This is from Paul Dushkind…
I enjoy reading about the late night hosts, but you haven't addressed the issue: could Leno, who was under contract to NBC, have turned down a return to the Tonight Show if he wanted to? Conan seems to think he could have.
Well, I never read Jay's contract — and I doubt Conan did, either — but if the Bill Carter book is correct, yes, Jay could have refused to go back to that time slot. I'm not sure why anyone could or should have expected him to…but I believe he could have.
You know, the whole debacle was based on a number of flawed premises, starting with a prediction within NBC that in that last five years of the Leno Tonight Show, Jay's ratings would fade, whereas Conan's popularity would soar. If anything, the opposite occurred. But another big problem was that both Jay and Conan made key errors in their contracts. Conan did not secure a time-slot guarantee — something that was fairly standard in deals like that. He had no contractual assurance that his Tonight Show would air at 11:35, thus making it possible for NBC to consider sliding him later.
Leno's omission was even more curious, given how obsessed he was with remaining on the air continuously. At all costs, Jay wanted to avoid being off TV for an extended period, which is what would have happened if he'd rejected the offer for the 10 PM show and anything else NBC offered him. He couldn't immediately have gone to Fox or ABC or elsewhere. NBC had him under contract and while they would have had to keep paying him megabucks for the duration, they could have kept him off television, interrupting his continuity with the viewership, causing much of his staff to scatter if he didn't elect to keep paying them himself, etc. Obviously, one of the main appeals of the 10 PM offer for Jay was that it kept him in the same place (same offices, same studio, same parking space, etc.) and got him back on television much quicker.
What he should have done when he made his deal to do that last five years of The Tonight Show was to hold out for terms that would have made him a free agent the minute he was no longer appearing five nights a week on NBC. And if he didn't get it then, he really should have gotten it when he made the deal for the 10 PM show since he had even more clout at that moment. He didn't. Instead, his lawyer secured for him an unprecedented "pay and play" deal which seemed to suggest he could sue NBC for breach if they took that show off the air. But the meaning of "pay and play" was so unprecedented and to go to court would have been so messy and time-consuming that no one took that seriously as a threat. Jay seems to have ruled it out because it could have keep him off TV for years…so I'm not sure what the point of it was.
I suspect that some who fault Leno for his conduct in replacing Conan are operating on the theory that Jay, once his 10 PM show was axed, said to NBC, "You owe me all this money so I demand you kick O'Brien off and give me back The Tonight Show." But that would have been suicidal of the network if they didn't think Jay would have done a lot better there than Conan…and there's no evidence such a demand was ever made. Indeed, in the Carter book, when Jeff Gaspin tells Leno that the 10 PM show is being terminated and proposes the half-hour at 11:35, Leno asks if NBC will release him from his contract if he refuses. Gaspin says no. Assuming that's true, Leno at that point had two choices: Agree to a new show for them or just wait out the expiration of his contract for a year or two. If he'd chosen the latter, he would have made a lot of money for doing nothing but he would have been off television for a long time…and of course, his staff would have lost their jobs.
So NBC offered Leno a half-hour show at 11:35 and planned on bumping O'Brien's Tonight Show to 12:05…to which Jay said, "If Conan's in, I'm in." Some say that it was even wrong for Leno to say that…and they're assuming, I suppose, that if he'd refused to ever return to 11:35, NBC would have left Conan there indefinitely. Do we believe that? I don't. I think they would immediately have started lining up someone else for to host The Tonight Show. They had to have someone.
In 30+ years, there had never been a moment when NBC didn't have at least one person (sometimes, two) in the "on deck" circle for The Tonight Show. During Carson's tenure, it changed from time to time — at one point, Bob Newhart or Joey Bishop; at another, David Brenner or McLean Stevenson; later, Joan Rivers and, of course, Leno. And for much of that time if Johnny had suddenly quit or died, there was David Letterman. There was always a host-in-waiting, even though unlike the Conan situation, canceling Johnny due to low ratings was generally not a concern. Throughout Leno's run as host, they always had Conan.
So then one day, they have Conan behind the desk and it's too soon to think about Jimmy Fallon moving up. Conan's fans have claimed the ratings weren't as bad as NBC insisted, especially since his numbers with younger viewers were decent. Clearly though, NBC was not happy with them. The NBC/Conan relationship probably reached the point of no-return when the President of NBC Sports (and a former dabbler in late night programming) Dick Ebersol got sick of seeing Conan's handlers and friends blaming Leno. He took to the pages of the New York Times to call the then-current Tonight Show "…an astounding failure by Conan."
I think it's silly to say Jay had some obligation to Conan to not be available to go back to late night. I don't see what Jay owed Conan other than to hand off The Tonight Show to him with graciousness and good ratings…which he did. Would you have been as polite as that to the guy who hadn't hesitated to bump you from the best job you ever had? But leave you out of it and let's say Jay did for some reason decide to sacrifice a large chunk of his career, as well as the jobs of his staff, to help Conan. Suppose he'd said. "Nope! I'm not going back to 11:30." That might have bought O'Brien a little more time on the air but the following would also have happened…
NBC would have started looking for his replacement. And they would have started looking hard and fast because it can take a while to find the right person and put his or her show together. They were already displeased with Conan's ratings and so were the affiliates. (Carter says that when the network polled station owners as to who they wanted at 11:35 at that point, not one voted for O'Brien.) NBC had to be worried the numbers would drop even more, damaging perhaps their most valuable franchise and time slot. So without Jay as an option, you would have heard they were talking to Jon or talking to Steve or talking to Jerry or talking to lots of people about taking over for Conan. Folks within NBC like Ebersol who had decided Conan had to go would have leaked it to the press. Other comedians who dreamed of taking over The Tonight Show — i.e., almost all of them — would have had their managers planting stories that they were under consideration.
I was always a big fan of Conan O'Brien and his whole operation — Andy, the writers, the producers, everyone. Conan was, is, and will remain a major talent in television and a stunning success story. He was a guy who wound up in an impossible situation — an unknown replacing David Letterman — and really made it work. But I wasn't fond of his Tonight Show and obviously, I wasn't the only one. At some point, the suits at NBC wanted to get him out of the 11:35 time slot and if possible, ease Leno back in. Maybe that was a wrong decision or at least a premature decision…but my main point here is it wasn't Jay's decision. Jay doesn't program that network.
It's amazing how little power that guy had there given his winning year after year after year. Ordinarily when you're in first place, you're safe. Jay was in first place when he didn't have the power to stop them from offering his job to David Letterman. He was in first place when he didn't have the power to stop them from actually giving it to Conan O'Brien. Later, he was in first place when he didn't have the power to stop them from giving it to Jimmy Fallon. But apparently someone's premise is that when his 10 PM show flopped and he was at his greatest point of failure, he had the power to get NBC to dump Conan O'Brien.
People faulted the guy for even being available but if it hadn't been him, it would have been someone else. The network gets what it wants and if they wanted Conan to stay, he would have stayed and if they wanted him to go, he would have gone. Had Jay refused the slot, Conan would have been a walking deadman, carrying on a few more months while rumors swirled about as to who NBC was courting to replace him.
I'm sorry it went down that way. The one time I met Conan O'Brien, he was funny and eminently likeable. Given all the network promised him, I think he deserved a lot better. But that's true of a lot of people in television. It's kind of how the industry operates and it's the reason he had a contract that they had to settle to the tune of $45 million. He had it better than many folks. There are people who get screwed over and don't get $45 million as a consolation prize…and almost none of them get another show months later. Some of the news stories about the whole mess acted like he was the first person to ever suffer the disappointment of having his series canceled.
This'll probably be the last message on this topic for a while. I'm aware it's Old News and no longer of interest to many…but it's bugged me for some time that people who don't like his comedy (or are on opposite him) were trashing the guy. Let's move on to other topics. It's Comic-Con Time!