The War for Late Night_ When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy - Bill Carter [6]
He also weighed in on the early critical reaction to Conan’s 12:35 successor. “I watched the reviews of Jimmy Fallon after one night,” Jay said. “Give the kid six months; give him a year. Conan—give it a year.” Mindful of his own early ratings drubbings at the hands of Letterman, he added, “I mean, Dave was beating me for the first eighteen months or so.”
What about that little frisson of tension with the Boston station? Was there any reason to worry whether other affiliates might bail on him? “I talk to the affiliates,” Jay said. “You know, there is no NBC. There’s only the affiliates. They’re the customers. NBC is just a bunker in Burbank somewhere, and you have all these affiliates. They buy your product. And if your franchisees are unhappy, they close your restaurant. Simple as that.”
At this point, Jeff Zucker, who had been leaning against a wall of the suite, taking it all in, stepped forward. He was having none of any suggestion that NBC’s backing of Jay was anything but unstinting. He turned to a reporter who had persisted with a line of questioning about how long the network would hang on if Jay’s initial ratings were lackluster. “We’re completely committed to this,” Zucker said quietly, adding, “This question comes from a very anachronistic way of looking at it. This is going to be judged on a fifty-two-week basis, not on a first-month basis.”
“There’s a poker player!” a suddenly energized Leno jumped in, pointing to Zucker. “Right there! You know, if it’s not working, kick my ass out! Thank you! I know how it works.”
By no means did Jay see that as a likely outcome, however. He explained how his ten p.m. show would be much cheaper to produce than those hour-long dramas on the other networks—he could do his show for one-fifth of the cost, he promised. And all he really needed to do was improve the ratings for the ten p.m. time period over the lame shows NBC had been programming at that hour—like Lipstick Jungle—to be judged an immediate success. “And then you build from that,” he concluded.
Besides, Leno noted, “You have something of a proven product here. Logically it stands to reason you’ll do better at ten than you did at eleven thirty.”
In both his words and his air of assurance, Jay was making it clear that he saw this latest transition in much the same way he regarded every move he had made in his career. At bottom, it was all about doing something he had worked on his whole life and now had complete confidence in: telling audiences—in clubs, on TV—jokes. Lots and lots of jokes.
“It’s like people always say to me: What happens if you go to a club and you just bomb? Well, you know, after a while you don’t bomb anymore. You do better than you might have done, or you do a little worse. But you don’t go out there and just bomb.”
Just before Brian Williams stepped onstage at precisely nine p.m., he glanced at the big video monitor in the ersatz greenroom backstage, which showed the Roots pounding through their last warm-up number and the faces of the crowd, now settled into their seats. As he looked around, Williams noticed that in this room full of comics, few ever raised their eyes to the screen. Their demeanor reminded him of athletes at sports events, like Olympic skiers closing their eyes and mentally running through the course before being set loose onto the snow—a cross between that and jittery thoroughbred horses right before being loaded into the starting gate for the derby.