STUPID NETWORK TRICKS

By Richard Zoglin

IN RETROSPECT, IT SEEMS A STRANGE cultural aberration. Or maybe a temporary virus. For a couple of years there, David Letterman was the toast of television. After toiling in the wee hours for more than a decade, the host of NBC's Late Night had been passed over for the job as Johnny Carson's successor on the Tonight Show. But he parlayed that slight into a lucrative new contract at CBS and his own 11:30 p.m. show to compete with Jay Leno. The crowds that jammed his studio audience gave him standing ovations every night; his Top 10 lists became a national obsession. The ratings soared, surpassing Leno's. Dave was a winner, and America loved him.

Not anymore. Letterman's show has dropped to third place in the ratings, behind both Tonight and ABC's Nightline, and his surly, subversive comedy has gone back to being a minority taste. Leno, after a rocky start, has the hot hand, with newsmaking guests (Hugh Grant, Magic Johnson), big-event ambiance (traveling to the Super Bowl) and the most relentlessly flogged O.J. bits on TV. Now Jay is the one getting the nightly ovations.

So The Late Shift, a new HBO movie about the network battle over Leno and Letterman, arrives looking like something of a period piece. It is based on Bill Carter's 1994 book, which was essentially the story of Letterman's victory: how he outsmarted the network suits and became the most sought-after personality in television. The movie, even more than the book, pokes fun at the ineptitude of the NBC executives who let Letterman get away and ends with CBS's triumphal press conference welcoming Dave to the network. There's a postscript acknowledging that the ratings have since turned around, but the movie's take seems dated. After all, those NBC executives may be weasels, but who has the last laugh now?

Even before the reversal in fortune, The Late Shift was one of the worst ideas for a TV movie ever. Docudramas that trot out actors to impersonate famous people, from Jackie O. to Roseanne, are pointless enough, but to re-create this TV-industry story for a mass audience seems the height of self-absorption. John Michael Higgins does a good job mimicking Letterman's cigar-chomping crankiness, but he's too energetic. Daniel Roebuck has the chin (with the help of prosthetics), but turns Leno into a simpering moron. Yet these characters, at least, will be recognizable to viewers. The rest of The Late Shift is a parade of TV executives known to few in the audience, but all scrupulously identified onscreen as if this were a documentary on the Vietnam peace talks. (Look, it's John Agoglia, president of NBC Productions!) The Late Shift is the ultimate in inside baseball.

Still, the film is more entertaining than one might have expected. The backstage network shenanigans have been deftly digested (by Carter, who co-wrote the screenplay, and director Betty Thomas), and the movie gives a good picture, in broad strokes, of how the TV business runs: badly, most of the time. NBC's executives, surprised by Carson's retirement and egged on by Leno's aggressive manager, Helen Kushnick (Kathy Bates), promised the job to Jay without comprehending how it would upset Dave. Letterman, who felt he was entitled to the Tonight post but was unwilling to fight for it, hired a new agent, Michael Ovitz (Treat Williams), who orchestrated the bidding war that had NBC, at the last minute, desperately trying to win back Letterman with a promise of the Tonight job after all.

But the caricatures rankle. Kushnick was certainly an abrasive advocate for her client; once, furious that NBC let its coverage of the Republican National Convention run long, delaying the start of the Tonight Show, she sent the studio audience home and forced the network to air a rerun. But the movie's portrayal of her power-mad bitchiness, even to Leno ("Stand up straight, for chrisakes; you're the host of the Tonight Show!"), leaves the viewer wondering why Leno was loyal to her for so long. Similarly, the NBC executives are too wimpy and stupid to be believed. In one scene, Leno eavesdrops on a speakerphone conversation between network executives discussing his fate. Later he phones program chief Warren Littlefield (Bob Balaban) to reveal what he knows. Littlefield, who takes the call on the toilet, jumps up in panic. Showing a network executive with his pants around his ankles may get a cheap laugh, but is this any way for a grownup movie to act?

Letterman has already complained about the movie (especially Higgins' red hair). Leno says he hasn't seen it yet, though friends have described its portrait of him. "I don't understand how such a simpleton could hold on to a major show for five years," says Leno. Still, he adds, "If I can't take it when they're making fun of me, I wouldn't be a very good sport." NBC executives have refused to comment; Letterman's camp is understandably more pleased. "It's a broad satire on the trade, and I was amused by it," says former top CBS executive Howard Stringer, who wooed Letterman to the network. Letterman's executive producer, Robert Morton, found the movie "fairly accurate," partly because "Letterman came off as a decent man who cared about doing the right thing."

WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THAT decent man since the events in the film? Most date the start of Letterman's downfall to his hosting the Academy Awards last March. It should have been the capstone to his coronation; instead, it was a critical fiasco. Letterman's mocking irreverence ("Oprah...Uma") fell flat with the Hollywood crowd, and with most viewers. In truth, his performance wasn't all that bad, but it foreshadowed his ratings decline. Even though that drop can be explained largely by CBS's prime-time collapse (which has reduced his lead-in audience) and the loss of key affiliates, Letterman's winning aura was broken.

Leno, meanwhile, is the happiest man in show business, so energized that he seems ready to burst out of the TV set. He bounds into the audience each night to shake hands with the crowd and cackles enthusiastically through every interview. The program is packed with elaborately produced comedy bits, most of them obvious and witless. It's Lincoln's birthday? Jay is seen as Honest Abe doing a TV commercial for his law practice. Guest Ellen DeGeneres has a touch of the flu? The show hires an ambulance to drive her onto the set. What separates Leno from Letterman (and from Carson before him) is the lack of any ironic distance. Carson made fun of those Carnac and Aunt Blabby sketches. Leno sells every bit like Professor Harold Hill in The Music Man.

Letterman still has the funnier show by far, but his nightly psychodrama is getting harder to watch. The Oscar experience obviously continues to sting; Dave keeps obsessing about it in his jokes. The Top 10 lists are spilling over from self-parody into self-loathing. "Top 10 Insults for Dave Letterman," went a recent one. ("Letterman, let's face it--you put the 'suck' in success.") Clearly, Dave needs a lift, but The Late Shift isn't going to do it.

--Reported by Dan Cray/Los Angeles and William Tynan/New York

With reporting by DAN CRAY/LOS ANGELES AND WILLIAM TYNAN/NEW YORK