So this is a book about Johnny Carson's retirement from The Late Show, the machinations behind NBC's decision to replace him not with David Letterman who had been hosting the show after The Late Show for a decade but with Jay Leno, who had been a frequent guest host on The Late Show, then Letterman's decision to leave NBC and set up a competing show to Leno's Late Show on CBS. Even I, who has a certain affection for showbiz arcana, am wondering why anyone would care about these things, even when they are grounded in important ideas like big-advertising-dollars etc. I just can't see this as important, and obviously, I'm not American so why would it be. I tried to think about how in this country, Channel 9 used to mean something (um - family-friendly, glossy, best-practice television but not really that engaging to me most of the time) Channel 7 I suppose meant something to some people though I'm not sure what (it wasn't Channel 10 though) and Channel 10 was trashy and bratty. Channel 2 was a whole different ballgame and so of course was SBS, they're not important for the purposes of the comparison. Still, I don't know what NBC / CBS meant in the 80s-90s in the US and it's a completely different system anyway - the networks - they're much more like networks of distinct broadcasting companies than we had in this country.
So what's the interest value? Basically that these people, particularly Letterman, but also just the knobs in management, and the CEOs and producers etc, are the most unbelievably neurotic fools you can imagine, all somehow stoked up by the preposterously shallow and fickle enthusiasms of millions of people who are as likely to reject them tomorrow as continue to do the most passive thing you can do and be a 'fan' (that is, not turn off a tv). Carter subtly suggests Jay Leno is a childish automaton whereas Letterman is presented as gifted but, as mentioned, an ego so fragile as to be most susceptible to the criticisms of the voices in his own freakin' head. Also, I guess, that this shit mattered so much to so many; I suppose it was like the zeitgeist news, checking in to see-how-the-culture's-going-kind-of-thing and now thirty years later you're kind of like 'well, the zeitgeist looked after itself, that world is over now, vale'. But seriously - to report with such seriousness (and I have to say, skill in reportage) about the trivial behaviour of big adult babies - at some point, surely, Carter said to himself (or someone) who are these creepy soft-shelled millionaire idiots. I'm close to the end and he hasn't actually asked any question like that really (beyond one moment of reported self-analysis from Letterman along the lines of, 'it's just a TV show'). So. It's interesting but it's mental.
I would love to read an Australian equivalent, and I have enjoyed things like Gerard Henderson's 60 Minutes book, etc. I'd like to read about Daryl Somers, Ernie Carroll and Gavan Disney etc. But there's no real big set-up war dynamic for them as there is in this book.
By the way, I gather Leno's manager/producer Helen Kushnick sued Carter for $30M for the way she was portrayed in this book and I don't see how she couldn't have. She comes out so badly it's almost embarrassing to read, and once again, you end up thinking: no-one could have been this bad or, if she was this bad, what kind of milieu was she in that allows the creation/fostering of people who behave this badly? There was a settlement, and Kushnick died not long after (from cancer).
Oh and also they made it into an HBO film as well. For what that's worth.
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