“War for Late Night” Author Reveals One Joke Jay Leno Never Could Get Over

by Matt Schneider | 4:49 pm, November 14th, 2010

» 17 comments

On CNN’s Reliable Sources, host Howard Kurtz laid out what the public perception of Jay Leno was during the late night debacle: a scheming bad guy who plotted to get rid of Conan O’brien in order to get back his old job. But Bill Carter, author of The War for Late Night, said today that that’s not accurate at all. While some might consider Leno calculating for giving a controversial interview while still hosting his ill-fated 10 o’clock show, where he awkwardly said he would take back the 11:35 slot if it was offered to him, apparently Carter cuts Jay some more slack.

“Jay wants to go along and get along, he never wants to burn bridges and get people angry with him,” said Carter. Although as Carter did note, people tend to get annoyed at Jay anyway.

It was well known that Jay was willing to go along with the eventual two show compromise NBC dreamed up, with Jay at 11:35, and Conan at 12:05. Jay, after all, is always happy to do what NBC tells him, unlike Conan. However, what Carter reveals here is that one of Conan’s jokes prompted Jay to call NBC and say “I can’t work with this guy.”

Conan’s memorable, and apparently lethal, one-liner? “I just want to say to the kids out there watching, you can do anything you want in life, yeah, unless Jay Leno wants to do it too.”

For those who cannot get enough of these behind-the-scenes maneuverings, Carter speaks at length in an ESPN radio podcast full of fun speculation about the future of late night television. And in the spirit of pure speculation, here’s another thought: with David Letterman’s days as a talk show host dwindling, as Carter suggests, perhaps Conan should stop worrying he’s banished to cable forever. The opportunity for him to return to network television as Letterman’s successor to vanquish the Leno dragon might not be that far off.

Watch the interview from CNN below:

Bill Carter, Conan O’Brien, David Letterman, Howard Kurtz, Jay Leno, Jay Leno Conan O'Brien, Reliable Sources, The Tonight Show, War For Late Night

dummy123

Conan strong-armed NBC to push Jay out of the Tonight Show seat while Jay was number one in the ratings!
Conan took George Lopez 11pm time-slot at TBS.
Why is Conan righteous and Leno is evil????
dhg

I “got enough” of all this crap many months ago,something a lot of folks don’t seem to understand.From Letterman to Kimmel to people trying to make money off a pointless episode where nothing that actually matters to anyone except maybe 3 or 4 people took place.

It doesn’t matter who is hosting what at anytime anywhere.Get over it and STFU please!
Johnny M

dummy123 said:
Conan strong-armed NBC to push Jay out of the Tonight Show seat while Jay was number one in the ratings!Conan took George Lopez 11pm time-slot at TBS.Why is Conan righteous and Leno is evil????

…Because you just made that all up. Conan passed up $21 Mil from Fox to stay at NBC because they promised him the Tonight Show in 5 years. NBC could have chose to let him go when that contract ended but wanted him as their future host. That’s not strong-arming…

And its well documented that Conan didnt take the 11Pm slot until talking to Lopez first. Unlike what Jay did.
Eric

@dummy123
You are very stupid!
dummy123

Johnny M said:
…Because you just made that all up. Conan passed up $21 Mil from Fox to stay at NBC because they promised him the Tonight Show in 5 years. NBC could have chose to let him go when that contract ended but wanted him as their future host. That’s not strong-arming…

And its well documented that Conan didnt take the 11Pm slot until talking to Lopez first. Unlike what Jay did.

So, I was right!!

……you are a whiny Conan fan that will NOT even watch his new show in 2 months.
dummy123

Eric said:
@dummy123
You are very stupid!

why???
Conan forced Jay out of the Tonight Show….when Jay was number one in the ratings!
Conan forced Lopez out of the 11pm slot on TBS.
b4peace

I still miss Ted Koppel.
pakattak

dummy123 said:
why???
Conan forced Jay out of the Tonight Show….when Jay was number one in the ratings!
Conan forced Lopez out of the 11pm slot on TBS.

If anything NBC forced Jay out of the Tonight Show to keep Conan… and yet tried to keep Jay too after his Tonight Show run ended. That was their biggest mistake. Both Jay and Conan were simply played against each other by the company. Conan didn’t ‘strong-arm’ anybody.

And Conan only agreed to take the job at TBS after George Lopez personally called him and asked him to take the 11pm slot. If anything, Conan’s publicity has established a good lead-in for Lopez’s show, giving him higher numbers. Lopez was happy to give up his time slot.
Some_Dude

If true, you’d think a comedian that has lived in the limelight like Leno, for as long as he has, and with all of the controversy he’s been through, would have thicker skin.
RobDavis

b4peace said:
I still miss Ted Koppel.

I miss Johnny Carson.
dummy123

pakattak said:
If anything NBC forced Jay out of the Tonight Show to keep Conan… and yet tried to keep Jay too after his Tonight Show run ended. That was their biggest mistake. Both Jay and Conan were simply played against each other by the company. Conan didn’t ’strong-arm’ anybody.

And Conan only agreed to take the job at TBS after George Lopez personally called him and asked him to take the 11pm slot. If anything, Conan’s publicity has established a good lead-in for Lopez’s show, giving him higher numbers. Lopez was happy to give up his time slot.

George Lopez gladly/willingly gave up the Maserati (11pm time-slot) to ride the bus (midnight time slot) ?
I bet George’s contract mentions no time-slot…meaning TBS could air his show at 3am if they wanted to.
Lopez like Leno is taking his Conan screwing with a smile..;)
hello11

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pakattak

dummy123 said:
George Lopez gladly/willingly gave up the Maserati (11pm time-slot) to ride the bus (midnight time slot) ?
I bet George’s contract mentions no time-slot…meaning TBS could air his show at 3am if they wanted to.
Lopez like Leno is taking his Conan screwing with a smile..;)

If this is indeed the case, Lopez getting ‘screwed over’ is more TBS’s fault, not Conan’s.
Johnny M

dummy123 said:
So, I was right!! ……you are a whiny Conan fan that will NOT even watch his new show in 2 months.

Yep, you pegged me…and it two months you’ll still be a jackass hoping to get human interaction through message flames.
marcus.lewis

dummy123 said:
George Lopez gladly/willingly gave up the Maserati (11pm time-slot) to ride the bus (midnight time slot) ?
I bet George’s contract mentions no time-slot…meaning TBS could air his show at 3am if they wanted to.
Lopez like Leno is taking his Conan screwing with a smile..;)

George Lopez was on a 1 year contract, meaning that with his less than great ratings, there was a very good chance he would not of had a show again this fall. He told Conan that he wanted Conan to join TBS at 11:00. Having Conan virtually guaranteed that Lopez would be picked up as a show in the fall. So you’re comments are purposefully misleading, as Conan in essence saved Lopez’ job.

Furthermore, Leno is not being screwed. He has what he wanted, his show back on at 11:35. Conan did not push him out of the tonight show, that was NBC. NBC signed a contract that said Conan will get the tonight show in 2009 and if he doesn’t there were financial penalties for NBC breaking the contract. NBC could have said, sorry conan–but we are keeping Leno at 11:35 and you are free to go to whatever network you want. But NBC wanted to reduce the expenses of creating television, so they dropped all scripted 10pm shows and put Leno on there. Leno is not at fault for doing something wrong, he’s just at fault for not having a backbone. If he did not intend to retire he should have said so from the start instead of streaming it along. NBC is entirely to blame.
omega919

Lopez gave up the 11:00 slot because he (smartly) realized that having Conan as his lead-in would mean higher ratings at midnight than if he were to stay at 11:00.

I’m reading Bill Carter’s book right now, and I have to say that NEITHER guy comes off badly. Conan was given huge offers at other networks. NBC offered him the Tonight Show in order to keep him, so he stayed.

Jay never wanted to leave, but he was a company guy, so he relented. If you read the book, he’s a total workaholic (there are stories about him wanting to hire 2 separate production crews so he could do the Tonight Show 52 weeks a year and never be forced to go on vacation), so he wasn’t about to retire. To keep him from going to another network, NBC offered him 10:00 which he took.

I’ll say that Jay did himself a big publicity disservice when he JUMPED at the chance to take the 11:35 slot. But, it was either take the slot or go to another network, because the man just wasn’t going to retire.

I’d say the bad guy in all of this is NBC, who just made a series of stupid moves, and instead of saying “Jay is our guy” or “Conan is our guy”, they tried to have it both ways.
J Baustian

RobDavis said:
I miss Johnny Carson.

The technology exists to bring Johnny back. And Bob Hope could return to host the Academy Awards.

The main impediment might be getting their respective estates to sign off on the use of their images, at a reasonable price.