Is there going to be a sequel to The Late Shift?
A report in Monday's Los Angeles Times said NBC's best laid succession plans for The Tonight Show might be threatened by Jay Leno rethinking retirement.
The article, citing "three people familiar with the situation," said Leno, despite signing off on an NBC announcement two years ago to set his retirement date for 2009, "doesn't want to go."
Conan O'Brien, late of NBC's Late Night, is supposed to move into Leno's old job (and the network's planned new digs) when—if?—Leno steps aside.
In the newspaper, NBC executive Marc Graboff is quoted as saying the network (a) wants to stay in the Leno business (a business that is "beyond late night") and (b) has no plans to not turn over TV's top-rated late-night show to O'Brien.
"We had to make a choice because we didn't want to lose Conan," Graboff told the Times. "We feel that we made the right choice."
An NBC spokeswoman said Graboff was quoted accurately.
Neither Leno nor O'Brien speaks for himself in the article.
The Times story doesn't get anyone to talk on the record about Leno's supposed ennui, but describes the hardworking comic as "frustrated," and "reluctant to retire from late night."
Last week, NBC announced it was selling its famed "beautiful downtown Burbank" digs, the longtime headquarters of The Tonight Show. Leno was expected to remain at the current location and O'Brien was due to christen the new set, which will be built near parent company Universal Studios.
In 2005, when NBC announced the planned O'Brien-for-Leno substitution, Leno released a statement saying he'd promised his wife, Mavis, that he'd take her out to dinner before he turned 60.
Leno will be 59 in 2009.
"When I signed my new contract," Leno was quoted as saying, "I felt that the timing was right to plan for my successor, and there is no one more qualified than Conan."
NBC pushed for the succession announcement in order to keep the younger and in-demand O'Brien in the network fold. Now, according to the Times, if the network doesn't give O'Brien the 11:35 p.m. time slot in 2009, it'll be on the hook for $40 million—the price you apparently pay when you break a promise to a man with a good agent.
Another scenario—recalling Late Shift, the book and movie about the behind-the-scenes machinations leading up to Johnny Carson's final days on The Tonight Show—would see Leno leaving, O'Brien moving in...and Leno moving on to another network in his old Tonight Show time slot. According to the Times, ABC or Fox would be the most likely suitors for the reluctant retiree.
In 1991-92, Carson's own pending retirement set in motion the chain of events that led to O'Brien's late-night career. Leno, then the Tonight guest host, was named Carson's successor. That one announcement ticked off David Letterman (who hosted Late Night for NBC), briefly caused NBC to consider rescinding its job offer to Leno and making one to Letterman instead, prompted Letterman to leave NBC for CBS and The Late Show and led to NBC hiring the then-unknown O'Brien to become the new Late Night host.
At least this time around, Letterman won't be in play.
Per a deal announced in late 2006, Letterman is locked in at The Late Show through 2010. It's not known if, at the end of his current contract, Letterman intends to retire.