The War for Late Night_ When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy - Bill Carter [57]
For his part, Leno never looked away from what Dave was doing. Partly, colleagues said, it was because Jay remained fascinated by Dave, his unpredictable nature, his whipsaw wit. But another part of Leno grew more and more astonished that Dave not only never seemed to pay a price for not making every effort to win, but was outright disdainful of the things Jay did routinely in his pursuit of quantifiable success.
He couldn’t believe the attitude behind comments from the Letterman camp like one from Rob Burnett: “Jay runs The Tonight Show like a political campaign. If he thinks something will attract more viewers, he’ll do it. Jay sees that Arnold Schwarzenegger is hot, so he introduces Arnold at a political rally. He sees that wrestling is hot, so he wrestles for the WWF. Maybe Jay earned himself a few more viewers for doing those things, but you have to ask yourself: Who would you rather be? Jay or Dave?”
Arrogance in the face of endless losing? In private moments, Jay could not help noting that Dave didn’t do that well anymore and wondering:. Where does all this power come from?
But he knew the answer. Whenever Jay broke down the differing courses their careers had taken, Jay always acknowledged Dave’s great strength—on television. “I’m a comedian,” Leno said, analyzing their relative assets. “I’m not a talk-show host. I think Dave as a broadcaster is as good as there has ever been. I would say Dave is the better broadcaster and I am the better stand-up comedian.” He felt they had learned from each other. From Dave, Jay had learned to be a wordsmith. From Jay, Dave had learned how to be a performer and be aggressive and “hit the mic hard.”
But faced with the change proposed by NBC in 2004, Dave didn’t factor much in how Leno parsed out his future. As he surveyed the changing late-night landscape around him, he considered the possible threats to his preeminence if he chose to dig in his heels and decline NBC’s proposed five-year plan. Say no, Leno reasoned, and he would be going up against Conan on Fox or ABC. “It’s not so much Conan—well, it’s Conan and it’s everything I’ve worked for in my career,” Jay said. “Conan would go to ABC, and then I would be fighting a war on two fronts. Dave . . . who knows what Dave was going to do? And whether Jon Stewart would step in for Dave, and then you’re fighting . . . two younger guys.”
Jon Stewart? Nobody else seemed to be including him in the coming network late-night equation. NBC had not imagined any scenario that would have CBS turning to Stewart to replace Letterman, creating more viable competition for that younger audience they expected Conan to attract. But Jay had been a regular viewer of Jon Stewart dating back to a late-night show Jon had starred in on MTV. It seemed to Jay then that Stewart was reaching every possible person in his chosen demographic group (young, smart, hip) but no one else. It was obvious, though, that the guy was really funny. “You know, you never know,” Jay assessed. “Things come along; you never know what’s going to knock you out of the box.”
As Jay peered over the horizon of his potential future, he saw a possibility that few others did: the cable guy who was coming into his own.
Jon Stewart had been buzzing around the late-night airfield for years, usually landing on some auxiliary runway before taking off again in search of a better heading. He had tried out for the Late Night opening post-Dave with the rest of the stand-up community at NBCʹs showcase in early 1993 when he was thirty. Later the same year he successfully pitched MTV a thirty-minute late-night talk show. It only lasted a year but generated enough attention that Paramount stepped