Word: leno
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...Late Shift, HBO's recent movie about the late-night battle, Littlefield comes across as the arch network dunderhead, the guy who lost Letterman to CBS. In one scene, Littlefield (played as a smarmy nebbish by Bob Balaban) is so surprised by a phone call from Jay Leno that he races out of the toilet in his boxers, with his pants around his ankles...
...matter of late night, it turns out that Littlefield wasn't so dumb after all. NBC may have had some last-minute qualms that Leno would be a big-chinned albatross, but his Tonight Show is now whipping Letterman soundly in the ratings. As for the rest of NBC's fortunes, Littlefield, 43, has confounded critics, who regarded him as something of an empty suit--a protege of NBC programming whiz Brandon Tartikoff who inherited Tartikoff's No. 1 schedule in 1990 and quickly let it slide to third place. Littlefield has not only kept his job for nearly...
...days when NBC was being derided for having lost Letterman, who initially drew great ratings on CBS. "The scariest thing was when Dave came on that first year," he says. "I really had to question all of my instincts." He attributes the late-night turnaround to his having pushed Leno to evolve "from a talk show to a comedy hour...
Letterman has already complained about the movie (especially Higgins' red hair). Leno says he hasn't seen it yet, though friends have described its portrait of him. "I don't understand how such a simpleton could hold on to a major show for five years," says Leno. Still, he adds, "If I can't take it when they're making fun of me, I wouldn't be a very good sport." NBC executives have refused to comment; Letterman's camp is understandably more pleased. "It's a broad satire on the trade, and I was amused by it," says former...
...Leno, meanwhile, is the happiest man in show business, so energized that he seems ready to burst out of the TV set. He bounds into the audience each night to shake hands with the crowd and cackles enthusiastically through every interview. The program is packed with elaborately produced comedy bits, most of them obvious and witless. It's Lincoln's birthday? Jay is seen as Honest Abe doing a TV commercial for his law practice. Guest Ellen DeGeneres has a touch of the flu? The show hires an ambulance to drive her onto the set. What separates Leno from Letterman...