Word: cbs
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...back rubs from Irving R. Levine. The man is a master." A reporter asked if any of Letterman's familiar bits, like Stupid Pet Tricks, are still the property of NBC. "They own the rights to my old ice-dancing routine," he replied. When will his new show on CBS begin? "In August," he said. "And we should probably finish up around Labor Day." Then to CBS president Laurence Tisch, sitting on the podium next to him: "That's a joke, Larry...
With l'affaire Letterman, everything was a joke and deadly serious at the same time. Ever since last month, when Letterman made public a lucrative offer to take his late-night talk show to CBS, the drama over whether NBC would be able to keep him was played out with flip wisecracks in front of the cameras and high-stakes maneuvering behind them. On the Tonight show, host Jay Leno made jokes about his precarious job status (one night he proposed a new theme song: Stand By Your Man); to reporters, he complained bitterly about the lack of support from...
Only in the floodlit world of network television could a simple career move cause such shock waves. If NBC were to lose Letterman, pundits warned, its entire late-night house of cards would start to collapse after four dominant decades. If CBS managed to win him, the network would be a competitive factor in late-night TV for the first time. Casual viewers studied the subtleties of Letterman's contract and debated NBC's knotty dilemma: Stick with Jay or switch to Dave? NBC anchorman Tom Brokaw couldn't escape the subject even during a vacation following his reporting sojourn...
...from Botswana to Burbank, everybody knows. After a flurry of last- minute negotiations, Letterman announced he will leave NBC when his contract expires in late June and resurface on CBS -- an hour earlier, at 11:30 p.m. Eastern time -- two months later. NBC, after a siege of executive indecision (and possibly a last-minute change of heart), decided to stick with Leno, the man it installed as host of the Tonight show after Johnny Carson's retirement last May. The result will be a face-to-face battle between Leno and Letterman in the latest, liveliest chapter of the late...
...previous agreement with Letterman's representatives, headed by Hollywood superagent Michael Ovitz, NBC had one month to try to match CBS's offer. Though neither Letterman nor NBC executives would divulge details of the negotiations, insiders say NBC made several offers, including a weekly prime-time slot. But Letterman rejected them. "If you were going to do a half-hour of prime-time television," he explained, "you would have to do it as well as Jerry Seinfeld does it. I couldn't do it that well, so why waste my time?" The prospect of a different kind of prime-time...