Stars and Strife: The Battle for the Late-Night Audience : Television: As ‘Tonight Show’ and ‘Arsenio’ jockey for young viewers, charges of pressuring guests and knocking the competition are surfacing.

When comedian Rosie O’Donnell’s appearance last week on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” was first booked, the show’s producers reportedly knew that she was already scheduled to appear two weeks earlier with Madonna on “The Arsenio Hall Show” to promote the summer baseball movie “A League of Their Own.”

But as her appearance on “Arsenio” drew near, sources close to O’Donnell report that “The Tonight Show” briefly tried to get O’Donnell to drop “Arsenio” so Leno could have her first. In the end, she kept her schedule with both shows.

“Tonight Show” executive producer Helen Kushnick would not comment on the situation, but she expressed frustration and concern over the number of accusations that have been flying around the late-night arena lately.

“I don’t get all this,” Kushnick said. “We’re just trying to have fun on the show. I think this whole competitive, everybody’s-got-to-be-No.-1 business is destructive to everyone.”

Two months have passed since Johnny Carson left “The Tonight Show,” and in that time the once-calm waters of late-night television have become choppy with reports of pressuring guests into exclusive appearances, releasing misleading ratings and making disparaging remarks against competitors.

The focus of competition has been between NBC’s “The Tonight Show” and the syndicated “Arsenio,” which, according to the latest national Nielsen ratings, finished just two-tenths of a ratings point behind “The Tonight Show” the week of June 29 (the last week for which national ratings are available).

Although “Arsenio” that week featured three big-name guests--Eddie Murphy, Bill Cosby and Whoopi Goldberg--and “The Tonight Show” was delayed in most of the country because NBC was showing Wimbledon highlights, that’s still the narrowest ratings margin in the history of the two late-night programs.

One reason there is so much heat between the two shows, which don’t even compete head-to-head in most cities, is that they are both aggressively jockeying for young viewers.

NBC reportedly invested $10 million in advertising to launch Leno as Carson’s successor and proudly says that Leno’s young demographics are up significantly over Carson’s. Advertising time on the show is sold out through September, Kushnick said.

And Paramount Television has reportedly backed Hall this summer with a $6-million advertising campaign to pull in high school and college kids who are on summer break and to make a move in the new late-night playing field.

But because both shows want to be the first to feature top talent, stories have been circulating for several weeks about escalating booking wars. Two weeks before his scheduled appearance on “The Dennis Miller Show,” acerbic writer P. J. O’Rourke abruptly canceled to instead do “The Tonight Show”--a decision for which Miller chastised O’Rourke on the air.

“It’s fierce, I can tell you that,” said one late-night producer, referring to the competition over guests. “Certainly from my perspective and other people who are doing these shows, they’re really being very tough, almost to the point where it’s awkward for agents and managers and publicists who want to put their people on these shows.”

Several publicists contacted for this story said that once a guest is booked for “The Tonight Show,” the program sends out a confirmation letter, part of which states that the celebrity is expected not to appear on another late-night show first. But they also said there is a similar understanding with “Arsenio” and “Late Night With David Letterman,” whether it’s spelled out in writing or not.

“If you put a guest on one show, you’re generally not going to be able to get them on another show for a few months, unless you’re dealing with a top name,” one publicist said. “It used to be easier. You knew which guests were right for Carson and which ones were best for Arsenio. There’s definitely more of a competition now. ‘The Tonight Show’ is trying to pull in and book the same type of people Arsenio was booking.”

Since Leno has succeeded Carson, the ratings for “The Tonight Show” and “Arsenio” have been impressive, helped in part by summer nights when late-night viewing is up and the stars are out to promote big movies.

Based on preliminary ratings for last week, “The Tonight Show” numbers appear to have rebounded from the week of June 29. Overall, “The Tonight Show” seems to have stabilized around a 5 rating, after slipping for several weeks following a phenomenal premiere when droves of viewers were sampling Leno (each rating point represents 921,000 TV households).

“Arsenio,” meanwhile, has been averaging ratings in the low 3s, showing improvement in the past several weeks with the help of such strong guests as Murphy and Madonna.

The competition between the two shows has even played itself out in advertisements placed in the trade paper Variety, with Paramount calling NBC’s ratings for “The Tonight Show” into question and NBC saying that Paramount is using misleading ratings to advertise “Arsenio.”

Kushnick took issue with a recent “Arsenio” advertisement featuring weekly ratings because a guest visit from Madonna made it appear that “Arsenio” was on a dramatic rise. The ad also used overnight ratings, which are generally higher than the slower-to-arrive national numbers.

Hall isn’t pleased with Leno’s ads either.

“In these trade ads, Leno puts my name and Dennis Miller’s name and other late-night shows,” Hall said. “He has pictures of himself and (band leader) Branford Marsalis up in the clouds in heaven looking down on everybody else.

“I go in with the Paramount people and I say, ‘Don’t position our ads in a way that tries to dog these guys.’ We don’t use pictures or mentions of Leno, because that’s how we kick it. We show we’re on the rise. Do we say that he’s falling? No. We don’t have pictures with wings on me rising upward and him falling from the clouds.”

The back and forth between Leno and Hall began before Leno was ever on the air, when in a national consumer magazine Hall was quoted as saying he was going to “kick Leno’s ass,” while laying out some guidelines as to who he was going to book on his show.

“We didn’t start all this,” Kushnick said. “They set up the game before we were ever on the air.”

Hall in subsequent interviews has said that his comment about Leno was taken out of context.

“In a business sense, you can’t beat the NBC machine,” Hall explained. “You can’t beat the publicity Leno got on NBC during the NBA playoffs, the kind of promotion Leno gets on NBC’s prime-time schedule. You can’t compete with that. I show commercials for my show on ‘I Dream of Jeannie’ at noon on Channel 13. But I can go out every night with the attitude of doing the best I can and trying to kick Leno’s ass.”

Before Leno took over, both shows peacefully coexisted with a split audience; Carson took the older viewers and Hall the young people. But when Leno stepped in, he went after a wider range of talent, and Hall began booking some traditionally older-skewing guests to grab what was perceived as a floating Carson audience.

Last week, for example, while Hall’s close friends Eddie Murphy and En Vogue (Hall plays basketball with the group’s manager three times a week) were on with Leno, former “Tonight Show” band leader Doc Severinsen was on Hall’s show playing the old “Tonight Show” theme after receiving clearance from Carson to do so.

“I was hanging out last night with Johnny Gill,” Hall said. “He’s a regular guest on my show, and people like Johnny Gill and En Vogue are starting to surface on Leno. The funniest to me was Leno and Gerardo. But the bottom line is, I have friends who are being offered ‘The Tonight Show’ who never thought they would be offered the show. Johnny said he’s got an offer, and he looked at me and said, ‘Yo, things are changing.’ The bottom line is things are changing.”

Leno is also giving Hall a run for his money musically by showcasing diverse musical performers, such as the alternative band Toad the Wet Sprocket, the harder-edged the Black Crowes and rapper Gang Starr. Several music industry executives indicated they now have two strong outlets to turn to for late-night bookings instead of one.

In his search for fresh acts, Leno recently featured singer Sophie B. Hawkins before her first album even came out.

“That’s unheard of,” said Bobby Colomby, senior vice president of creative development for Sony Music. “In the case of Arsenio, he recognized early the importance of music. Their sound, their lighting, the way their acts are presented are of the highest quality. But I think Jay’s people immediately recognized that as part of their strategy. They want that audience as well, and they have obviously taken measures.”

One advantage for Leno is the reach that the NBC network provides. After Simply Red performed on Leno in May, the English group’s album jumped 47 places on the charts. Tom Cochrane’s album sales have increased 40% since his performance on Leno last month.