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 | | From: | The Starmaker | | Subject: | Johnny and Joan | | Date: | Mon, 24 Jan 2005 01:38:23 GMT |
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 | ...By early 1986 negotiations were getting serious, and Rivers had to
make a decision. Staying at NBC and The Tonight Show meant security. If
she left, there would be no coming back. In her memoir, Still Talking
(1991), Rivers recounts what proved to be the turning point: “Then a
friend—a real friend, [NBC vice president for special services] Jay
Michelis—smuggled me a list prepared by NBC naming the ten successors if
Johnny [Carson] retired. My name was not on it. I almost died.” NBC’s
president Brandon Tartikoff denied to her that there was any such list,
but for Rivers it was yet another slight by the network.
...The man who may have let the cat out of the bag was, by his own
admission, Fox programming executive Garth Ancier. It was known that Fox
was about to announce the host of their new late-night show. After a
frustrating period in which NBC executives were not returning her calls,
suddenly it was Rivers’s people who were incommunicado. Brandon
Tartikoff was able to put the pieces together, and he called his former
employee and asked him point blank if Fox was planning to launch a
late-night talk show with Rivers.
Ancier was conflicted. “I said, ‘I can’t comment.’ I didn’t want to lie
to him. I also didn’t want to tell him. But based upon that, he said, ‘I
have to take that as a yes.’ And he immediately called Johnny Carson. I
then called Joan. Joan tried to call Johnny, but he was on the phone
with Brandon...
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