Late Shift Author Bill Carter on ConanGate, Letterman's Heirs and the Cannibalization of Late Night

Of all the journalists who covered the dramatic ups and downs of late night television this year, only one has made the genre his journalistic purview. Reacquaint yourselves with Bill Carter: New York Times media reporter, bestselling author of The Late Shift and the authority on late night. In spite of the tens of thousands of headlines already devoted to Conan, Leno and Letterman in 2010, the late night industry is still relatively small, with a handful of hosts, a few hundred employees and several tightly guarded doors. As evidenced by his definitive book about the battle over Johnny Carson's crown, Carter is the only person with complete access to this cutthroat world. In anticipation of his upcoming chronicle, The War For Late Night: When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy, which will be published in September, Movieline picked Carter's brain about another HBO adaptation, a potential Tonight Showdown at the Emmys and the reason why Conan might contribute to the collapse of late night.

One of the biggest inconsistencies surrounding the Tonight Show shakedown was the economic factor. NBC claimed they were losing money on Conan yet in Conan's 60 Minutes interview, he seemed to think that was impossible. Do you have any insight on that from your research?

I will try to shed light on the economic situation in the book, yes.

Has there been any talk of an HBO adaptation of this book?

Not really. Nothing serious. Let's put it this way: There have always been people kicking it around because they think it's funny. Conan made a joke about it on the air. When HBO makes the movie, he said that Tilda Swinton should play him. And Letterman made a similar joke saying that Max Von Sydow should play him. So you know, people are just kicking it around like that.

What are your thoughts on the upcoming Emmys? There is an outside chance that both Jay and Conan's Tonight Shows will be nominated for best variety series.

Well, Jay has had trouble being nominated before, and I wouldn't expect it will be necessarily different this year. But we will have to wait to see how this plays out. I could see a lot of Emmy voters -- just to be a little mischievous -- voting for both Conan and Jay. I would not be surprised to see a nomination for Conan at all. That category has become unbelievably difficult, by the way, because you have Stewart, Colbert, Letterman, Craig Ferguson, Jimmy Fallon, Conan, Saturday Night Live and Bill Maher all basically in the same category. It becomes difficult to get one of those five nominations. You know that Stewart and Colbert are almost shoo-ins for nominations. So it is really difficult to get a nomination in that category, but I do think I could see a lot of people saying, "Hey, maybe we won't vote for Conan to win but..." <span

class="pullquote right">How much fun would it be to have Conan on the Emmys, which will be on NBC, nominated for the Tonight Show? That is almost too delicious to pass up.

It's eerie how much NBC has tried to erase Conan's term at the Tonight Show from the network's history. Occasionally, Jay will have a guest mention it on-air, like Chris Rock did last week but it is always incredibly awkward.

There is a rationale for that. What is to gain by talking about Conan? And also, it's not being addressed because Conan is off the air. It will be interesting to see how they handle it when Conan comes back on the air. If that is a story and it's in the news, then [NBC] will almost have to deal with it on the show. And I think Jay does not want to go through this process of contention. He doesn't like being at odds with people, and I think he would just rather move ahead -- that's what he always wants to do -- perform, tell jokes, move ahead. So it will be interesting to see how Conan addresses everything and what that means going forward -- whether Jay and Conan will continue in some fractious way. I don't think they will though. I think it's not in Conan's best interest to replay what happened again or make it personal between him and Jay. He will make a few ad libs and comments on the side -- David Letterman still does that and it has been 16 or 17 years [since he and lost the Tonight Show to Jay]. I do think you could look for somebody like Dave or Jimmy Kimmel jumping in to stir it a little bit like they did in January though.

Do you think NBC has managed this crisis well?

I think it's more important to see how it plays out in the long-term because with Jay, NBC returned to being the leader in late night and that obviously makes them feel good. But the numbers are still down -- they are down for everybody in what I would call alarming ways. There is a theory that it's going to be hard for any of the late night shows to recover because there are so many of them on the air now. Conan will be on again, and just look at how many people will be on during that time period [Conan, Colbert, Jon Stewart, Chelsea Handler, George Lopez come on at 11 PM and Jay and Letterman will be on at 11:35 PM] carving up the audience. So what will it take for Jay to succeed? Is that the reason why his numbers are off? And this summer, are you going to see even lower numbers because summer is traditionally less-watched? And then in the fall, boy, will it come back? Will the audience come back to these shows or will they just record them and watch them later? There are a lot of questions, and I am going to address some of those in the book.

Do you think there is any truth to the rumor that NBC is panicking over Jimmy Fallon's numbers?

I don't think so at all. I am sure they are unhappy with the numbers but NBC is very, very high on Jimmy. They really think he is a big player. So he is not in danger. From the reporting I have done and the people I have talked to, I hear nothing but praise for Jimmy and his performance. So the numbers, as I said, you have to ask whether late night can be a viable thing going forward with this many shows on the air. It's very, very difficult. They are all going to have big writing staffs, big bands that they have to pay every night plus the star and all the other producers. That's a big budget to have to cover. In the past, these shows were great because they were on five nights a week and that's a lot of commercial time to fill. But now, I think it's problematic for them to make significant profits off these shows.

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