And Now, a Word From Our Hosts : Leno: ‘It’s Too Easy to Paint Good Guys and Bad Guys in This Situation.’

After the taping of “The Tonight Show” Thursday night, during which gentleman Jay Leno wished David Letterman best wishes at his new late-night home on CBS, Leno’s fans in the audience were not nearly as forgiving as their humble host, who for the first time in months was feeling secure about his job.

“NBC picked Jay to be Johnny Carson’s successor, and then less than a year later he’s not even sure that he has a job,” said Kathleen Cullin, 29, of Vista, who was in Burbank for the taping. “I was surprised by that. I thought they should have stuck with him.”

“And then it was rude to air it all in public,” said Cullin’s friend, Janet Conary, who was visiting from Connecticut. “It must have made him feel badly to have everybody know about all these negotiations. I think he handled it well.”

On Friday morning, in a phone interview from his home in Beverly Hills, Leno was still handling it well, defending the network that for weeks kept him dangling.

“It’s too easy to paint good guys and bad guys in this situation,” Leno said. “I understand the position (NBC president) Bob Wright was in. He was agonizing on the phone to me, calling this the toughest decision he ever faced in his life. He said David had a legitimate argument--he was not treated as well as he should have been over the last few years.”

Even though Leno is now the late-night linchpin for NBC, there was a distinct sense from him--perhaps born from years of one-night stands as a stand-up comedian--that he’s still in the hot seat, at least in his own mind. On Thursday, rather than celebrate his victory, he earnestly set out to convince the executives at NBC who did not support him that the right decision had been reached.

“I assume there were people within the network who perhaps felt David would have been the better choice,” Leno explained. “I would like to find out why they felt that way and what I can do to bring them around. I issued a blanket statement (Thursday) saying, ‘Look, the people lobbying heavily against me--it’s nothing personal, I have no ax to grind--but come talk to me. Tell me what you like and what you don’t like so we can do this right.’ ”

Leno said he had already received some responses. He would not say from whom, and he would not detail their comments, but he did indicate that some NBC executives want him to be more spontaneous and build more comedy into the show.

To Leno, the suggestions come as comfort, not criticism. Throughout NBC’s indecision, the most frustrating element for Leno was the lack of communication from management.

“When it comes down to it, I’m different than some of the people in the game here,” Leno said. “I don’t have a lawyer to look after me, nor an agent or manager. All I require is that the boss or somebody call me and say, ‘Hey, you’re doing a good job.’ I’m still a performer, and the applause and affirmation from whoever I’m working for is what I’m in the business for. I was disappointed that nobody would say, ‘I’ve been watching the show, things look good.’ I can take anything but apathy in this business. Either applaud or boo. But just don’t sit there. Give me some feedback.”

Only once, Leno said, did he lose his cool, and it was over this issue. The Monday before Christmas, Wright called Leno and told him that Letterman might be given “The Tonight Show.” Then Wright said he would be gone skiing and couldn’t be reached.

Leno recounted the conversation: “Then I heard a click. ‘Hello? Hello?’ I mean, I’m told (by Wright): ‘There’s a good chance this could happen. We don’t know where we’re going. A decision has to be made.’ Then everyone went skiing for two weeks. I’m calling mountains in Aspen, trying to call people off ski lifts. I mean, nobody could be reached. Just the fact that they would tell me this four days before Christmas and then disappear. . . .”

Soon after, Leno was on the phone with several publications wondering publicly why NBC would not stand behind him. Since then, Leno and Wright have been having regular telephone conversations.

Still, now that the matter is resolved, Leno said that he has no plans to squeeze NBC or ask for more money--even though he arguably has the network over a barrel. After all, as Leno has been quick to point out all along, “The Tonight Show” is hardly in straights. At one point, Leno even tabulated the financial facts and bottom-line profits to show NBC how well “The Tonight Show” was doing under his helm.

“I don’t think that anybody at NBC disliked me. A lot of them just felt that Dave was a proven entity, he’s gotten the job done for 11 years and this is the way they should go. And I argued that wasn’t necessarily the case,” Leno said.

“The Tonight Show,” currently the No. 2 program in late night behind behind “Nightline,” was viewed by an average of 4.7 million households a night during the November ratings sweeps. Those numbers are slightly below what Carson was pulling a year ago, but NBC is making more money because Carson used to receive the lion’s share of show profits. Advertisers are pleased with Leno’s performance, as are the bulk of managers at NBC stations, about 70 of whom Leno called directly or was contacted by over the last few weeks.

“This is not about money,” said Leno, who reportedly earns about $3 million a year, compared to the $14 million Letterman will receive from CBS and the $25 million that Carson was getting from NBC toward the end of his “Tonight Show” tenure.

“I make more than enough money,” he said. “I’m very happy. I feel that a number of people at NBC Productions put their asses on the line for me, their reputations. They backed me on this. I appreciate that, and that’s why I would not ask for anything or renegotiate. I’m not looking for more money. I appreciate the fact that the people who said they supported me did so behind closed doors as well as to my face.”

That generosity, that desire of Leno’s not to offend his faithful, has become something of a trademark. In fact, when asked what the lowest point in the whole Letterman affair was for him, Leno pointed to the realization that he might have to send his staff packing.

“The fact that I would have, oh man, moved people here and then not protected them, geez, that was the ultimate nightmare,” Leno said. “Most of the people on my staff are not television people. One writer was an advertising guy, one writer was a rabbi. They come from Omaha, Chicago, New Jersey, Pennsylvania. I physically moved people and their families here. They sold homes. In some cases, I went to banks to help them get loans by vouching that they would be working for me. And the fact that they would have lost their job and their income was devastating to me. I had made promises to them.”

Now, NBC is finally making promises to Leno.

“This whole situation is very funny,” Leno said with a touch of irony. “I mean, I’m having a good time. It kills me that this is the only job where they either say ‘You’re fired or you’ll lead us into the 20th Century.’ ” He broke off laughing.

“Yesterday at the press conference, it made me laugh that we were celebrating the fact that I didn’t get fired. People thought I was auditioning for this job. ‘Oh, it’s neck and neck who’s going to get it.’ I had the job. They would have had to fire me to give it to Dave.”

Of course, Leno is not out of the woods yet. After surviving the trial of taking over for Carson, surviving the challenge from Arsenio Hall, surviving the controversy surrounding the firing of his manager-turned-producer and surviving the threat from Letterman, Leno will have to prove himself once again come August, when he will begin competing head-to-head with Letterman on CBS.

“I must admit, it’s exactly what I expected,” he said. “The saving grace for me is the monologue, in that this is like taking a test. I don’t mean to sound like a sad Al Jolson story, but when you walk out there each night and people applaud, I’m sorry, it really does make it all worthwhile. When you write a joke, you have no idea if it’s going to be any good, but then you get a big laugh--there’s nothing like that.”