Truce Declared in Late-Night Booking Wars

A week ago Friday, Steven Seagal made his first appearance on David Letterman’s “Late Show” to hype his new action film, “On Deadly Ground.” Last Tuesday, Seagal visited the syndicated late-night talk show of his friend, Arsenio Hall, for the same reason. Two nights later, Seagal could be seen chatting up his movie with Jay Leno on “The Tonight Show.”

So, whatever happened to those late-night Booking Wars?

Like most great battles, the often fierce behind-the-scenes struggles among late-night TV producers to secure exclusive bookings for top stars has run its course. There’s a late-night armistice in effect, and guests are now roaming freely between Letterman, Leno and Hall.

“We’re in a new age here,” said Paul Bloch of Rogers & Cowan, who worked on the publicity campaign for “On Deadly Ground.” “Everybody understands that you can do two or three of the shows and, provided the actor wants to do them, it doesn’t hurt anybody. It certainly helps us.”

Not as clear, however, is which show is the favorite among Hollywood celebrities and the publicists who arrange their appearances. Ratings, demographics, physical proximity and personal preference all are factors that get weighed in the decision.

After six months of ratings preeminence at 11:35 p.m. on CBS, Letterman is landing high-profile guests who never appeared on the host’s more caustic 12:35 a.m. NBC program, such as Seagal, Sean Connery, Rosie O’Donnell, Jeremy Irons and Sally Fields. And he gets some of them to engage in daring stunts and gimmicks. Alec Baldwin was recently seen driving a snowmobile on the roof of a nearby parking garage, and Connery flew in on a jet pack in October to disprove worldwide reports that he was terminally ill.

But Letterman does not get all the best bookings, by a long shot.

“The show that everyone looks up to creatively and wants to be on is Letterman’s show,” said the head of one major talent agency. “The show that you’re on because you’re on the West Coast and it does a rating and you want to promote something is Leno’s show.”

Letterman tapes “Late Show” on Broadway in New York, while Leno tapes “The Tonight Show” in Burbank. There’s little doubt that location plays a key element in booking both shows.

“It’s purely geographic,” said Pat Kingsley, president of the public-relations firm PMK. For example, she placed Tom Hanks on Letterman in December when he was doing an Eastern publicity tour for the film “Philadelphia,” while Roseanne Arnold will do Leno this week because she’s still shooting the ABC sitcom “Roseanne” in Los Angeles.

“If clients are back east, it’s an automatic opportunity to do Letterman. Out here, it’s easier to try to put them on Leno,” Kingsley said.

“In the case of Tim Allen, who has done both shows, and of course can do both shows, the location in New York just becomes a headache,” offered Allen’s manager, Rick Messina. Allen did “The Tonight Show” last week to promote his ABC sitcom “Home Improvement,” TV’s top-rated program, for the February ratings sweeps.

“As it is, when Tim does ‘The Tonight Show,’ he runs over during a lunch break at Disney (in Burbank), does it really quick and then runs back,” Messina said. “So the convenience is much better for a West Coast-based artist with a business schedule.”

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Publicity strategists also look at the different audiences they want to reach. Letterman is hot right now, with a heavy concentration of educated young adults watching. Leno has maintained his broader, older audience. And Hall, whose ratings are much lower than those of the other two, scores with young urban viewers, especially women.

“What you basically try to do is cover all demographics,” said Marleah Leslie, who handles publicity for a stable of comedians. “The strategy is you want to look at the demographic of the movie, and you want to figure out which talk show is geared toward the audience of that movie.”

When Leslie booked Jim Carrey, whose film “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective” was the surprise winner at the box office the past two weekends, she believed she could hit a wide enough audience by just scheduling him with Leno and Hall, who tapes his show in Hollywood.

Familiarity with the host can make a difference too. For Robert De Niro’s directorial debut with “A Bronx Tale,” the publicity-shy actor turned down Letterman, according to “Late Show” executive producer Robert Morton, but agreed to do “The Tonight Show” and Fox’s failed “Chevy Chase Show.” De Niro reportedly appeared on Chase’s show as a favor to his friend Chase.

De Niro’s publicist, Stan Rosenfield, would only say: “Certain artists have personal relationships with the host of a show that they just happen to work better with.”

The relaxed attitude on all the talk shows is a breath of fresh air to managers, agents and publicists. When Leno took over for longtime “Tonight Show” host Johnny Carson in 1992, late-night TV became a hotbed of news with reports of high-pressure booking tactics, which resulted in NBC firing “Tonight Show” executive producer Helen Kushnick.

“After the problems that came about after the so-called Booking Wars, we realized we had to be more lenient,” explained NBC spokeswoman Jennifer Barnett. “We like to have first shot at the best guests, but we don’t worry about it if we don’t get them first. If Dave has them first, we’re still willing to have them.”

Although “The Tonight Show” has relinquished its late-night ratings crown to “Late Show,” Leno has managed to retain roughly the same size audience he had before Letterman moved opposite him. According to CBS and NBC research, viewers are tuning in to see their favorite host, not their favorite guest. So featuring a big guest first amounts to little more than bragging rights.

“My feeling is, by the mere power of our audience, I like to have the guest on first,” said “Late Show’s” Morton. But he was trying hard at press time last week to get Kim Basinger to appear with Letterman a week after she was on with Leno. “If a guest does ‘The Tonight Show’ first, it’s not the end of the world,” Morton said.*