Why does leno beat letterman

I moved in and in I was on the damned show. I had numerous meetings with NBC president Brandon Tartikoff over and over and over again, and I can remember one in particular. He came in — because the ratings on the NBC show were tremendous for a late night show — and he came in and said, Anything else? We had a fight that lasted a full 24 hours, because I thought the problem was not me, the problem was the network.

And then I gradually began to realize that the problem was me, and I made my peace with that. It was simply that a larger number of people liked watching Jay Leno more than they liked watching me. It went on like that forever, and that panicked us, or perhaps me because I was at the head of the thing. We lost our way for a while.

It took a long time to settle back in and find out what we were doing. On occasion we would beat him in the ratings here and there, but not routinely. I felt bad for the network, I felt like I was failing the staff. I was embarrassed for my family. I got over it, but I still wish we could have been the Number 1 late night show. And I thought, How can I possibly take this seriously? The guy put a little puppet in his signature.

Pushed Or Jumped? I wanted it one year and my friend Les Moonves agreed that it would be one year. I said, look if at any time between now and then you want to make a change, just let me know.

So it was mutual. No, I was not fired. If Letterman wanted to use a year-old feud for laughs or simply remind his audience the feud existed, such comments seemed irrelevant. Late night was already moving on. Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies. Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later?

Start your Independent Premium subscription today. Already subscribed? Log in. Forgotten your password? Want an ad-free experience? But Leno was never a critical darling. From the time he started in late-night on NBC in the early s, Letterman was considered an innovator.

He subverted the showbiz conventions of late night; he poked fun at the high and mighty; he did absurd things like showcase Stupid Pet Tricks and toss TVs and other heavy objects out of high-rise windows just to watch them smash on the pavement below.

Leno was a near-universally admired stand-up comic, but an innovator he was not. He was a comedian in the Bob Hope mold, a reliable deliverer of snappy punchlines. The battle for that throne was so notorious it became an HBO movie.

Whether that was fair or not hardly mattered. He almost never gives interviews well, until his finale approached, anyway. He is famously prickly on-camera and off. But his detachment was part of the act and made his fans love him even more. They saw Letterman as genuine.