WI: Letterman gets the Tonight Show, Leno goes to CBS

This is a Late Night War thought experiment. In the OTL, NBC gave the Tonight Show to Leno instead of Letterman, who was Johnny Carson's heir apparent. Letterman made the decision to leave NBC and go over to CBS. Such was a very bloody and controversial war in late night, and one which destroyed Letterman's and Leno's friendship. Facing a popular late night entity like Letterman cost Arsenio Hall his CBS affiliates and helped that show's downfall. Letterman would oversee the creation of "The Late Late Show". And to replace Letterman in "Late Night", NBC brought in an untested writer named Conan O'Brien. In short, the Carson succession crisis set the stage for the state of late night ever since.

So what if Letterman had assumed the Late Night crown of NBC after Carson, and CBS snatched up Leno to compete with NBC in Late Night?
 
If Letterman gets The Tonight Show, Leno's not doing a LNTS -- period. Maybe a show cars or something...

Apparently CBS (maybe some other networks too) wanted Leno as a force to compete in late night with NBC, and it was a threat by Leno's manager to NBC that Leno could go over to CBS if he didn't get the Tonight Show. Leno had guest hosted the Tonight Show many times in the years before he became host.

Instead, they gave Leno the Tonight Show, and expected Letterman to stay as host of "Late Night". Letterman consulted Carson, who begrudgingly (as he didn't want to get involved) relented to Letterman asking him what he should do, and told him if NBC had done this to him, he'd have left. So Letterman left, took over a show on CBS, and the rest is history.
 
So does Conan still end up at Late Night, or is that butterflied away if Letterman gets the Tonight Show?
Presumably Conan would be butterflied with Letterman still at NBC, since he's almost certainly going to at least try to hand pick his own successor on that show, and the hand picked successor is not going to be a staff writer from SNL and the Simpsons. If you really think about it, Conan O'Brien's career is pretty bizarre. I think there's a pretty good chance that NBC would offer it to Leno, who would of course refuse. NBC, if I remember things correctly, wanted to keep both Leno and Letterman with the network. If that's true the same dynamic is going to be at play here, only with Leno in Letterman's place. Also, didn't Leno's agent insist that if her client wasn't made Carson's successor by the studio, he'd bolt to ABC rather than CBS?

The earliest period of Leno's Tonight Show didn't go very well in terms of quality or in terms of ratings, to the extent that the network was almost willing to fire Jay Leno and hire Lettermen in his place. If it's an entirely new program, and it has the same quality and ratings issues, Leno's Late Night Show might be canceled before he's able to build up any real popularity, depending on what kind of contract he is given by the new network. If Leno's at ABC, and Letterman's at CBS, then Arsenio Hall might last longer, assuming of course that he doesn't interview Louis Farrakan.

So, if things line up well enough, then you might end up with a situation in which the Late Night competition in the 1990's is between David Letterman and Arsenio Hall. Weird situation, that.
 
Presumably Conan would be butterflied with Letterman still at NBC, since he's almost certainly going to at least try to hand pick his own successor on that show, and the hand picked successor is not going to be a staff writer from SNL and the Simpsons. If you really think about it, Conan O'Brien's career is pretty bizarre. I think there's a pretty good chance that NBC would offer it to Leno, who would of course refuse. NBC, if I remember things correctly, wanted to keep both Leno and Letterman with the network. If that's true the same dynamic is going to be at play here, only with Leno in Letterman's place. Also, didn't Leno's agent insist that if her client wasn't made Carson's successor by the studio, he'd bolt to ABC rather than CBS?

The earliest period of Leno's Tonight Show didn't go very well in terms of quality or in terms of ratings, to the extent that the network was almost willing to fire Jay Leno and hire Lettermen in his place. If it's an entirely new program, and it has the same quality and ratings issues, Leno's Late Night Show might be canceled before he's able to build up any real popularity, depending on what kind of contract he is given by the new network. If Leno's at ABC, and Letterman's at CBS, then Arsenio Hall might last longer, assuming of course that he doesn't interview Louis Farrakan.

So, if things line up well enough, then you might end up with a situation in which the Late Night competition in the 1990's is between David Letterman and Arsenio Hall. Weird situation, that.

Ted Koppel was on ABC, which would force Leno to start his show at Midnight.
 
Unless Nightline was canned.
Or, alternately, ABC decided to divide the weekly schedule between Nightline and The Jay Leno Show. In any event, I stand by my conclusion that there's a strong possibility that Leno's show is going to be canceled. His earliest period as Carson's replacement was rough, to the point where NBC almost changed it's mind and handed it to Letterman in spite of what had happened in 1992. And if Leno's show is canceled, Late Night Television is almost unimaginably different. Because both Leno and Arsenio Hall will be gone. That leaves David Letterman won't have much competition after about 1994 or so. Interestingly, this is precisely the period in which Letterman's early star began to fall, and Leno's Tonight Show became more popular than Letterman's show.
 
From what the movie shows, the PoD needed to keep Leno off The Tonight Show seems to be Letterman explicitly asking for a guarantee that he'll be Carson's successor, though I actually like the idea of Jay deciding to stick with Helen Kushnick, getting fired from the show with her, and going to CBS...


The problem with that, if the firing is after Jay has already started as new host of the Tonight Show, is that the show will be damaged goods that Letterman won't want because he'll be taking over Jay Leno's show and not Carson. And Letterman would be seen as stealing a job from a friend, which is Leno territory and not his.

Btw, the film account let's Jay off the hook more than what was likely reality. In the film, Jay is portrayed as an idiot who doesn't know what his manager was doing, while in reality, he was probably in on it all.
 
Btw, the film account let's Jay off the hook more than what was likely reality. In the film, Jay is portrayed as an idiot who doesn't know what his manager was doing, while in reality, he was probably in on it all.

Yup. No doubt Leno is a shrewd son of a bitch.

My guess is that, like claimed, Leno migrates over to CBS but doesn't do nearly as well without the Tonight Show brand behind him. Letterman probably would still be doing the Tonight Show, Conan would still be writing and producing The Simpsons, making it remarkably amazing, even today (not eh as it's become).
 
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