Michael Doran has another question…
Over at the Breitbart websites, they're pushing the notion that the main, if not the only, reason that Leno outrates Letterman is that Jay tells jokes about President Obama, and Dave does not. The Breitbarties always try to skew everything to the Right, of course, but this has turned into an obsession over there, particularly with one regular poster named Christian Toto. To me, for one side to claim Leno as One Of Their Own, while Letterman is Going Down In Flames With The Kenyan…silly beyond belief. But the Breities are convinced of this, as they are with all their tropes, and there are quite a few of them (the Breities and the tropes, I mean). Maybe this is too dumb to comment on, but I am curious, if not yellow…
Well, the obvious response here is that Leno has been outrating Letterman for a long time…since before anyone was talking about Obama at all, and during a period when Obama was a topic but not one that either late night host criticized. If Jay had been losing in the ratings and then only pulled into first place after he started doing jokes about Obama, someone might have a point.
I actually once briefly discussed politics with Jay. I don't know the guy well but we've had a few conversations. My sense, based on those talks and things folks on his staff have told me is that Jay is not particularly on anyone's political team. At least, he doesn't care enough about any particular point-of-view enough to reject a good joke that slammed anyone or anything. For a long time, he didn't do Obama jokes because…well, there weren't many good ones around; not unless you bought into a lot of the accusations that most Americans don't buy like Obama was born in Kenya or Obama is gay.
Imagine you were hired to write a roast of some person. How would you start? You'd look for what I used to describe to my comedy writer students as Access Points. What's the joke about? Is it about the person being fat or dumb or slow or old…or what? I couldn't write jokes about Obama being fat or dumb or slow or old…but I could about him spying on your phone calls. That's an access point. The jokes would be pretty much the same as the ones about Rupert Murdoch listening to your phone calls but it's a fertile premise…and one that Jay and his gag writers didn't have a year ago. There wasn't much about Obama that you could hang jokes on. Even Dennis Miller couldn't come up with much…but now there are a few more access points.
Really, I think it's silly to try and extrapolate something about America from something like that. You could just as easily say more people are watching Jay because he's for gay rights and women's rights. Or because Letterman cut back on his Sarah Palin jokes. There's no way of proving any such cause-and-effect.
Scott Marinoff writes to ask…
What (if anything) do you make of TCM's choice of Conan O'Brien (rather than Leno or even Letterman) to do the intros and closes for the vintage Carson guest interview segments that have been airing Mondays in July?
Well, we don't know for sure that Jay or Dave weren't asked and turned it down. Assuming they weren't, I can think of two reasons. One is that Carson's nephew Jeff Sotzing, who runs the company that licenses footage of Johnny, is reportedly a big Conan fan. And the other reason is that Conan is a star on TBS, the Turner Broadcasting System, which is owned by Time-Warner. So it's not that odd to promote him on TCM, Turner Classic Movies, which is owned by Time-Warner. Perhaps both those reasons are applicable.
Lastly for now, here's Donald Byrne again with another question…
Thank you for answering my question about Conan O'Brien and the whole Tonight Show debacle. As long as I have your attention, let me ask you about something else — and this might require pure speculation on your part. Namely, what is the endgame for The Late Show with David Letterman? Letterman is 66 years old and I have read that he is looking to make an exit in the not too distant future. I also read that he wanted to outlast his onetime pal, Jay Leno, and now that Leno will be gone early next year, Dave can start planning his own exit. Does CBS have someone lined up to take Dave's place? Will it be Craig Ferguson? Or will it be someone like Jon Stewart (the name I hear most often) or Stephen Colbert or if they're really desperate, Pat Sajak again? Does CBS even have succession plans in place? Or are they planning on airing NCIS: Duluth in that spot after Dave departs? I can imagine CBS executives laughing at the straits that NBC is in being a lot less jolly when Dave retires and they have to deal with similar issues.
If I had to guess, I'd guess that Dave's current plans have very little to do with outlasting Leno but they might have a lot to do with how he fares in the ratings against the two Jimmies. If they split the younger audience and Dave is suddenly back in First Place because he inherits a lot of viewers from Jay, there will be a powerful argument that this would be a good time for Letterman to announce his retirement so he could go out on top.
The trouble with that premise is that what I'm hearing is that Dave does not want to retire; that he still loves doing the show and loves going into the office almost every day. He has been known to go in during weeks the show is dark just because he likes working on the program and being with the staff. I think it's also becoming pretty obvious that Dave has nothing else he wants to do of a professional nature. He doesn't want to do movies. He doesn't want to play Vegas. He doesn't want to do prime-time specials, a la Bob Hope. Yeah, he could retire to his ranch and raise his son but there's nothing else he wants to do for audiences. Retirement on that basis might not be healthy.
I was discussing this the other day with someone and I tried to think what Dave might do. Now, keep in mind that I, like other Dave-watchers, have a near-perfect track record for being wrong with predictions about what Dave will do. So do most folks around him. But if I were Dave Letterman, I'd go to CBS and propose a deal: "Look, I know you'd like to get a younger guy into this time slot and have me retire soon with dignity and grace. Okay, let's pick someone and have that person guest host Monday nights. I don't even want to do five shows a week. If our first pick doesn't work out, we'll find someone else. If and when someone does, we'll expand that person to Monday and Tuesday and eventually give him (maybe her) some whole weeks.
"My conditions are they do that show indefinitely out of the same building. We can bring in new people for the new host to work with but we keep my staff intact and when I go, they can stay on if they choose. And I will go but at my own pace, cutting back over the next few years. I will never be fired. I will never look squeezed-out. I will anoint my successor and there'll be no nastiness about 'Who will replace Dave?' And I'll have a place to go and a show to do until the ratings on my nights fall below an agreed-upon level or I just feel like it's time to bow out."
Assuming Dave didn't demand unreasonable money or that his company own the show after he stopped appearing on it, I think CBS would go for such a deal. It would solve a problem they've undoubtedly had to consider, which is what to do if it becomes time for Dave to go and he doesn't wanna. It would make sense for Dave too…which is probably why he won't do it. Truth to tell, I don't know what he'll do or when he'll do it and he may not either because, among other things, he doesn't know if post-Leno, he'll be in First Place, Second Place or trailing badly behind two guys who are much worse at hosting a talk show. The only prediction I feel fairly confident of is that the next host to star in that time slot is probably not someone mentioned anywhere in this posting.
Tomorrow, more about why people thought Jay did something unethical in taking back his old job.