Ok if you watch the movie you see that Mike Ovitz threw a contract at NBC that said Letterman has to have an 11:30 show or get 50 million dollars, he then goes on to say this will not phase CBS because there offering him an 11:30 time slot but it would make NBC choke.
Unfortunately for Dave, the original deal he had with NBC was that if he did not get what he wanted, he would be awarded a penalty fee of one million dollars (something he would admit he was a, let's say a "sucker" to have settled for when he was hammering out his original contract with the network).
Conan is told that they want to do an experiment where they put Jay Leno on at 11:30 and Conan on at 12:05. Conan refuses saying that the tonight Show at 12:05 is not the tonight show so he leaves. NBC could have said to Leno many years ago OK Jay were going to move your show to 12:05 put Letterman on at 11:30.
That's an interesting suggestion. However, the difference was that in 2010, Jay was being brought back to 11:35 in an effort to improve the ratings for "The Tonight Show" which began to plummet just weeks after Conan took over. In the 1990's when NBC was trying to keep both Jay and Dave, the ratings for "The Tonight Show" with Jay as permanent guest host, and later, as solo host, were still solid. It was only after Dave went to CBS that Jay's ratings dropped dramatically for almost 2 years. Also, Dave wanted "The Tonight Show" so badly that I doubt he would've been happy hosting a half hour show (especially if it wasn't going to be called "The Tonight Show with David Letterman"). It's an intriguing idea though as NBC then would've had an unstoppable late night team.
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JAlexa9898
13 years ago
Yes but it would have been interesting to see what Leno would have done in the same situation Conan was in. The truth is Letterman would not have been able to get out of it, remember they said NBC had the ability to match whatever deals are offered elsewhere. If they had put Letterman at 11:30 and Leno at 12:05, or change the places put the tonight show at 12:30 and Letterman at 11:30 with them both having each hour shows. This would avoid the 50 million problem. What would Ovitz had done then?
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a_l_i_e_n
13 years ago
...it would have been interesting to see what Leno would have done in the same situation Conan was in.
Yes, he might have been annoyed considering he'd turned down the CBS offer in exchange for NBC's guarantee he would eventually get "The Tonight Show". Jay was by then already well established at 11:35, too, so being bumped to 12:05 would've definitely seemed like a demotion. But, as it's been said of Jay in the past, "he's a company man". So, he might actually have agreed to the switch. Be interesting to see how it would've worked out, too.
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