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For one thing, Fox presented a compelling case. It had put together a PowerPoint presentation of what it called a late-night deck, which broke down what the comic could expect in terms of station clearances and advertising sales, and even a guess at what size audience might be available. (Once again, the pitch was to launch a show at eleven p.m., giving Crystal a half-hour jump on Leno and Letterman.) And then there was the $20 million-plus potential payday.

The Fox executives were convinced they had gotten close, really close, to making a deal with Billy. He asked all the right questions; the interest was there. But if he hadn’t already been aware of just how much effort went into these jobs, having done the late-night rounds himself—including, famously, being the first ever guest on Leno’s Tonight Show—it hardly took much due diligence to learn. “When Billy found out how much you have to work,” said one Fox entertainment executive, “he thought, No way.”

Workload was never going to be an issue with Jay Leno, of course, whose reputation preceded him. The product might not always be fresh or exciting or new to the critics, but it was going to be pumped out on a regular basis and it was going to generate numbers—and dollars. NBC’s competitors knew if they somehow could lure Jay away, the tectonic plates in the late-night world would slide and shift with devastating results.

But the rules had to be observed. NBC held exclusive rights to Jay Leno’s television work for the full period of his contract. That meant that any flirtations that went over the line into an actual pass—as in, anything resembling a real offer of future employment for Jay elsewhere—would be grounds for a legitimate claim of tampering, or tortious interference, if it ever got to court.

Hollywood deals generally hold only loosely to such legal niceties. Agents and managers test the waters of future associations for their clients all the time, and studios and networks have their ways of letting talent know how much they love the idea of getting together someday. Everyone in the late-night game remembered how David Letterman’s team had handled his contractual complications with NBC when the star looked to flee in 1993. Though bound by limitations stipulating when Letterman would be free to negotiate any kind of new deal, his agents at CAA simply told suitors to make their best pitch—and all Dave would do was listen.

Now Leno found himself in a similar position: He was all ears.

The approaches from ABC and Fox were general at first. Interest was conveyed; discreet conversations were held. Everyone understood the terms. Jay was locked in at NBC through January 1, 2010, and NBC retained exclusive negotiating rights with him until late November 2009. No outside entity could engage in any negotiation with him before that time. Jay, of course, had no formal representation, so the only way to get to him was either directly or through his lawyer, Ken Ziffren. Quiet though it was, none of this activity caught NBC by surprise in the least. “I expect Bob Iger and Peter Chernin are camped out at Leno’s garage,” one top NBC Entertainment executive said.

If they were not there exactly, they were certainly cruising the neighborhood. And if NBC didn’t get word of Jay’s courtship some other way, Leno had his own means of communication—like the night when he was doing his act two “Headlines” segment and put up a local newspaper’s Sunday TV listings insert. The cover featured a picture of Jay himself, with the tagline “Starring Jay Leno of ABC.”

Jay, swallowed-canary grin firmly in place, peered into the camera and said: “Like a headline from the future.”

On November 5, 2007, the monologues stopped—for everybody. Looking to press the networks and studios for a bigger payday from their material being used on new media like Internet videos and webisodes, writers walked off their jobs, shutting down every scripted show on television. That included the late-night shows, all of which relied