Diverted at Night (nytimes)

Conan O'Brien on "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno," September 5, 2003.

In 2004, when o "Late Night With Conan O'Brien" was always "Tonight Show with Jay Leno" as a puppy at a Clydesdale, o ' Brien asked how he felt about the new the Leno five-year contract extension. After secretly promised work "Tonight Show" by NBC after this contract has increased, with the sanction of Leno reluctant, perplexed), that redhead beamish could not resist stirring the cauldron anyway: "Let's just hope it gets ugly, and then we'll all have fun."

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I guess it's just the New York Times Media reporter Bill Carter felt the NBC learning plan to facilitate by older actor and turning the franchise "Tonight Show" phenomenally profitable to younger guys, hipper, ­demographically attractive. Strike of the band, boys, happy days are here again--focus on hosts struggle, crazy competitors, anxious to network executives and porters, phalangeal frenetic producers, agents and servants assorted, jostling for their moment in the midnight sun. Entertaining, politely unbeliever new book Carter, "War for the night," is impartial and speechless when taking in this enjoyable ugliness. It is just that most everyone, while demi-scepticisme how a bunch of seasoned professionals, aware as they were able to make such a vase of BP-size careers, reputations and bottom lines.

"The war for the night" echoes curtly exquisite breakup saved from a previous Carter, books "The Late Shift." This is a descent of déjà vu tracks for the participants as well as drive, memories of the NBC encouraged Johnny Carson retired and ambivalently passed from David Letterman for Leno per­meate almost each choice made this time. Gauze, o ' Brien and Jeff Zucker, Chief Executive of the NBC were all consciously trying to their struggle not to make the same mistakes. Gauze conscientiously agreed to step aside, o ' Brien waiting its turn for half a decade (an eternity on TV) as a good team player. Zucker has finally tried to negotiate an agreement to maintain both NBC and But it is proven that those who remembered history were doomed to repeat and or set in motion a comedy still made Beaver strategic error.

Who knew NBC could himself top in the mismanagement of human resources, causing a mutiny by network of subsidiaries, transform "Leno" synonym of can and exile o ' Brien core cable? Leno could be managed in a game 10 hours night showed that he had been at 11: 35 a.m. was a cockeyed dice roll, but the alternative was to move to another network and outperform the. O'Brien taking over "The Tonight Show" was also greater risk, but he was a young as follows; at the rate that issuing numbers tend, is on the verge of being "show AARP with Jay Leno."

It does not support the expertise of a Bill Car­ter to see why that build your business on the premise of the sitcom pilot model was a terrible idea. His book is strong, showing how the pivotal aspects were more subtle, not to mention more banality that some games of morality of joy-le-petit-guy. One crucial factor in how it all played was simply contractual: Leno had ironclad pay and play deal (incredible thing, NBC executives at 10 a.m. show for two years, or if they cancel it tried were in breach of contract be obliged), while's o Brien "Tonight Show" time period 1135 didn't specify contract. Taking into account the abysmal scores two performances and invincible Leno negotiating position, the result has been pre­ordained: except if o Brien was flexible enough to let embossing according to a "The Tonight Show" return half an hour to make room for an abridged Leno program, it was inevitable NBC would safer, less expensive option and keep the "Big Jaw."

"Talk shows of Dick Cavett" is symptomatic instructively host syndrome: a host is not another gig but a zealous vocation and show many years after last Cav­ett, it is always the same mentality of leisure. The book is a collection of his columns ­NYTimes.com online, but he plays less like a blog than a series of "parts", in which he turns to indirect name dropping stories. Essentially, Cav­ett is interrogated himself here, featuring the classic "SCTV" of his PBS show. Brushing against magnitude (Norman Mailer, Bette Davis, the incomparable Groucho), it is as an autograph of watchmaking - intoxicated, although ­peevish-conscious quality Lévrier has been better television: articulate faithful balanced by instinct of the writer a joke for the applicant chic or flouting defensive. Cavett is a veteran of previous wars of talk show, but there is not much to say about the last lap. "Talk Show" is largely an exercise in nostalgia for the bright eyes as a top version range of the former "Joe Franklin Show." It is interesting, even if this Cavett outward so refined that a gut go puncher as Leno, allows fists closed the same sort of outrage easy, pat. Consternation to view television obese people or patter glib on amounts of war in Iraq to a comic commoditization impotent - gag reflex as a lingua franca.

Howard Hampton is the author of "" born in Flames: Termite Dreams, dialectic Fairy Tales and Pop Apocalypses. ""