The War for Late Night_ When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy - Bill Carter [65]
Ludwin would dutifully report back to his management about Jay’s prospective driving directions. The news didn’t really surprise anyone; Ludwin and the others at NBC hardly expected Jay was going to pack it in and take up gardening.
Jay’s message could also come through at times in his monologue. More jokes began to appear about NBCʹs expertise in coming in fourth in the network rankings. A failure by a politician or sports team in the news somehow led to comparisons to NBC. When he returned from a dark week and NBC had done some redecorating on his stage, including installing a new desk, Jay feigned surprise, saying, “It’s not like NBC to get rid of something that’s worked perfectly well for fifteen years.”
When Brett Favre of the Green Bay Packers was let go by his team after long years of exceptional play, Jay remarked, with an obvious edge, “His bosses don’t want him anymore—even though he was doing a really good job.” Later, during the 2008 presidential primaries, Jay went through the news of the day, which included a story about Hillary Clinton’s camp making a secret offer to Barack Obama to run with her as vice presidential nominee. Jay’s joke: “Obama is wondering why he’s being offered the second position when he’s still in first place.” Pause. “I’ve been wondering the same thing myself.”
And occasionally Conan would get a pointed reference, as in one holiday-period show when Jay turned to his bandleader, Kevin Eubanks, and asked, “Kev, you ever regift?” (Pause.) “I do. I regifted; I gave Conan something I got fifteen years ago.”
At least Jay could derive a little cathartic satisfaction from nailing NBC with a good shot every once in a while. It was fun for him—in a small way. But it wasn’t as though it was going to make any difference. Leno had resigned himself to the fact that nobody was going to reverse the decision. The NBC executives were hardly going to change their minds.
In meetings of his entertainment group, Jeff Zucker enjoyed putting people on the spot, usually in jest, though for the most part the executives under him never really believed he was kidding. When late night was being considered, Zucker truly was only needling his executives through 2005 and 2006, raising questions about how things were shaping up. He was feeling no regrets. Profits were still pouring in from both of his hour-long shows, profits he had protected by locking in both stars; ABC and Fox still weren’t in the entertainment game in late night. All seemed right in that world.
But as the years rolled by, with all the players back on their isolated islands, the endgame, once a blip on the horizon, began to come into focus, gather shape—and the shape looked dark and smoky, like a distant storm.
Zucker, whose prime-time headaches had gone from annoying to chronic to blindingly intense, now had to endure a faint but growing buzzing in his ear: the sound of Jay Leno humming, “Na, na, na, na. Na, na, na, na. Hey, hey, hey, good-bye.”
So as 2006 rolled into 2007, Zucker began calculating what losing Jay Leno might really mean—especially if he landed in the late-night arms of a competitor. Zucker, an eye on the long-range calendar, began foraging for kernels of ideas that might grow into a feasible possibility to keep Jay attached to NBC in some capacity.
So Zucker, whenever he dropped in on his entertainment staff in Burbank, running the meetings as always, had sharpened his late-night focus. He would turn to Rick Ludwin, employing his usual half-puckish, half-pointed tone.
“So, Rick, how’re you sleeping at night?” Zucker would ask, and then scan the table, letting the group know how playfully pregnant the question really was. Ludwin, looking bookish as usual, was flanked almost always by his late-night deputy Nick Bernstein, so boyish next to the much taller Ludwin that they were affectionately known as Batman and Robin.