{"id":295,"date":"2011-01-23T07:59:27","date_gmt":"2011-01-23T13:59:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/?p=295"},"modified":"2011-08-28T16:51:02","modified_gmt":"2011-08-28T22:51:02","slug":"book-3-of-52-the-late-shift","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/book-3-of-52-the-late-shift\/","title":{"rendered":"Book 3 (of 52) – The Late Shift"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

The Late Shift - Bill Carter<\/p><\/div>\n

\u00a0Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.\u00a0 The host of the Tonight Show<\/em> changes, NBC executives start to think they’ve made a huge mistake, and, while the new host is on the air, offers the job to someone else.\u00a0 No, this isn’t the story of Jay Leno stealing the Tonight Show<\/em> back from Conan O’Brien, but the original story of Jay Leno stealing the Tonight Show<\/em> from Johnny Carson and then fighting off David Letterman.<\/p>\n

It is a fascinating story, even more so within the context of nearly the same thing playing out 18 years later.\u00a0 Jay Leno is the permanent guest host of the Tonight Show<\/em>and his manager is working furiously to push Johnny Carson out of the way.\u00a0 When Carson announces he is retiring, Jay had just signed a contract guaranteeing him the top spot.\u00a0 Meanwhile, as\u00a0NBC’s other late night star, Letterman assumed he would move up an hour once Carson retired.\u00a0 NBC execs, wanting to placate both stars, split down the middle.\u00a0 When Jay’s manager goes crazy, starting booking wars and alienating publicists, NBC decides they made a mistake a offer the job to Letterman, who instead decides to leave his home of over a decade and start over at CBS.<\/p>\n

The behind the scenes look at these shows, and the men who host them, is intriguing.\u00a0 Jay Leno comes off as someone with extreme mental disorders.\u00a0 He is loyal to a fault, either to his manager who almost sabotaged his career or to the network he thinks of as home.\u00a0 He seems to have trouble dealing with people in an adult manner.\u00a0 His life appears to revolve around two things: hosting the Tonight Show<\/em> and fixing old cars.\u00a0 He\u00a0is married, but it comes off as though it was done not out of love, but because when you reach a certain age, you are supposed to be married.\u00a0 The famous story of Leno hiding in a broom closet for hours so he can eavesdrop on a call between NBC executives, and the glee it brought him showing off that he knew things he shouldn’t, makes you feel sad for him.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Letterman comes off as the more together person, but that really isn’t saying much.\u00a0 He is described as a bundle of neuroses, who is never satisfied with a performance and is overly critical and dismissive of his own skills.\u00a0 He spent years bashing the network and his bosses and yet expected them to just know how much it would have meant to him to be the host of the Tonight Show<\/em>.\u00a0 The book ends with a triumphant Letterman on top, his Late Show<\/em>on CBS winning the ratings war for the first year plus.\u00a0 Unfortunately, for Letterman and his fans, this started to go the other way with Jay Leno, behind a resurgent NBC primetime lineup, overcoming Dave and holding on to the top for years.<\/p>\n

As we know, the sequel would happen 18 years later, and Bll Carter is back with the sequel<\/a>.\u00a0 Hopefully, I don’t have to wait 18 years to read it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.\u00a0 The host of the Tonight Show changes, NBC executives start to think they’ve made a huge mistake, and, while the new host is on the air, offers the job to someone else.\u00a0 No, this isn’t the story of Jay Leno stealing the Tonight Show back from Conan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,63],"tags":[504,64,512,65,513,500,763,515,514],"class_list":["post-295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-39","category-television","tag-cbs","tag-conan-obrien","tag-david-letterman","tag-jay-leno","tag-johnny-carson","tag-nbc","tag-the-late-shift","tag-the-late-show","tag-the-tonight-show"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":298,"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295\/revisions\/298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/learningturkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}