The War for Late Night

So, if you can't tell from this latest rash of books - I've always enjoyed the "behind the scenes" of tv shows or movies. I'm one who always likes to watch the "Making of the Movie" features on DVD's (my wife always makes fun of me for that - or usually falls asleep in the middle of it). It's just always been a fascination.

A few years back, there was a big brew-ha-ha (did I even spell that right?!), about the shake-up in late-night television. For those in the know, it dealt with Jay Leno vs. Conan O'brien vs. David Letterman (sort of). All of a sudden (for those who didn't watch the shows religiously), Conan was taking over The Tonight Show, and Jay Leno moved to a 9 o'clock (MST) slot. "Interesting..." was my first reaction. I'd always enjoyed watching the late night shows (when I could stay awake long enough). I'd already noticed that Jay's opening monologue was much better than David Letterman's - but that Letterman had lots more funny skits on his show (mostly outside his theater - I loved when he would drop stuff off the roof of his building!). I had watched Conan a few times, and got his humor as well. So, I was interested to see how this new experiment with Jay at 9 was going to work. Yeah - it didn't. Colossal failure. Then, all of a sudden, Jay was back with The Tonight Show, and Conan was out of the picture (only to reappear later on TBS). I remember some news coverage at the time, with Conan being indignant that he was forced out, and never really given a chance.

So - this book gives you the background behind the whole deal - why Conan took over for Jay, why it didn't work, how the other late-show hosts (Letterman, Kimmel, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Craig Ferguson, and Jimmy Fallon) all dealt with the whole thing, and how they played small roles in the whole process as well. There's a lot in here about the negotiations that went on between Jay and NBC, Conan and NBC, and a little about Dave and CBS. As a lawyer, I found the negotiations interesting.

Overall, the entire book was good. There wasn't any part where I felt like it was "plodding", or including information solely for the sake of expanding the length (as sometimes I feel). It was a good "behind the scenes" look at the various players. If anything, it could have used a little bit more - maybe in the form of an update on how the new time slots have really worked out for everyone. But, a good read, nonetheless.

No Rest for the Dead

This one was hyped pretty highly. Even the book itself has a whole bunch of awesome reviews. Basically, the premise is they got 26 different famous mystery or thriller writers to come together and write a book together. The story takes place in San Francisco, and revolves around the death of a museum curator and his wife's later execution after being found guilty of the murder.

The introduction of the book makes it seem like there was going to be a big surprise ending at the end of the book, that you wouldn't be able to figure out until the end. The introducer even comments on the fact that a good mystery keeps you guessing until the end - without letting you figure out the plot resolution before you get there. However, they failed to do it here. Without letting you know too much, I still had at least 100 pages to go when I'd figured out what happened (or, at least, had a pretty good idea, that later proved to be right). While a few of the writers who were involved are good writers, that I've read alot (John Lescroart and Jeffrey Deaver particularly - almost anything from those two is very good!), there were many others that I'd heard of, but not really read much from. While the book itself didn't necessarily impress me - there were individual chapters from these individual authors that I did find very well-done. I may look up other books by those authors to see how their entire writing is.

Anyway - the story here is a good one, and the book was an interesting concept. I just figured out the conclusion to early to make it a 5-star for me. Probably more like 3.5.

Those Guys Have All the Fun

For those sports nuts out there (there has to be at least one somewhere who reads this blog!), this is the book for you, sort of. If you spend any time watching ESPN, and have for awhile, you'll find portions of this book interesting. Along the same lines of the "Live from New York" book detailed below, this book is almost entirely a mish-mash of interview quotes from folks who've been intimately involved with ESPN from the beginning of the network.

There's some really funny moments in the interviews - you can tell the folks really knew each other. At times, the author was good at juxtaposing the different views together - for instance you'd get a quote from someone saying "So and So would almost always do this whenever they were working with me." And then, immediately afterwards, the other guy saying something like "I would never have dreamed of doing that when I was working with him." Shows how people can have different views of their history - even if it's shared together.

Reading the book, sometimes you get bogged down in the negotiations over certain "big events" - i.e., NFL contracts, NASCAR contracts, affiliate cable station contracts, etc. As an attorney, I found those parts interesting. However, the average sports nut probably wouldn't care for those parts of the book. There are some other interesting parts about very specific stories that happened during the development of the channel. Overall, it was a good interesting read - helps put some of what they all do in perspective, and makes me want to watch it more now - just to see if I recognize more names.