On the eve of one of his most significant weeks–a series of shows from Los Angeles that could lift him out of a ratings miasma–David Letterman has been making noises that his “Late Show” may live up to the most ominous implications of its name.
He told a New York newspaper last week he might call it quits when his contract with CBS expires. It’s an unlikely prospect–and not much of a story when he’s obligated to the network through 2000–but one doesn’t have to overturn many rocks to find reasons he might be discouraged:
– For 10 straight weeks, Jay Leno’s “Tonight” show has beaten (nine times) or tied (once) Letterman’s CBS “Late Show” in the weekly ratings, after Letterman dominated for the first two years of their head-to-head, heavily hyped competition.
– NBC last month rewarded Leno with a fat contract that will keep him in the “Tonight” host’s chair, the seat Letterman always coveted, through 2000.
– Quincy Jones, the new producer of the Academy Awards, announced last week that Whoopi Goldberg would be his host, apparently rejecting the work Letterman did on the show last March. (Did Jones see Goldberg’s efforts in that role the year before? Just wondering.)
– Letterman’s network, CBS, showed a few leaks last season and has been taking on water at an alarming rate this year.
– In September, Leno’s show beat Letterman’s for the best variety series Emmy. In accepting the award, Leno suggested a new ending might need to be written for the made-for-HBO movie in the works that’s based on the book “The Late Shift.” Bill Carter’s book concludes on the note that Letterman still rules late night.
– For perhaps the first time in his career, Letterman suffered through negative press this summer. Entertainment Weekly’s take: “Tired gags, predictable format, smug demeanor.”
– Then there is Letterman’s famous self-loathing, by all accounts a psychic quirk that is in place even when he is atop the world. One visible example: his Calvinist self-flagellation over what was, in truth, a fine though uneven performance hosting the Oscars. He joked in his show Wednesday that this spring he would be at home, watching Goldberg’s broadcast, introducing one piece of furniture to another: “Chair, couch. Couch, chair.”
“Let me get this straight,” Letterman said, continuing a self-defeating theme. “I screw up in front of a billion people, and all of a sudden I’m out?”
With so much bad news in the wind, Letterman’s shows from Los Angeles all this week bear special importance. Twice before he has taken his CBS show on the road–to Los Angeles in May 1994, and London a year later–and been rewarded with viewership boosts.
The Los Angeles trip even brought a “surprise” walk-on from Johnny Carson, his first late-night TV appearance since his 1992 retirement. It was one more sign that Carson considers Letterman, not Leno, his rightful heir.
A new look
What’s more important than the ratings business, though, is that viewers who tune in this week will see a rejuvenated “Late Show.” Since September or so, Letterman and his crew have been making subtle changes in response either to the criticism or to their own sense of wheels spinning beneath them.
The actual adjustments don’t sound like much, but the show has been more sharply focused and sprinkled with more of the appealingly goofy comedy that is a Letterman hallmark.
The Top Ten list, a crowd-pleaser grown long in the tooth, has been set free to float in the broadcast, or to not appear at all, though most nights it does.
The writing staff, says executive producer Robert Morton, is being “rebuilt.”
Chris Elliott, the comic familiar to fans from Letterman’s later-night days at NBC, is back on board, though the show seems to not yet know how to make Elliott’s aggressively oddball style fit into the more populist CBS program.
There is, in general, a sense of a new looseness to the material. Last week, the show sent a pair of pants, encased in clear plastic and perched on top of a flatbed truck, on a cross-country tour to heal the nation’s psyche. The “Pants Across America” rig was accompanied by Casey Kasem, a gloriously absurd duo checking in from the St. Louis arch and Mt. Rushmore.
Earlier, the program convened its own O.J. Simpson jury, a panel of New York City taxi drivers. Enlisted to help guide the deliberations were Geraldo Rivera, Uma Thurman and Florence Henderson.
Further, says Morton, the show has returned to its NBC tactic of anchoring some regular features: viewer mail on Thursdays, and one of the highlights, the taped field excursions that pit Letterman’s electric mind against the general public, on Fridays.
In the works are a new opening sequence and reworked theme music (sooner) and a new set (later), Morton adds, though they won’t be radically different. Letterman is clearly no fan of wholesale change.
And Letterman himself seems invigorated, keeping the show from getting stuck on the kind of “Oprah-Uma” repetitions that can drive even his most devoted fans to distraction.
There are still too many jokes that rely on the word “ass” for a punchline, and I’d be happy if Letterman never fell back on his doofus character again, but he does seem more at ease–which isn’t saying much–in the rear-runner role. He’s now got a competitor to chase and a blundering network to rail against. One joke from last week, during a Halloween costumes skit: Three kids show up at his door dressed as a $10 bill, a nickel and a penny–CBS’ third-quarter earnings.
And how much do Leno’s assorted triumphs really mean?
Leno’s leading, but so what?
It’s a broken record from the Letterman camp, but there’s no denying that NBC’s strength in prime time, and its strengths in late news in big cities, not only hand “Tonight” an audience, but make it that much easier to promote than “The Late Show.”
“We’re like the best dessert in the city at a really lousy restaurant,” Morton contends. “If you’re not coming in to sample the restaurant, you’re not gonna ever taste that dessert.”
To counteract that, Morton says, the “Late Show” has taken to running Letterman promos on cable and radio, places that reach young adults like CBS does not. In that demographic category, NBC wallops CBS during prime time, but Letterman maintains his edge over Leno, although Leno is closing the gap.
As for the Emmy, Leno may take solace, but Emmy voters are not known for their unerring recognition of excellence.
And except for the NBC executives so determined to prove they did the right thing by giving Carson’s job to Leno without consulting Carson or Letterman, few are arguing that Jay Leno is making great television.
Indeed, in an October Esquire cover article, headlined “Leno lives!” the best that writer Bill Zehme could come up with was, “It is now possible to watch him and not wince.”
Like Letterman, he tells good monologue jokes–many more of them than Letterman, which is playing to his strength. Like Letterman, he has good guests, though where Letterman’s interviews tend to bristle with nervous energy–and to extract odd information or revealing moments–Leno’s are generally tepid.
Unlike Letterman, Leno just will not surprise you. In a TV universe where Conan O’Brien and Greg Kinnear do good work in the Carson-Leno-Letterman mold, and where HBO’s “Larry Sanders Show” and the Cartoon Network’s “Space Ghost Coast to Coast” so effectively parody the style, it’s that sense of surprise that keeps Letterman on top, ratings or no.
This is, after all, the man who sat across from supermodel Cindy Crawford last week, pulled from his mouth an apparent tooth crown and presented it to her.
