all it could out of Jay’s drop-in to the city. Besides the affiliate meetings, Jay had been asked to spend an hour or so with another constituency of likely ten p.m. skeptics: the press. At about six that evening, a phalanx of NBC publicity executives, accompanied by many of the network generals, including Jeff Zucker, ushered Jay into a suite at Hotel Mela, where a group of about a dozen reporters was waiting for him.
Jay arrived looking relaxed and in good spirits, if a little puffy faced, dispensing his usual greeting—“Hello, everybody”—to the room and offering shout-outs to several of the reporters by name. He sprawled his blocky frame into an armchair chair behind a coffee table, settling in for the session with no discernible signs of concern—not even when the first question carried an implied shot about NBC’s decision to try him out at ten.
Stephen Battaglio, a reporter for TV Guide, wanted to know if Jay had heard what one of his late-night rivals, Jimmy Kimmel of ABC, had said in his comedy monologue at the ABC upfront that afternoon. Jay hadn’t, so Battaglio explained it to him. Kimmel had referenced his fear, before NBC announced the ten p.m. plan, that ABC was going to lure Leno away, place him at 11:35 p.m., and knock Kimmel back from his perch in the midnight hour to a start time of 12:35 a.m. “ ‘But NBC said we will not let Jay go to ABC,’ ” Battaglio quoted the ABC star, “ ‘even if we have to destroy our network to keep him.’ ”
As the reporters laughed, Jay rolled with it. “As long as it’s funny!” he bellowed in his best punch line voice. “That’s the rule.”
Most of the subsequent questions covered the obvious territory:
What would the new show be like? Jay offered few details because he hadn’t started planning it yet.
Why did he believe this idea might work? “I thought: There’s no comedy at ten o’clock. Maybe we’ll try that,” Leno said, with his characteristic no-big-deal insouciance, as if he were discussing a dinner order rather than a career change. And, as usual, how much of that detachment was real and how much was calculated was impossible for anyone in the room to read.
How could he compete against expensive dramas like CSI: Miami on CBS and Private Practice on ABC? “Hopefully when they’re in reruns, we’ll catch them,” Jay said, turning to familiar ground: a car metaphor. “We may not get them in the straights. We’ll catch them in the corners.”
Didn’t he worry about tarnishing his legacy as the longtime winner on Tonight? “I’m not much of a legacy guy,” he said, tossing a scoff. “I hosted the Tonight show for seventeen years. It’s like the America’s Cup. I didn’t screw it up. I passed it off to the next guy—whew! Everything else now is gravy. If this is a success—wonderful. If it’s a huge bomb . . . Well, I hope not.” Jay’s tone rang more with confidence than mere hope.
What about the notion that staying at NBC and moving to ten amounted to stealing Conan’s thunder? “No, I don’t think so,” Jay said, quickly locating his familiar Conan take. “Conan is terrific. We’ve been friends for a long time. This will be a smooth transition.”
Then Jay, who at various times in his career had enjoyed performing the role of