Carter contends, to “be a comic for every audience,” like Bob Hope.
Rather than cynically choosing jokes that play to the lowest common denominator, Mr. home of the prep school Phillips Academy made him suspicious of elitism. Leno’s upbringing as a townie in Andover, Mass. Carter moves beyond such presumptions, pointing out that Mr. Leno has been characterized by others as a no-nonsense workhorse willing to sacrifice his edge for the sake of broadening his appeal, Mr. Leno returned to the show in March with the sheepish humility of a five-star general disguised in a Little Bo Peep costume.Īlthough Mr. O’Brien abandoned NBC and “The Tonight Show” in a very public huff in January, and Mr. spot to prevent him from competing in the “Tonight Show” slot elsewhere not only sparked the war, but also kept the battles raging until the bitter end. O’Brien “The Tonight Show” five years in the future and promising Mr. O’Brien and fearful of losing either to the competition, NBC executives made a series of short-term moves to try to keep them both. O’Brien felt betrayed, and an unruly army of handlers spit invective into their cellphones, the real problem was simple: Unable to decide between Mr. Carter demonstrates that, while the usual oversize Hollywood egos were forming secret alliances and stockpiling armaments, it was NBC that fired the shots that sank the Lusitania.Įven as Mr. Through exhaustive research and interviews with the major players in this battle Mr. Leno would beat him about the face and neck with it? Or at least that was the reigning narrative as this strange battle unfolded in January 2010.īut in his new book, “The War for Late Night,” Bill Carter, a television reporter for The New York Times, demonstrates that the flanking maneuvers made by crucial warriors on the late-night battlefield were far more complicated and far less malevolent than onlookers assumed. But who could have predicted that, instead of passing him the baton, Mr.
“Let’s just hope it gets ugly, and then we’ll all have fun,” Conan O’Brien privately joked about his future at “The Tonight Show” back in 2004, never imagining just how ugly and how far from amusing his clash with Jay Leno would become.
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