Letterman vs Leno: the show behind the shows

At Andrea's advice that I stop reading theology and linguistics journals before bed and actually read something fun, I picked up a used copy of The Late Shift on clearance for a buck at Barnes&Noble. I was hooked after just a few chapters. The book, written by New York Times television reporter Bill Carter and published in 1994, tells the story of the tumultuous turnover of The Tonight Show from Johnny Carson to Jay Leno, and not to David Letterman.

The battle to replace Carson wasn't a battle at all at first; Leno's pushy manager bullied NBC into signing him to a contract guaranteeing him The Tonight Show just a week or so before Carson announced his retirement. Leno had been Carson's permanent guest host for a few years, and had been campaigning for the job with NBC execs and affiliates. Letterman, meanwhile, was ably filling the 12:30 slot on NBC after Carson. Letterman longed for the Tonight Show job but hated backroom politicking. He naively thought he could win the job on the considerable merit of his current show, without having to kiss up to NBC.

The real drama started three months into Leno's tenure on The Tonight Show, when NBC executives started second-guessing their decision, and when some of Letterman's producers first told NBC how desperately Letterman wanted The Tonight Show. Leno's ratings were OK, but NBC could tell already that he was a little bland and mechanical, with none of Letterman's spontaneity and edge. Letterman was Carson's personal preference, but Carson stayed out of the backroom politics, too, and NBC didn't consult him.

After months of agonizing by NBC, and after a juicy CBS offer that NBC had the chance to match, NBC ended up offering Letterman--and this was news to me--the chance to take over for Leno after Leno's two-year contract was up. But CBS' offer was so much better, and a switch at that point would have looked so bad for everyone involved--including Letterman, who would have been perceived as having forced Leno out--that Letterman took the CBS job. (It was Carson who told Letterman towards the very end of the ordeal, "If NBC had treated me like that, I would probably walk.")

The book ends with a happy ending--Letterman scores huge ratings his first year, beating Leno, despite the disadvantage that 30 percent of CBS stations ran his show an hour later than Leno because of syndication obligations they still had at 11:30. And so we're left to wonder what happened after that -- starting in about 1995, Leno took over the lead from Letterman and hasn't relinquished it since. Letterman has consistently been more decorated with Emmys and more praised by critics; he's retained his freshness in comparison with Leno's lameness. Last year, Conan O'Brien signed the same kind of contract guaranteeing him The Tonight Show (though not until 2009) that Leno did back in 1991. But these days, the hottest late night host is neither Leno, Letterman, nor O'Brien, but Jon Stewart.