The War for Late Night_ When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy - Bill Carter [50]
“I’m fine for a guy who’s gonna be out of work! Put out to seed!”
It didn’t help when guests came on the show and naturally made reference to the big recent news, almost always expressing shock that Jay, of all people, the man who considered vacations—or time off of any kind—even less appealing than green vegetables (which he never ate), had agreed to turn in his talk-show badge.
“Yeah, I’m retiring,” Jay would say, in a half-mocking, half-pained way. And then he would quickly change the subject. How could he discuss it? He didn’t really understand it.
Nor did other people. Around Hollywood, many in the industry found themselves mystified by NBC’s move, which just seemed inexplicably bizarre. Who in show business made calls five years in advance about anything? The status quo changed every five minutes. One agent with clients connected to late-night said, “Who the fuck let this happen? This guy is so proud that he doesn’t have an agent. Let me tell you something, any agent with a heartbeat would have told NBC, ‘Go fuck yourselves. This guy is winning. He’s going nowhere.’ Who makes a move like this?”
Another executive with long connections to late-night programming observed, “I thought they were out of their minds. Conan had to say yes if he had that drive that most comics have regarding The Tonight Show. I also thought it might explode in his face that he was gunning for Jay’s job. Jay’s politeness toward Conan seemed thin to me. But you don’t take someone who’s doing very well in the ratings off the air—I’m sorry. What is the life expectancy of an executive like Jeff Zucker? Five years? Seven? So he’s really worried what the company is going to be like in five years? Hell, he’d be lucky to be in that position in five years.”
One outside—but familiar—voice checked in almost immediately with both Debbie and Jay. Don Ohlmeyer, now five years out of his leadership position over the network’s entertainment division, had developed close working relationships with both the Tonight star and producer during his time at NBC’s Burbank headquarters. While he no longer had authority over any decisions at NBC, Ohlmeyer certainly had opinions.
He got to Debbie first—and she had no doubt about where he stood. He was furious.
Ohlmeyer put NBC’s decision in some historical television context. In the mid-eighties a top programmer at ABC named Lew Erlicht had gained everlasting fame (or infamy) for having turned down a proposal from a couple of producers named Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner for a new sitcom starring Bill Cosby. (Later, Erlicht became the subject of one of the most lasting and likely apocryphal stories in TV lore. Supposedly he was approached in the street years afterward by a homeless guy looking for a handout and said, “Hey, don’t give me your sob story; I’m the guy who passed on The Cosby Show.”) “I think this is a bigger mistake than Lew Erlicht passing on Cosby,ʺ Ohlmeyer declared. ʺWhy do they want to force out the guy with the first or second most profitable show on the network?”
And the way the situation had been handled made Ohlmeyer livid. Compelling Jay to announce the Conan deal on his own show, he believed, was the most demeaning thing he had ever seen done in the television business. Ohlmeyer had a characteristically colorful metaphor for it: “It’s one thing to stick a knife in a guy’s heart. It’s another thing to stick it up his ass and then stick it in his heart.”
Ohlmeyer did not even believe NBC’s motivation had any credibility. He suggested that the supposedly imminent offer for Conan from Fox was a fantasy—just Ari Emanuel conning gullible executives. In that view he had some supporters inside NBC, including one major one: Dick Ebersol, the president of NBC Sports and longtime close friend of Don’s from their early days as protégés of the great ABC sports impresario Roone Arledge.
Though Ebersol was by this point serving as mentor to Jeff Zucker, Zucker had not consulted him on