Downshifting

I'll admit it -- I've been run over a few times by the Late Shift movie bandwagon, so it will probably take a couple of weeks to get through my backlog of reviews and letters concerning the HBO teleflick. For now, here's a great insight on the film from Mark Evanier:

"Usually, when Hollywood dramatizes real life events, simple arguments turn into free-swinging brawls. In The Late Shift, just the opposite has happened: All the fights, recriminations and even destruction of office furnishings are greatly diminished for the screen. In real life, Jay Leno exploded at Kushnick, conducted a massive personal investigation of her actions, spent hours in pre-divorce arguments with her, then launched a sweeping campaign to take full responsibility for his show and to apologize for all that had gone before. In The Late Shift, he whines, breaks one small picture frame ... and gets her out of his life forever.

"At the same time, Letterman is reduced to a person singularly obsessed with taking the reins of The Tonight Show for the shallowest of reasons. Viewers may wonder why hosting a talk show on NBC at 11:30 is a childhood dream and ultimate goal, whereas hosting a talk show on NBC at 12:30 is suddenly, after ten years, a sign of failure and personal humiliation. They may also wonder how any person who has the whole TV business lining up to throw money at him could be so unhappy, so convinced of his own non-success. The answer, of course, is that the real David Letterman had a long, complicated relationship with NBC and more on his mind than can be conveyed in a few brief scenes, performed by a guy more interested in grimacing like Dave than in thinking like him."

"Marie at 15"

Public-radio reporter and documentarian Jay Allison has another of his terrific intimate portraits airing Wednesday on ABC News Nightline that I highly recommend. The piece, titled "Marie at 15," revisits and updates the story of a girl profiled by Allison in a 45-minute special Nightline that aired (and I reviewed) last spring. As I wrote last week in the Village Voice, Allison "spent months tracking four young women trying to detox and kick-start their lives from a recovery home in Massachusetts. ... What clinches the piece is Allison's unorthodox technique: he shot the whole thing using a $900 Sony camcorder. ... The result is an intimate and in-your-face chronicle ideally suited to the late-night hour."

Koppel has been on a roll of late; even his talking-head setups have been exceptional. Take the Feb. 14 encounter between Labor Secretary Reich and one of America's top downsizers, Scott Paper CEO Albert Dunlap -- one the passionate defender of the idea that businesses are people, not mere profit centers, the other an archetypal plain-talking corporate man arguing that his business benefits plenty of people, namely the millions of Americans who hold stock in it through their pensions funds and 401(k)s. Back and forth these two went, arguing forcefully and brilliantly their points of view. You will not hear a better debate on America's future this entire presidential campaign (particularly if the snooze machine from Kansas wraps up the GOP nomination).

It brings to mind something a longtime reader, Samer Farha, who works in the news business in our nation's capital, pointed out in a recent letter: "ABC News have proved time and time again that good, solid reporting will keep viewers watching. Ted Koppel does it at night, and the World News Now folks do an excellent job on overnights. Peter Jennings is always ahead of the curve on ratings for the evening newscasts. Sure, they still pander to the audience every now and then, but they do not make a habit of it. And for every story on a news-less item like O.J. that Nightline does, it does a serious, what-the-hell-are-we-doing-this-for? show." Samer takes his hat off to ABC's efforts, and so does Late Show News.

Next: Ladies Night

You hear it said that nothing much has changed in forty years of late night, except for the hosts: same kind of jokes, same kind of guests, same kind of comedy bits. But Late Night with Conan O'Brien deserves a medal for coming up with the closest thing to a breakthrough idea the week of Feb. 20-23: theme nights. I only caught one of them, Civil War Night; it was marvelous. Host, sidekick, and band were decked out in the blue and grey; a remote camera caught North and South reenacting fierce hand-to-hand combat on Madison Avenue and a local delicatessan; and Max even re-arranged the opening music to a military tempo (following a goofy time-travel sequence that had me yelling "Help me, Mister Wizrrrrrrd!").

Sandra Riggs writes, "The highlight for me was Early 80's Night. Conan and the band in skinny vinyl ties ... Andy in FGTH garb ... a TRS-80 looming ghostlike behind Conan's desk all night. They didn't overlook a thing -- even parachute pants showed up when 'Oldie' Olsen appeared in full breakdancing gear for a tribute to 'Breakin 2: Electric Boogaloo.' The night was special to those of us who spent the early 80's just trying to stay awake long enough to see the end of Night Tracks."

But Matt Ackeret, who caught Friday's show, adds, "Kennedy's appearance on last night's Late Night rates almost as high on the creep-o-meter as Crispin Glover's 'I can kick' appearance on Late Night back when Letterman hosted it!"

Beratings

Both Letterman's and Leno's camps have claimed victory in the sweeps month of February. NBC's 11:35 program won the overall race handily, averaging 4.8% of households -- about what it rated last year -- to CBS's 4.2% and ABC's 4.7% (for the 11:35-12:05 block only). Oh ho, said Letterman's people, but we won the all-important 18-34 and 18-49 age groups (2.6 to 2.5 and 2.7 to 2.0, respectively). Ah, came Leno's retort, but we won the even more crucial 25-to-54 age bracket! And so on.

Thankfully, the alt.fan.letterman newsgroup has been graced in recent days by an AOL subscriber who won't reveal his identity but who has access to the Nielsen overnight ratings in 32 metered markets. These are the fabled scores that show up each morning on the desks of all the late-night producers and make for such fascinating luncheon chatter. Actually, if you're not exposed to them too often, they are kind of fascinating. They make the usual weekly national numbers seem dull by comparison.

For instance, during the week of Feb. 12-16, Leno started with high ratings but by 11:45 p.m., after the monologue, had lost between 19% and 27% of his audience, and by the top of the hour was in a dead heat with Letterman. This is historically typical behavior by the two shows' audiences: Dave's viewers are there to see Dave, not to hear the standup act or see the stars. What wasn't typical was that during the week of Feb. 26-29, as CBS was soaring to second place in the prime-time sweeps, and delivering Dave some of his highest lead-ins in months, Late Show could not hold onto them: 20% gone after ten minutes, another 28% by midnight, much higher attrition than Leno.

Conclusions? One that suggests itself immediately is that Leno is winning late night largely on the strength of his monologue and his older viewership. While neither of these factors should cause Jay to hang his head in shame, it does bear out NBC's folly for its complicity in easing Johnny Carson out the door prematurely. The network considered Carson's plus-50's a sore spot, not a thing to boast on. Moreover, Johnny averaged a full point higher overall than Jay does now -- that's a million households that have either drifted off to another network or to sleep.

But another inescapable conclusion is that the Dave wave, that phenomenal burst of hype and euphoria that marked the first season on CBS, has gone for good. Though Letterman is putting out some of his best shows in over a year -- including last Monday's show, when he suffered unusually high attrition -- quality is no longer a harbinger of good ratings. Nor can this be laid entirely on CBS's doorstep, especially on Monday nights, when it often wins prime time.

The most important lesson to draw, however, is that ratings are like salted peanuts to Late Show News.

New Books, New Books

"David Letterman" by Frances Lefkowitz should be showing up in bookstores later this month, published by Chelsea House as part of its Pop Culture Legends series. And Doubleday will be publishing a compilation of Dennis Miller's rants next month, taken from his HBO series. (Thanks Karen Owen)

Subnormal

For unknown reasons, Saturday Night Live allowed Norm Macdonald to broadcast this joke during the Feb. 24 "Weekend Update" segment: "In Nebraska, a man was sentenced for killing a female cross-dresser who had accused him of rape and two of her friends. Excuse me if this sounds harsh, but in my mind, they all deserved to die." So far a queer-nation group has protested, but the larger question that should worry straights as well as gays is, will SNL draw the line anywhere?

Ted's Bum Rap

Speaking of protests, a number of prominent conservative Catholics, led by former defense advisor Richard V. Allen, complained to ABC over an otherwise excellent Nightline profile of presidential juggernaut Pat Buchanan Feb. 23. Anchor Ted Koppel reported that Buchanan's father had "listened to the bigoted and isolationist radio orator Father Coughlin," a report the Buchanan family later denied. Koppel apologized on the air Feb. 27 for the error. But Allen's charge that Koppel's commentary on Buchanan's Catholicism was systematically unfair, "mocked the Church, its sacrament of confession, nuns who have dedicated their lives to the Church and to the education of young people," is idiotic. It is hard to imagine a television personality these days with higher respect for religious institutions, and the moral certainty they instill, than Ted Koppel.