Word: leno
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DAVID LETTERMAN, after a decade as host of the funniest hour on TV, begins to feel restless in his late-late (12:35 a.m. est) time slot. But when the job he covets -- host of the Tonight show -- becomes available, it goes to Jay Leno. With his NBC contract expiring next spring, Letterman hires a new agent, Hollywood power broker Michael Ovitz, and starts entertaining offers. Everyone from the Fox Network (which wants to team Letterman in a late-night bloc with Chevy Chase) to major syndicators like Viacom (which offers Letterman additional exposure on its cable networks...
...struck with Letterman in the fall, the network has one month to match or better CBS's offer. But to do so, it would most likely have to offer him the Tonight show job, something NBC executives have ruled out. The network's dilemma: if it doesn't replace Leno with Letterman, it must be prepared to watch Leno compete against Letterman...
...ever said replacing a TV legend would be easy, but NBC's problems following Johnny Carson's retirement from Tonight last May have been worse than anyone could have predicted. Picking Leno as Carson's successor seemed a logical move at the time; Leno, after all, had drawn good ratings as Carson's permanent guest host. But Letterman, once regarded as Carson's heir apparent, was publicly grumpy at being passed over. And Leno, a well-liked and hardworking comic, has suffered a shocking run of bad publicity, much of it stemming from the hardball booking tactics employed...
...comes the second-guessing. "NBC seems to have made the wrong call ((for the Tonight show))," says Grant Tinker, former NBC chairman. "I think David should have been the one." Another top TV executive contends it was a "monumental blunder" for NBC to pick Leno over Letterman: "They put themselves in the position of angering a real marketable asset, of which they have precious few." A member of the Letterman camp argues that dumping Leno is the only way for NBC to salvage its 30-year dominance in late night. "Leno is destined for failure," he says...
Though there have been reports that NBC president Robert Wright favors Letterman for the Tonight job, NBC program executives insist they are happy with Leno and contemplate no change. Leno's ratings, they point out, are on the rise, from a low of 4.1 in August to 4.6 for the important November sweeps. That is still substantially behind Carson's 5.4 score of a year earlier, but it does include a slightly higher proportion of the young viewers most sought by advertisers. Opinion on Madison Avenue is mixed: some call Leno's performance disappointing; others are upbeat. "Leno is holding...