Yay! I Finished Another Book - The War for Late Night

Regular blog readers will remember that this writer is a very poor reader.  In an effort to jumpstart myself, I pledged to do regular book reports here as I try in earnest to crack a few spines.  Book binding, that is.

Well, it only took me five months, but I finally finished a book in 2011.  So much for challenging myself.

"The War for Late Night" by New York Slimes reporter Bill Carter is a sequel to his book "The Late Shift," which was written in 1994 and I actually did read that one when it came out that same year.  Carter is uber-focused on the late night television wars.  Seventeen years ago, he chronicled the network battles over Johnny Carson, David Letterman, and Jay Leno when the Tonight Show was up for grabs.  His latest update is all about Leno's travails in prime time, his return to late night, and the subsequent displacement of Conan O'Brien.

"The War for Late Night" is a remarkable tale of NBC's sheer ineptitude.  The guys running this network might be better suited for managing a Dairy Queen, and, even then, they're probably too stupid to keep enough hot fudge sauce in stock.  At every turn of this drama, somebody in power at NBC is screwing up royally.  And they wonder why the only audience they can get these days is by rerunning their shows on American Airlines flights.  And, even there, I ignore them so I can finish books like "The War for Late Night."

The saga is well-known.  Leno has to quit "The Tonight Show" so the network doesn't lose Conan.  But, then, NBC doesn't want to lose Leno so they give him a show in primetime which is the equivalent of a nightly colonoscopy for viewers.  Instead of losing Jay, they put him back to late night and bump the hapless O'Brien to oblivion or, more specifically, TBS. 

While all the twists and curves are entertaining, there's really nothing terribly revealing in this book.  When you cut right down to dollars and sense, NBC simply made a smarter decision when choosing between Jay and Conan.  Cutting bait with Leno would have cost them $100 million.  Shitcanning Conan only cost them $40 million.  You do the math.

Carter skirts unbiased journalism, but who doesn't these days?  He clearly is enamored with Conan and, hence, the red-headed moppet comes off very sympathetically.  That's an immediate stretch for me, because, from insiders I speak with, Conan is a complete snot and a dirtbag.  One of those Harvard grads who thinks he's the smartest one in any room that he enters.  But, here, he is depicted as a martyr and it certainly taints the story Carter relates.  While I enjoyed it all, there was an unsurprising revelation for me at the end of the book.

I didn't give a shit.

Since Johnny Carson left late night, I have logged a grand total of about fifteen video minutes of viewing any of these talk shows.  When Carson bid adieu, I made an almost solemn vow never to check into a late night show after that and I have pretty much held firm to my pledge to Johnny's tenure and now memory.

Frankly, I've never liked Jay Leno's humor.  Always a bit mean-spirited and ultimately empty.  David Letterman must be sampled in small doses only and, with all his latest escapades, he's nothing more than a filthy old man who you always try to avoid during social hour at the nursing home.  As for Conan, his talents have always been lost on me.  I doubt if I would feel differently if he was a graduate of Fordham.

Totally missing from any of these late night talk shows is any whisper of spontaneity.  Each and every moment is now carefully scripted.  Remember the days when Suzanne Pleshette and Tony Randall would pop onto Johnny's couch and just bullshit for fifteen minutes?  Long gone.  Now, it's a guest promoting a movie.  Then the latest reject from either American Idol or Dancing with the Stars.  Then a musical number from somebody I've never heard of.  End of show.  A creative vacuum that never really stops sucking.

While the drama about who's doing these shows is always entertaining, the end result is always the same.  Boredom. 

Johnny, you are still missed.  And your accomplishments and legacy could give us volumes if only somebody like Bill Carter would devote time to writing them down.

Dinner last night:  Pork loin, sweet potato fries, and sauted string beans.