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The War For Late Night

3.97 of 5 stars 3.97 · rating details · 1,665 ratings · 233 reviews

A dramatic account of the politics and personalities behind NBC's calamitous attempt to reinvent late-night television.

When NBC decided to move Jay Leno into prime time to make room for Conan O'Brien to host the Tonight show-a job he had been promised five years earlier-skeptics anticipated a train wreck for the ages. It took, in fact, only a few months for the dire pred...more

Hardcover, 394 pages

Published November 4th 2010 by Viking Adult (first published 2010)

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May 23, 2012 Stephen rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: ebooks, non-fiction, busyness, 2006-2010, pop-cultural, audiobook

The Battle for Late Night...Part Duex.

Upfront, I'll admit this book probably deserves star number four…but it’s not going to get it because Bill Carter’s previous late night expose, Late Shift: Letterman, Leno, and the Network Battle for the Night, was so compelling for me that this seemed too pale and watered-down by comparison.

This second tussle over the captain’s chair of NBC’s The Tonight Show just didn’t have all the clandestine maneuvering and friend-eat-friend back-stabbing that the ori...more

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Mar 21, 2013 Kemper rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011, non-fiction, tv, humor, bidness

3/21/13 - Floating this one to warn Jimmy Fallon.

A Phone Conversation in 2020

“Hello, this is Slick McGee, agent to the stars. How can I help you?”

“Slick, it’s Garfield Lawlerly, president of NBC.”

“Garfield! How are you? Why, I haven’t heard from anybody at NBC since your last scripted show Law & Order: Omaha went off the air.”

“Yes, finding new scripted programs has been challenging.”

“Really? FX, HBO, CBS, Showtime, AMC and a dozen other networks seem to find good shows to put on the air all...more

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Apr 18, 2013 Brandon rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

When I first heard about this book, I was still seething from when Jay Leno took the Tonight Show away from O'Brien after only seven months of some hit or miss shows. Funny thing, for whatever reason, my hatred of Leno blinded me to the sheer stupidity of NBC. When I was finished this book, I still disliked Leno but I realized I hated NBC more.

There were some good points brought up here in defense of Leno, but there were also some points that made him look like a jerk. That being said, the book...more When I first heard about this book, I was still seething from when Jay Leno took the Tonight Show away from O'Brien after only seven months of some hit or miss shows. Funny thing, for whatever reason, my hatred of Leno blinded me to the sheer stupidity of NBC. When I was finished this book, I still disliked Leno but I realized I hated NBC more.

There were some good points brought up here in defense of Leno, but there were also some points that made him look like a jerk. That being said, the book wasn't entirely pro Conan either. In NBC’s defense they did make some suggestions to O'Brien that he more or less ignored. NBC had been looking for Conan to alter his comedy style to suit people who were not fans. Basically, NBC wanted him to retain a large portion of Leno’s fans and looking at it from a business standpoint, you really can’t blame them. As much of a dream as Conan wanted to label his time on The Tonight Show, as the author points out, it’s still a job. When you’re an employee, you have to listen to your boss. Unfortunately for NBC, Conan was not, and never would be, Jay Leno 2.0.

For the life of me, I can’t wrap my head around NBC’s stance that they couldn't let Leno go to another network. Yes, when he left his post on The Tonight Show, he was still number one in late night but the man was at the point in his life where he couldn't possibly be a threat for long. He wasn't going to do this forever, surely he only had a few more years left in the tank. I also just can’t understand who finds this man funny, especially when there are so many other options in late night land. Other than “Headlines”, which is just Jay reading (or screaming) typos that other people send in, there’s really no reason to watch his show. He’s not innovative or unique and he’s painfully annoying. I just don’t get it.

Not only does the author shed some light on The Tonight Show fiasco in 2010 but you get some background on the other late night hosts. There are some interesting bits about Letterman, Stewart, Colbert and Kimmel. It kind of left me wanting a book about Letterman as the stuff written about Dave had been fascinating.

In my opinion, it all worked out for the best. Leno gets his show back on a network that doesn't deserve better and Conan gets his own show on cable where he doesn't have to answer to the affiliates. Conan is also $45 million richer! Oh, it should be worth mentioning that you have to catch the epilogue. It features some quotes from Jerry Seinfeld that basically make this whole thing look ridiculous. Some funny stuff indeed.

Cross Posted @ Every Read Thing (less)

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Jul 10, 2011 Steven E rated it 4 of 5 stars

Apparently it took only seventeen years for everyone to compose themselves, relatively speaking. No one acts particularly egregiously, maybe because Helen Kushnick is no longer around. There's nothing here on the level of a paranoid Jay Leno eavesdropping in on a meeting of NBC execs from a nearby closet; in fact, as far as facts go, there's nothing new in the book at all to anyone who paid attention during that time when late night went crazy.

So in a vanilla narrative, Bill Carter sketches in...more

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Sep 09, 2012 Judy rated it 3 of 5 stars

In hindsight, it all seems like a bad dream. Realizing that Conan O'Brien was on the verge of jumping to another network and posing a threat to NBC's the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, NBC CEO Jeff Zucker offered Conan O'Brien a deal. If he stayed with the late show after the Tonight Show for five more years, Leno would be retired and O'Brien would be named as the new host of Tonight. O'Brien agreed since hosting the Tonight Show was his life-long dream. Then, unfortunately, Jay Leno is informed th...more

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Jul 24, 2012 Travis Todd rated it 4 of 5 stars

I don't have a "dog in this fight", which is probably a phrase Bill Carter would use, as he enjoys the hardboiled Runyanisms and Breslinisms that tough guy journalists like to decorate their prose with. I guess I mildly prefer Conan O'Brien to Jay Leno, although I stopped watched late night television talk shows years ago. To me the audience numbers so ferociously battled over seem miniscule to the point of absurdity; this book makes it seem as if hardly anyone is paying attention to these shows...more

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Jun 15, 2012 Rebecca rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: tv

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Yay Bill Carter! One of my favorite writers. He writes about TV for the New York Times and has written books in the past, which I have generally enjoyed. This book was okay too. Not as good as the first book I read from him (just about tv in 2004 or something) but not as dated as his book about the late night wars in the 90's, which was definitely different because I didn't know anything about it. This book might have been just too recent and too played out in the public eye. Ugh, so many names!...more

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Aug 06, 2011 Andrew rated it 4 of 5 stars

I haven't read the original book about the Letterman/Leno clash and its ramifications, but Carter's review of the Jay/Conan debacle offers a weird vision into a late-night world that its residents take way to seriously. What's neat is the way Carter at once deconstructs the archetypes and shows their validity. Jay fashions himself as an unpretentious, anti-industry workaholic who "just wants to tell jokes at 11:30" (a mantra that he apparently repeated over and over again throughout the process)...more I haven't read the original book about the Letterman/Leno clash and its ramifications, but Carter's review of the Jay/Conan debacle offers a weird vision into a late-night world that its residents take way to seriously. What's neat is the way Carter at once deconstructs the archetypes and shows their validity. Jay fashions himself as an unpretentious, anti-industry workaholic who "just wants to tell jokes at 11:30" (a mantra that he apparently repeated over and over again throughout the process). Conan can't escape his own intelligence, an introspective bubble in which he believes he is the funniest person alive. Both operate with a weird mix of integrity and narcissism. And there are a bunch of suits who think they are dealing with puppets: despite Carter's attempts to make them sympathetic, I just wanted to throw eggs at them and chastise them for their terrible, terrible decisions. That's the flaw in the book: Carter gets to know these guys so well that he feels uncomfortable casting blame and pointing fingers.

What remains weird about this, and this is an irony the book does well in pointing out, is how much these guys care about such a specific format, and honoring the ghost of Johnny Carson. It makes Conan's decision to quit the Tonight Show because he couldn't bear seeing it pushed ahead thirty minutes all the more weird. And it makes Jay Leno's weirdly specific gifts (see the mantra above) all the more pathetic. If Carter is to be believed, both Jay and Conan acted honorably, yet they pretty much hate each other now. It's all based on a 2004 selfish decision by a jerk named Jeff Zucker who decided that he could lock in Conan by offering him the job that Jay didn't want to leave. NBC profited big-time off of this, and now Conan is on TBS, and Jay is back to making fun of the very audience who watches them by reminding them how dumb they are with offensive and lazy segments like "Jaywalking." Who's better for it? Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, apparently.

A lot of magnanimous descriptors get thrown around here: "Machiavellian," "genius," "innovator," but they all seem pretty shallow when connected to a dying format that its participants believe is one of the highest cultural forms. And that's what makes it so interesting - watching all these dudes think and fight over the right to get to ask inane questions to Ashton Kutcher when most of us on the East Coast have gone to sleep.

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Jul 10, 2011 John rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: People very interested in late-night television

I enjoyed Bill Carter's The Late Shift when I read it over fifteen years ago, and I wanted to read his narrative of the 2009-2010 late night fiasco. While it was a quick read and mostly moved along quickly enough to hold my attention, I did not enjoy this nearly as much.

In part, as Carter expressly recognizes at one point in The War for Late Night, the events of the early 1990s had a much more archetypical feel: Carson could be viewed as the retiring emperor, with Leno and Letterman (each with w...more I enjoyed Bill Carter's The Late Shift when I read it over fifteen years ago, and I wanted to read his narrative of the 2009-2010 late night fiasco. While it was a quick read and mostly moved along quickly enough to hold my attention, I did not enjoy this nearly as much.

In part, as Carter expressly recognizes at one point in The War for Late Night, the events of the early 1990s had a much more archetypical feel: Carson could be viewed as the retiring emperor, with Leno and Letterman (each with whispering advisors) as two princes with competing claims to the crown, Helen Kushnick as a wicked and manipulating sorcerer, etc. While thinking of that story in such broad terms probably oversimplified it, it also gave it a familiar and weightier feel. It also helped that, in the early 1990s, The Tonight Show really still felt like "The Empire of the Night," rather than the "damaged goods" that Carson (and later Letterman) producer Peter Lassally described in 1993, just before Letterman jumped ship to CBS. It also helped that my interest in late night television and personalities in 1995 was much greater than it is today.

Carter's reporting in the book is solid, and he is able to report inside details that reflect years of understanding of the business and close contacts with some of its biggest players. His writing can be hackneyed, though: rephrasing "bleeding red ink" as "exsanguinating red ink" does not make it any less of a cliché, and the needless variation calls even more attention to it. He also harps on aspects of the host personalities—Leno is the hard-working everyman who studies the numbers, while Conan is the Harvard guy who refuses to change to fit his new audience—so often that it feels repetitive. Carter also mostly missed some of the generational and Internet politics that seemed (at least to me) to be involved in who ended up in the "Leno" and "Conan" camps.

If the book has a hero, it is probably Conan's producer Jeff Ross, who Carter basically describes as smart, hard-working, and essentially the nicest guy in showbiz. While he is probably most central to the narrative, the book ends up mostly a chronicle of disastrous decisions (primarily by NBC, but also by others) that left its NBC's late night franchises in disorder. By the end, though, I found myself agreeing with Jerry Seinfeld in the epilogue that these "shows" and "institutions" people fight over are in the end just made-up printed letters on cards. This nicely echoed Johnny Carson's statement from the very beginning of The Late Shift that "[t]hese shows are about the guy behind the desk." Thus, by the end of the book, I better understood Conan's decision to leave NBC rather than move his show. Even so, given how shabbily NBC had treated the "institution" of the Tonight Show—not just once, but twice—it left me to wonder why anyone else was interested in protecting it.

In the end, the book was worth reading for me, at least to replace a great deal of reporting on the subject that I only skimmed while it was ongoing. I didn't really derive too much insight from it, though, other than the great story (also buried in the epilogue) of Lorne Michaels' encounter with NBC executive Irwin Segelstein. If you're interested in late night television, but you didn't follow the Leno-Conan story as it was ongoing, this is a good summary of the reporting, with some additional views and commentary from the participants benefitting from at least a few months of hindsight.(less)

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Jun 28, 2011 Terrance Owens rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Bill Carter is a newspaper reporter. And a terrible writer. It's interesting to see someone who seems to have a tuned grasp of comedic craft (enough to dissect it quite well) have no grasp of writing craft. I lost count how many times he attempted to turn narrative into scene by invoking the dark grey clouds on the horizon. While I applauded his attempt at mixing the chronology to get a greater insight in to the events I mostly ended up confused. Why am I reading about Craig Ferguson's childhoo...more

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Jun 06, 2011 Fred rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011-read, investigative, new-york-city, television, hollywood

I came into reading this book thinking Jay Leno was a meek but manipulative prick and when I finished the book I felt just about the same. I'm glad for one thing, that the author touched on the subject of the Baby Boomers having a serious affect on the issue of Conan being host of The Tonight Show. Most of the station managers for NBC affiliates were male and 55+ and every single one of them across the US wanted Leno over Conan. See, it doesn't matter if something is better, it's all about what...more I came into reading this book thinking Jay Leno was a meek but manipulative prick and when I finished the book I felt just about the same. I'm glad for one thing, that the author touched on the subject of the Baby Boomers having a serious affect on the issue of Conan being host of The Tonight Show. Most of the station managers for NBC affiliates were male and 55+ and every single one of them across the US wanted Leno over Conan. See, it doesn't matter if something is better, it's all about what the Boomers want and whatever they want, they get.

I thought the whole 'war' was very much about the Baby Boomers vs. people under 35. I started watching Conan when I was 15 or 16 (1995-96). I'm 30 now and I still like Conan over Jay Leno and even prefer him to Letterman as well.

More and more I find that there's absolutely nothing I like on US network television. If there's any original and funny programming, it's on US cable, like HBO, Showtime, AMC, Bravo etc. In the end NBC thought Conan was too 'niche' for NBC, perhaps they're right, people who watch NBC seem to be over 40, white and not exactly tuned into to 'new' things. Conan should have left a long time ago. Let Leno and Letterman continue to bring out crusty old comedians, actors and musicians from their era. Anyone who wants a more 'youth' oriented show can always turn to Conan or Kimmel.

I'm not too surprised Seinfeld supported Leno either. Seinfeld often comes across as arrogant and egotistical in his interviews (see his interview with Larry King). I also believed that Seinfeld supports NBC because he earned his fortune on NBC, NBC buttered his bread and then allowed his horrible show "The Marriage Ref" to stay on the air as some kind of favour.

This book is well researched, fresh and easy to read. My feeling after reading it is that it slightly favours Conan O'Brien, but I think that's just because any person who looks at the facts of the situation and looks at how Leno acted, both in 2010 and 1993 will see he comes across as a complete selfish asshole. (less)

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Mar 25, 2011 Jay rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: business, media, audiobook

"The Late Shift", the next generation. This time, instead of Leno being in a closet, he's in the basement, with awful ratings for his prime time show. This book follows Leno's moves from and back to the Tonight Show. I found this interesting for the stories behind the stories of the late night talk show hosts and network brass working to keep up with or define American tastes. As a business book, this is a story that revolves around egos and contracts. Certainly, if egos involved in the Conan -...more

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Mar 08, 2011 Kristin Little rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 50-book-challenge-2011

Interesting insight into exactly what went down with the Leno/Conan debacle. Has a slight pro-Conan slant, but can anyone argue that he didn't get royally screwed? This book only solidified my dislike for Leno further. Leno comes across as a single-minded idiot. There is also some great background on the other big late night players like Letterman, Kimmel, Ferguson, Stewart, and Colbert. I especially liked the "inside" information on things like contract negotiations, the impact that DVRs were h...more

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Jan 11, 2011 Jason rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011

I never thought that there would be so much drama on late night tv but with this book, I found out that there is usually a ton going on behind the scenes that will never see the light of day. This book gives you a close-up view as to what went on in 2010 with the whole scandal that reeked of deja vu in late night television.

Just like Bill Carter’s other book, The Late Shift, this one involves Jay Leno and how he used his position as King of Late NIght to position himself into a job that may not...more

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Dec 21, 2010 Budd Bailey rated it 4 of 5 stars

As long as there are late night shows and clumsy successions, Bill Carter will be able to make a living.

Carter wrote "The Late Shift" about 16 years ago. That was the story about the fight, if that's the right word, over who should replace Johnny Carson as host of The Tonight Show. As we know, Jay Leno was picked over David Letterman, who fled for CBS. The definitive moment of that book came when Carter revealed how Leno snuck into a closet that was adjoining a room filled with NBC executives, a...more As long as there are late night shows and clumsy successions, Bill Carter will be able to make a living.

Carter wrote "The Late Shift" about 16 years ago. That was the story about the fight, if that's the right word, over who should replace Johnny Carson as host of The Tonight Show. As we know, Jay Leno was picked over David Letterman, who fled for CBS. The definitive moment of that book came when Carter revealed how Leno snuck into a closet that was adjoining a room filled with NBC executives, and listened in on the meeting with the use of listening through a glass. Then Leno used that information in meetings, leading to several "How did he know that?" moments.

Now Carter is back with "The War For Late Night," and it does have a feel of "here we go again." NBC had a new problem around 2003 in that Conan O'Brien was a popular host of a 12:35 show while Leno still was on top of the ratings at 11:35. How could NBC keep everyone happy? That question set in motion, nicley chronicled here, that showed the answer was "it didn't."

NBC signed both to five-year contracts, and promised O'Brien the chance to take over the 11:35 slot after that time. That worked for a while, but then Leno remained on top of the ratings and showed no interest in stepping aside if he could avoid it. That led to NBC creating a nightly 10 p.m. show for Leno, which bombed, and an 11:35 show for O'Brien, which lost audience. NBC tried to put Leno back at 11:35 p.m. and O'Brien at 12:05 p.m., and O'Brien took a multi-million settlement rather than accept the "demotion." O'Brien ended up on TBS, and Leno went back to his hour-long show where he leads the ratings chase.

That's a familiar story to fans of television, but Carter goes into great details in describing the events that really took years to evolve. His biographies of the stars are particularly good. The interesting part is that there really isn't a bad guy to be found in the story among the major actors. Leno likes doing the 11:35 show and is obviously popular at it, while O'Brien certainly waited his turn patiently. While NBC may have been a little clumsy, it seems pretty obvious that there were no good options here.

If there's a drawback here, it might be that the executives -- the guys in the suits -- have to play a pretty big role in all of this, and it can be a little tough to tell them all apart The reader really does have to pay attention, and maybe a little editing from the 400 pages of text would have helped.

Still, there's a lot of good information here. After reading "The War for Late Night," you will have a better understanding of the high stakes involved.(less)

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Dec 09, 2010 Kirsti rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Kristin

Shelves: anger, business, cake-eaters, eccentricity, greed, humor, los-angeles, nonfiction, sarcasm, waah-waaaah-nobody-loves-me

Here's what I learned from this book: Some things are more important than money . . . and sometimes that screws up everything. Because three men (Jay, Dave, and Conan) all believed that hosting The Tonight Show was more important than making tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars more money elsewhere. And three hosts can't be on one show. And the NBC people had no idea what to do about any of this, because they sincerely believed that throwing money at a problem will eventually fix...more

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Nov 18, 2010 Adam Sharp rated it 5 of 5 stars

While certainly prompted by the Leno/Conan debacle of 2010, The War for Late Night: When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy actually picks up in 1992, where the author's seminal The Late Shift: Letterman Leno and the Network Battle for the Night left off. It is an excellent piece of reporting by New York Times scribe Bill Carter, punctuated by obvious, candid access to every major player.

In many ways, I found this "sequel" to be a better read than the original -- perhaps the sources have...more

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Dec 31, 2010 Rincey rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2010, favorites

Disclaimer: I love Bill Carter and I find all of his books to be absolutely fascinating as I am obsessed with the television industry.

If you're looking for some surprise ending, you don't need this book. We all know the basics of the late night debacle and how it all turns out. What this book provides is background on not just Leno & Conan, but every player in the late night business... from the late night hosts [Letterman, Ferguson, Kimmel, Stewart, Colbert] to their producers to the networ...more

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Mar 13, 2013 Markus Molina rated it 3 of 5 stars

Ever since I was a very young child, I can remember doing my best to stay up late and watch Late Night with Conan. I would try sleeping upside down, hanging off my bed, so that when I'd hear the theme song kick in, it might wake me up so I could at least hear the monologue and hear the first sketch and it was a routine for me that I truly enjoyed. I remember seeing a lot of his legendary late night skits live and I take a lot of pride in that. I remember how excited me and a few of my friends we...more

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Mar 05, 2012 laaaaames rated it 4 of 5 stars

My friend Nick forced me to read this, and I'm glad he did. Carter did an amazing job covering the insanity of the (new) late night wars, with a smart look at all the major and minor players.

It ends up being kind of an interesting view of art v. commerce. There's a lot to ponder over a subject I think of often: how much do you have to give up of what makes your art "yours" if you want to make money doing it? I mean, if I didn't want to get published I would write books that were split neatly bet...more

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Mar 01, 2011 Janne Järvinen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

The War for Late Night is the true story of Conan O'Brien getting to host the legendary TV show, The Tonight Show, but for only seven months. A huge amount of back stage conflict preceded, and followed, the short stint.

This book is a follow-up to The Late Shift, a book by the same author about the Leno/Letterman conflict, also about the Tonight Show, in 1993. Both books are good, but I like this one more, because I'm a Conan fan.

This book would rate three stars for any reader, but four for any f...more

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Jan 19, 2011 John McNeilly rated it 5 of 5 stars

If, like me, you followed the 2009 Conan O'Brien/Jay Leno "Tonight Show" imbroglio with car-wreck watching fascination, you'll love this book.

There's no question O'Brien was terribly wronged in only being given a short time, a mere seven months, to achieve what were most likely unrealistic ratings. (Although, in the demographic advertisers most salivate over--the 18-34 year old male--he killed.) As a youngster, O'Brien really did dream of one day sitting in Carson's hallowed chair (he loved stay...more

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Jan 14, 2011 Lucas Brendel rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Anyone who watches late night shows, especially Leno or O'Brien

Amazing story of what happened in 2009 and in to 2010 with Conan O'Brien and Jay Leno. The book does an amazing job of not pointing fingers as to who was to blame, who was the bad guy. It laid out all the facts of what had happened from 2004 all the way to the end. It even covers some earlier details. This book not only covers Leno and O'Brien, but also Letterman, Kimmel, Fallon, Stewart, Colbert, Ferguson, and yes...even Oprah partially, along with all the NBC executives and producers who were...more

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Apr 03, 2011 David Sawyer rated it 3 of 5 stars

Really interesting look at how Conan lost The Tonight Show. The book also gives plenty of background on how Conan started in comedy and made his way to Late Night. The discoveries of Jimmy Kimmel, Jon Stewart, and Jimmy Fallon are also explained, as all three were at least considered for either Late Night or a show on a rival network. Of course, you'll read a lot about Dave and Jay as well. TV junkies will love this book. Nearly every imaginable executive, agent, lawyer, and their deputies are i...more Really interesting look at how Conan lost The Tonight Show. The book also gives plenty of background on how Conan started in comedy and made his way to Late Night. The discoveries of Jimmy Kimmel, Jon Stewart, and Jimmy Fallon are also explained, as all three were at least considered for either Late Night or a show on a rival network. Of course, you'll read a lot about Dave and Jay as well. TV junkies will love this book. Nearly every imaginable executive, agent, lawyer, and their deputies are introduced in the book as characters in the story. Even though I'm a long time Dave fan, I wouldn't consider myself a big fan of the late night genre. I found myself skimming over some paragraphs and had trouble keeping up with all the characters even at the end of the book. No one will accuse Carter of not being thorough. It's really a good book, but I wasn't jumping up and down about it. If you were glued to the Team CoCo story, you will probably really like this book.

I saw an interview of Bill Carter on Jimmy Kimmel. Carter explained that he spoke to everyone involved except Dave, which is not surprising. I think he gives a pretty fair shake to all parties. No one is cast as much of a villain - not even Jay. After the last chapter of the book, I, like most people, found myself sympathizing with Conan and thought it was kind of lame of Jay to even consider taking The Tonight Show back. But then I read the epilogue. Carter gets the takes of Jerry Seinfeld and Lorne Michaels, who both have a great deal of respect for Conan, but thought he overplayed his hand a bit. Seinfeld makes some great points about how there is no Tonight Show "institution," and how TV is just a business where performers are paid millions of dollars as long as the ratings make money for the networks. Lorne Michaels also has a great story about a conversation he had with an NBC executive when he explained his reasons for quitting his job on SNL. If you're on the fence about this book, at least read the epilogue next time you're in the bookstore.

For what my opinion is worth, I think the late night format is a dying medium and have said so for a while now. Carter quotes an unnamed executive who tends to agree with me: why should I stay up to watch the show? Anything that is funny will undoubtedly be on YouTube tomorrow. Research shows that the DVR is also killing the late night format, as viewers tend to catch up on their DVRs late at night - and hardly anyone DVRs the late night shows.

Anyway, it's a neat story about how the television business works (and doesn't work) any longer.
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Nov 06, 2010 Joe Kaiser rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

So I really liked the TV adaptation of The Late Shift, about the Leno/Letterman conflict of the early 90s, and eagerly awaited this one. This was very good. It follows in the tradition of Reality Show, a similarly good book about TV stars in an internet age. This was a fantastic telling of the Leno/Conan drama that shed a lot of light on things I didn't know - Leno's pay AND play contract, why Conan didn't end up at FOX, etc. There's a lot of behind the scenes stuff, and a lot of stuff that spea...more

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Apr 02, 2013 Eric rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: bio, non-fiction, business

In 1994, Bill Carter wrote a book called The Late Shift that offered a blow-by-blow account of the drama between NBC, Jay Leno, and David Letterman following Johnny Carson's retirement from the coveted Tonight Show. That was a terrific story told masterfully by Carter (and later adapted into a well-regarded HBO movie), so as a similarly Shakespearean drama began to unfold in 2009 between NBC, Jay Leno, and Conan O'Brien over the very same prize, I eagerly awaited Carter's follow-up. The War For...more

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Oct 25, 2011 J rated it 4 of 5 stars

I was unfamiliar with Bill Carter, but came across this book via the Giveaways on Goodreads. I have also worked in the television industry for over a decade and at times I found the decisions gut-wrenching. So much of a show's success or failure is married to the Nielsen ratings, and projections from the research group to the ad sales team. If the numbers don't look good, than there is no way to move forward, regardless of whether or not there could be benefit to the network brand if a change is...more

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Jun 07, 2011 Rosemary rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Team Coco and anyone else who hates cynicism.

Shelves: non-fiction

As a staunch member of Team Coco since long, long before the term existed, I went into this book already fully aware of many of the details and events laid out by Bill Carter. In this regard, there was nothing terribly new or shocking to be found. However, I have great admiration for the way in which Carter was able to weave the story and how all the different ends lead to the big explosion of January 2010. At times it had much the same feel as a political thriller, though ultimately no lives we...more

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Feb 24, 2011 Kate Woods Walker rated it 4 of 5 stars

Bill Carter's writing style--though densely-packed with names, dates, numbers and factoids--is as captivating as a soap opera plotline. The War for Late Night was every bit as interesting as his earlier dissection of the Letterman/Leno brouhaha in The Late Shift, and a bit more complicated besides.

I particularly enjoyed the deadpan, third-person recitations of various players' thoughts and feelings, in what must surely have been slight rewrites of tape-recorded interviews. Carter takes all his s...more

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Jan 23, 2012 Rachel rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: pop-culture, non-fiction

In The War For Late Night, Bill Carter covers the second war for late night, between Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien for The Tonight Show (the first being between Jay and David Letterman in the early 90s, the subject of Carter's The Late Shift). No journalist has had more access to all the major players involved, and he covers all of the events of the ham-fisted transition of Jay to Conan and back to Jay as host of Tonight during a seven-month period in 2009-2010.

Unlike in The Late Shift, there are n...more In The War For Late Night, Bill Carter covers the second war for late night, between Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien for The Tonight Show (the first being between Jay and David Letterman in the early 90s, the subject of Carter's The Late Shift). No journalist has had more access to all the major players involved, and he covers all of the events of the ham-fisted transition of Jay to Conan and back to Jay as host of Tonight during a seven-month period in 2009-2010.

Unlike in The Late Shift, there are no real new revelations this time -- no Jay Hiding in the Closet Eavesdropping moments. Entertainment reporting has changed so much since the mid-90s, most of it taking place on the internet by professional bloggers, that people who cared about the shifting tide of late night in 2009 were able to follow the details pretty much in real time.

For the most part, Carter captures the proclivities and thought processes of the people involved, which taken all together, led to a PR disaster in which almost everyone came out damaged. The NBC executives, most notably Jeff Zucker and Dick Ebersol, come across as short-sighted, driven only by current profitability, and ill-equipped to deal with the changes of their own industry; Jay Leno as passive-aggressive, insecure, and with an almost pathological need to be on television every day; Conan O'Brien as far too naive and trusting of both NBC management and his own handlers. And although they were mostly tangential to the fray, in Carter's portrait, Letterman is shown as generally angry and driven by grudges (not only against Jay and NBC, but also at times towards his own staff) and Jimmy Kimmel as mean and opportunistic.

Where I think the book fails is that Conan's fan base is a generation younger than he is and thus probably unable to understand why the Tonight Show was so important to him. For them, Tonight is Jay Leno -- a show for middle-aged people who like hokey comedy and innocuous interviews -- but for Conan, Tonight was the cultural institution that was Johnny Carson, just as it was for Letterman. What Conan failed to grasp until too late was that that Tonight show no longer existed. Letterman realized that NBC's offer in 1993 to let him have Tonight if he would let Jay host it for eighteen months first meant that he would never inherit Johnny's show, and had Conan come to a similar conclusion back in 2004 when NBC told him he could have the show five years later, he could have gone to FOX or ABC at what was then the height of his popularity, made a lot more money, and avoided the humiliation of having his lifelong dream publicly ripped away from him. Although Carter touches on this aspect -- there's a nicely unstated "cutting the baby in half" analogy where Conan objects to letting Tonight be pushed into an after-midnight timeslot as damaging to the franchise while Jay is perfectly fine with it if it means he gets to go back to 11:35 -- I think if he had emphasized the personal significance of the show to Conan as a comic who grew up in the 60s and 70s, then some of his angst would have seemed less annoying.

I do think the book would have benefited from better editing. Information that appears in early chapters is repeated almost word-for-word in later chapters, while other points are referred to repeatedly (e.g., long-time Executive Producer Robert Morton's firing from The Late Show) but not explained. Also there were so many people with similar names that it would have helped if they'd been referred to by job title as well as name. However, this was a good book overall and especially good for people who didn't follow the story closely in the media as it happened. (less)

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About Bill Carter

William J. Carter joined The New York Times as a national media reporter in 1989. In addition to his work for the newspaper, Mr. Carter has written numerous articles for The New York Times Magazine, including four cover stories.

Mr. Carter has covered the television industry for over 25 years. From 1975 until 1989, he was a television critic for The Baltimore Sun, writing four to six columns, repor...more

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Books by Bill Carter

The Late Shift: Letterman, Leno & the Network Battle for the Night

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Monday Night Mayhem: The Inside Story of ABC's Monday Night Football

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“The one thought Conan had on the spot about the half hour at 11:35 was that it would likely exacerbate the problem he already had with Leno. 'So at least now, Jay does his show, but there's the break of the news, and that's kind of the reset button,' Conan said to Gaspin and Graboff. 'At 11:35 Jay's going to come out and do twenty jokes. And then what's he going to do?'

When they replied that it seemed likely he would have only one guest, Conan said, 'OK. And then I come out and do what?'

The NBC guys didn't really have an answer for that other than what Conan had already been doing: his own monologue. That this now seemed like a late-night pileup - three shows with monologues lined up end to end - was the implication no one had really addressed.

Finally Conan did have something he really wanted to say, something that had almost burned a hole in his chest. 'What does Jay have on you?' Conan asked, his voice still low, his tone still even. 'What does this guy have on you people? What the hell is it about Jay?” — 1 person liked it

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