‘Late Show’ Guessing Game

They are impolite questions, given that David Letterman is only one week removed from a life scare--quintuple bypass heart surgery, performed after an angiogram showed a major blockage in one of his arteries.

But how long can CBS afford to air reruns, with February sweeps two weeks away and serious audience erosion a possibility? Will Letterman acquiesce to guest hosts? And will he be able to resume his 12-hour workdays when he does return?

On Wednesday, “The Late Show” host was released from New York-Presbyterian Hospital, less than a week after his surgery. On Thursday, “Late Show” executive producer Rob Burnett, who hasn’t been speaking to the media, called into Howard Stern’s morning radio show and predicted Letterman would be back to work in less than six weeks, a month ahead of recent projections.

“We’re not scared of guest hosts,” Burnett added of the show’s current reliance on reruns. “Guest hosts may be a great way to go.”

“The Late Show’s” status will be reevaluated in another week. This, as celebrities (some only hours after Letterman’s surgery) have been offering to guest-host the show. CBS, meanwhile, is honoring Letterman’s status as a broadcasting icon by saying nothing, not wanting to upset him. “It would look pretty cruel and heartless to speculate about who we would put in his chair,” said a CBS source.

But given that networks are in the moneymaking--and not care-giving--business, the network is mulling alternative plans, should serious audience erosion become evident as the weeks of “Late Show” reruns mount. Sources say, however, that Letterman’s contract gives him the final call on guest hosts.

Historically, Letterman’s vacations are spread out, so that viewers may not even be aware he’s gone, says Rino Scanzoni, executive vice president and managing director at Mediavest Entertainment, a media buying firm. “In this case, there’s been so much publicity, you’d have to be hidden in a cave on the moon not to know he’s not there,” says Scanzoni, adding that CBS is probably prepared to pay back advertisers if the audience drops precipitously.

Audience erosion isn’t apparent yet, as “Late Show” reruns this week performed as expected, with about a 10% drop-off from “Late Show” originals, said David Poltrack, CBS’ executive vice president in charge of research. This season, “The Late Show” has been averaging about 4 million viewers, an increase over last year but still about 2 million viewers behind rival “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” on NBC, according to Nielsen Media Research.

While CBS figures out how to get creative with reruns, there isn’t much of a blueprint for the situation. In 1960, “Tonight Show” host Jack Paar suddenly walked off the show for a month, angry that one of his jokes was censored. About two years later, NBC had another, 26-week hole to fill with guest hosts when Paar’s replacement, Johnny Carson, couldn’t get out of a previous contractual obligation.

But Leno and Letterman, say insiders, are workaholics with such a stranglehold on their respective shows that guest hosts hardly seem an option. Indeed, says Scanzoni, with Letterman gone, Leno can now corner the market on premium guests.

The media, meanwhile, have been having a good time suggesting Letterman’s temporary replacement. Among the names floated: Jerry Seinfeld, CBS comedy stars Ray Romano and Kevin James, comedian Chris Rock and Stern.

“If David wanted to have guest hosts, anyone he called would respond,” said George Shapiro, Seinfeld’s manager, adding that Seinfeld feels the call has to come from Letterman--not CBS.

The “Late Show” void comes in the wake of a splashy appearance Jan. 12 by First Lady and prospective New York Senate candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, which drew an estimated 11 million viewers, nearly triple the 4 million viewers “The Late Show” averaged during November sweeps and the show’s biggest audience since the 1994 Winter Olympics.

With “The Late Show” now likely to sit out February sweeps, one of the three ratings periods stations use to negotiate advertising rates, CBS is hoping those same advertisers will be sympathetic to Letterman’s plight and not gauge the show’s popularity when its host is on the mend. For CBS, too, Letterman’s illness could be ideally suited for a big promotional return in March, when millions of young men--the traditional Letterman audience--are tuning in for the NCAA basketball tournament.

Letterman himself has been issuing jokes through Burnett all week, apparently to reassure viewers that he’s still the same old ironic Dave. “I am thrilled to be out of the hospital,” he said Wednesday, in a statement released through Rubenstein Associates, the public relations firm handling the crisis. “I plan to spend the weekend doing some heavy lifting and playing handball.”

Dr. Selvyn Bleifer, a cardiologist and associate clinical professor at UCLA, says most people are “fully recovered” from a surgery like Letterman’s by the end of six weeks, and that some of his patients have been back to work in two weeks.

“It’s important to remember that once he has the operation and the arteries are bypassed, the circulation to the heart is now virtually normal. So his heart is better than it was before, and the recovery period is necessary because they had to open the chest and close the chest. . . . This is a wake-up call that he has a problem. He wants to do everything he can to prevent a recurrence of the problem.”

Does that include hosting a late-night talk show? Though Letterman is notoriously self-critical when it comes to himself and his work, some doubt he’ll want to stay away from work any longer than he has to.

“His whole day was about work and keeping himself healthy,” said Jeff Altman, among Letterman’s circle of comedian friends from the Los Angeles comedy scene of the 1970s and early ‘80s, when Letterman was a regular at the Comedy Store and Improv.

More often than not, Altman said, Letterman’s day would go as follows: Wake up at 4 a.m., run seven miles. Get to work at 9, then spend the next 12 hours at “The Late Show.”

“I think that Dave will be looking forward to getting back to work, if for no other reason than he’ll be bored senseless,” Altman said.