The War for Late Night_ When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy - Bill Carter [85]
Sony was even dangling connections to Sony’s music division—if Jay broke new artists on the show he might get cut in on a percentage of their sales. The company promised to think of ways to associate Jay with its PlayStation franchise, maybe promotions in the products, something to help Jay reach the young men obsessed with video games.
Even with all the perks, Sony’s executives knew their proposal was a long shot, simply because it didn’t come with a network attached. To make syndication work Sony would have to canvass the country to line up stations. And while entirely confident of success in that endeavor, the Sony representatives expected that Jay would squirm at the notion that his national station lineup was not instantly certain and secure.
To make that kind of complicated sale, therefore, Sony needed an ally in Jay’s camp. But Jay was agentless, and no one could easily name even an intimate friend who ranked as a professional confidant. Then some Sony executives remembered Jerry Seinfeld’s long-professed friendship with Jay. Sony was in business with Jerry as distributor of the Seinfeld reruns and DVDs. Maybe Jerry was the influencer they needed.
They approached Jerry’s longtime managers, George Shapiro and Howard West, and struck gold. Jay had already turned to Jerry for advice and he had brought George and Howard in as (quiet) consultants. Classic comic managers from the old school, Shapiro and West, both men in their seventies who seemed like the best sort of showbiz characters from a Woody Allen movie, could be counted on to do only what was in Jay’s best interests.
One thing everybody involved knew was that, when the time came, Jay would not lack for offers. Of course, not all the bidders were convinced they would even get a crack at Leno, not if NBC blinked and wound up paying off Conan, as some strongly suspected they would. With that in mind, a negotiator for one of the suitors figured it made sense to make another move, purely as a hedge. The executive contacted Ari Emanuel with a message: “Not if but when NBC fucks Conan, we want you to know we’ve got a pile of money to offer your client.”
When Jeff Zucker met with Rick Ludwin to thrash out the status of the effort to keep Jay in house, nobody fretted about Sony or any other syndication deal. All those people had to offer was money, but with Jay, it was never really about money. He wanted to count people more than bills. He wanted to work someplace where he could win. For Zucker, that had to mean ABC. It fit Jay’s needs, and ABC surely would want a shot at late-night entertainment after all these years on the sideline with Nightline.
As the early months of 2008 rolled by, Zucker heard from Ludwin that Jay’s hints about taking that left off the freeway and heading over to the Disney lot were only growing louder. Leno gave an interview to USA Today about his auto collection and put an exclamation point on it, telling the reporter, “I am definitely done next year with NBC.” And when asked if he would head out for another network, he offered his version of a cocky comeback. “I’m not a beach guy, and the last time I was in my pool was to fix a light. Don’t worry. I’ll find a job somewhere.”
This amounted to Jay’s waving a scimitar over Jeff Zucker’s head. Jeff’s calculation was simple: If—really, when—Jay refused all NBC’s various offers, he would take up residence at ABC, and money would surely follow him. Zucker had already received estimates from the network’s research and sales departments of what a Jay-at-ABC outcome would mean: NBC would take a monetary pasting. Despite that, Zucker clung, at least in what he was saying out loud, to the conviction that Conan could still win the young demos, figuring Leno and Letterman would then split the older crowd.
That might mitigate the financial hit a bit, but if Conan was finishing second—or, heaven forbid, third—among total viewers in late night, it would