Free The War for Late Night by Bill Carter

OʹBrien in 2001 and likely was at the ready to sprint after him again. He also knew that Conan’s people had been braying at Zucker’s door about using him or losing him. It was time for the definitive meeting about late night.
    Because the big decision had already been tacitly made, the actual discussion—which involved Zucker, Ludwin, Graboff, and NBC’s new top program executive, Kevin Reilly—went largely without drama. Graboff got the message clearly: “If we have to promise Conan The Tonight Show , we will.”
    The only issue was how to accomplish this. Could they simply shut down Jay at the end of this deal, given that he was still cruising along in first place, throwing off dollars as he went? Did that make any sense? But then again, how long could they realistically ask Conan to wait before his hyperactive sled-dog team mushed him out the door to another destination?
    Zucker made the final call on establishing the strategy. He told Graboff how he would handle it. They would go to Jay with a message: “Yes, we’ll extend your deal. But this is your last contract. Time to hand over the keys.”
    Before they took that step, however, they had to be sure that Conan and his Wild Bunch would agree to cool their heels. That assignment fell to Graboff, who knew just the right person to call.
     
    Jeff Ross had called nobody and pressured no one. He didn’t utz his friend Jeff Zucker in any way. Golf was golf; The Tonight Show did not come up over five-foot putts. It was important to Ross, the straightest of straight shooters, that Conan not be cast as anything even approaching the heavy in his pursuit of the Tonight assignment. Strong-arming wasn’t Conan’s style—and it certainly wasn’t Ross’s.
    That was one of many reasons why Jeff Ross belonged to one of the tiniest clubs in show business: the league of the universally well liked. The Conan staff, the NBC management, the publicists, the other producers in the late-night brotherhood (and sisterhood, counting Debbie Vickers, who had nothing but affection and respect for her counterpart in New York)—nobody seemed to have a bad word to say about Jeff Ross, no matter how heated the circumstances. Instead, they used words like “solid,” “reliable,” “flexible,” “shrewd,” and “menschy.” Thin and wiry, dark hair cropped close, Ross, still in his forties, usually wore an inscrutable expression behind his John Lennon wire-frames, one that might have signaled dour, serious, or disinterested, but almost always indicated only that he was keeping his emotions—and everything else—under control. Conan often joked—sometimes in the middle of on-air monologues—about Ross’s Zen-like mien, imitating Ross in a mock mumble, “Yeah, it was OK; sorta funny; could have been better.” But he greatly valued what Ross had to say, because Jeff gave it to him straight. He lifted Conan when he needed lifting—which could be often, given OʹBrienʹs depressive tendencies and penchant for beating himself up—and he brought Conan back to earth when his ego started to soar. “Sometimes I would kill for a yes-man,” Conan said in an interview about his producer. “Jeff is completely honest with me. We argue, but Jeff doesn’t trade in compliments, doesn’t waste time stroking my ego.” Everyone around the show—and connected with Conan’s career—understood the critical role Ross played over the sixteen years they had put Late Night on the air together. He was the trusted counselor and more; he was the true-blue comrade.
    In early February, when Jeff Ross got the unexpected call from Marc Graboff on the subject of what was then going on with Leno and his proposed contract extension, he took it as a completely unsolicited move by NBC to reach out to the Conan side.
    Graboff made it clear that this was a back-channel conversation, not an official contact, network to talent. He had a simple question: Would Conan wait four years in exchange for a