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.
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.
Some reporters gave Conan's fans flack -- for rising up in outrage after he had been bumped from his 11:35 time slot -- because they weren't watching his Tonight Show and giving him the ratings he needed in the first place. Do you think his fans will be more loyal when he premieres on TBS? And how much will Conan's show directly affect Leno's ratings?
Well, there was never a lot of crossover clearly in audience between Jay and Conan. We saw that when Conan finally got on the air. A lot of Jay's audience just left. I don't think there are a lot of people out there saying, "Well, I am watching Jay now, but when Conan comes back, I am going to switch back to Conan." I always thought that Conan's audience crossed over more with Letterman's, but I think everyone has to be concerned about having another player in their time period.
Listen, this all comes down to the fact that NBC didn't want one of their guys to leave the network. That's really why five years ago, they gave a contract to Jay saying that he would give up The Tonight Show, and that's why they guaranteed Conan The Tonight Show. They wanted to keep both guys, and then they gave Jay the 10 PM time slot because they wanted to keep Jay from going to ABC. And then, even after it blew up, they wanted to still keep both guys, so they tried moving Conan back to 12:05. That has always been the method to their madness, and it's totally understandable because when a guy leaves, he takes an audience. He takes some viewers away.
Most people think the competition you really have to watch is between Conan, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert because they are all cable guys and they start at the same time. That will be interesting to watch.
Do you ever tune into Lopez Tonight or Chelsea Lately?
This sounds crazy but I try to watch all of the shows some of the time instead of some of the shows all the time. I can't see as much of Chelsea Lately because she is on against Stewart head to head. But you can do something like this: You watch Stewart at 11 and watch the top five minutes of the Colbert Report at 11:30. Those first five minutes are clean -- there is no competition there. Then you can switch to watch Letterman and Leno and go back and forth between their monologues and then at midnight you can turn over and watch Kimmel do the top of his show. Then you can pretty much segue into Craig Ferguson, who comes on for the cold open right after the end of Dave. Watch that and then flip over to Fallon. Once Fallon goes to commercials, go back and see Ferguson's monologue. If you want to watch all of those in one night, you can -- and I have on occasion done that.
Now if you are going to watch Lopez and Chelsea Handler, you have to sort of set that aside and decide to watch those instead of one of the others. I watch those a little less regularly, but I do watch occasionally because I want to see what they are doing. Now, when Lopez moves in after Conan, he then becomes a midnight start time, and you can play the game even more elaborately because Kimmel doesn't really start until 12:06 or so. So you can watch six minutes of Lopez and see lots of his monologue. There is a lot of stuff you can do like that. It does take you around the dial a lot, and boy, does it keep you up late.
Craig Ferguson has said that he does not want to take over the Late Show. He is very set in his own format and he doesn't want the pressure of having to replace Dave. Do you think CBS is even thinking about that at this point?
Are they thinking about it? Well, look: Dave is 62. You have to be thinking about some kind of succession at some point. We know that Craig has the show that follows Dave, and usually those things happen -- a guy steps out, and the 12:30 guy steps in. That is what has happened although never very smoothly in the past. I would think that if -- God forbid -- Dave had another heart episode, I think Craig would be the natural guy to just start doing the 11:30 show because he is in place. If Dave were to say, "I am retiring in two years at the end of the next contract" -- and then CBS has a period of time to make a choice -- would they only look at Craig? I don't know. They would have to look and see who's available, who is not contractually obligated at that point.
Back in 2002, when Dave was dallying with ABC and CBS had to consider what they would do if he left, they made a big run at Jon Stewart to line him up if Dave left. I think Stewart would have taken it in 2002. Now I don't think he has any interest in doing that. Why would he? He is certainly as big and successful as any of the late night guys on a network. He hosted the Oscars for goodness' sake. How much bigger can he get? So he doesn't really need that. Will he be in play for CBS? I don't know. Now would Kimmel be in play? At that point, if ABC didn't want to move Nightline out of the 11:30 time slot, would Kimmel be a choice for CBS? Would Colbert possibly be a choice for CBS? I don't know. I think Ferguson would be their first choice.
When did you first become interested in late night television?
Well, of course, like everyone else, I watched a lot of Johnny Carson when I was a kid. Maybe not as much as some people, because you hear of guys like Letterman and Leno saying, "Oh my God, I grew up watching Johnny Carson," and they were obsessed with it. I wasn't. I would drop in and watch now and then. I remember watching Letterman actually when he had his short-lived morning show, which was so electric and crazy and different. But then he went to 12:30 so at that point in my life, I had little babies and I wasn't up very much -- or if I was, I was feeding a baby. So I didn't see Dave a lot in his early run at 12:30. What really obviously sparked [my interest] was attending the event when Johnny said he was going to retire. That is when I first said, "Whoa, this is going to be something big." And because I was in New York and had access to Letterman's people, I got to know them very well, and then I got to know Jay really well. Then I committed to the book, and I was off and running.