Analysis of “The Late

Shift”

August 8, 2010
Professor Denise Ogden
BA 322
Summer 2010
Team #9
Daniel Butler
Katelyn Roberts
Melinda Verbrigghe
Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION Page 3
MOVIE SUMMARY Page 4
TERM RELATIONSHIP Page 6
ANALYSIS Page 12
CONCLUSION Page 13
WORKS CITED Page 14
 INTRODUCTION

This course has been designed to teach the students enrolled the concepts of

negotiation and how to prepare for negotiations that we may find ourselves in. Every person is

affected by negotiations in every aspect of their lives. From bargaining on whose turn it is to

take the dog outside to negotiating for a salary increase at your place of employment, negotiation

affects us in ways that we often do not even realize. The art of negotiation, and it is most

definitely an art, is something that many people are afraid to enter into due to their lack of

understanding. This course has covered many aspects of the negotiation procedure so that we

can begin understanding the reasons people do what they do when encountered with a

negotiation situation. The course has laid a framework for us to work off of and to continually

practice and improve our negotiating skills.

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 MOVIE SUMMARY

“The Late Shift” is about the behind the scenes negotiations that occurred in 1993

when Johnny Carson was leaving the Tonight Show. The movie is set at NBC’s studios and

begins with the assumption that Johnny Carson would be retiring after his 30th anniversary of

hosting the show. This assumption is made by both David Letterman and Jay Leno with no real

evidence that this is true. Jay’s agent, Helen Kushnick, starts negotiating with NBC first by

using what seems like under-handed methods to secure Jay’s spot as the new Tonight Show host.

She is very foul-mouthed and everyone seems to tolerate her. She then leaks to the newspaper

that Jay is going to replace Johnny at the end of the season even though she has no real basis for

this. Jay is very upset by the headlines and calls Johnny to tell him that he was in no way

involved with the leak. When David Letterman sees the leak, he begins to worry about his

position with NBC and whether or not he is going to get his life-long dream of being the Tonight

Show host. While Dave maintains a pretty low-key approach to the situation, almost as though

he doesn’t care how it ends up, Jay’s agent Helen is constantly approaching the NBC executives

pushing for a deal. It is due to Helen’s tenacity and Dave’s seemingly lack of interest coupled

with his longer contract that prompts the NBC executives to cut a deal with Jay Leno for a

substantial amount of money and making him the host of the Tonight Show once Johnny retires

on Memorial Day. In addition to this, Helen secures the role of executive producer of the

Tonight Show. By the time Letterman is aware of this deal, he decides to get an agent to help

him negotiate with other networks in the hope that NBC will not want to lose him and thus give

him the Tonight Show. Due to Helen’s excessive use of force and bad decision making while

producing the Tonight Show, the NBC executives almost decide to give the job to Letterman just

to be rid of her. They decide instead to let her self-destruct and then inform Jay Leno that he

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must part ways with her or else he would be fired as well. Ultimately Jay makes the decision to

part with Helen which ensures his place as the Tonight Show host. David’s agent Mike Ovitz

has secured several good offers from the other networks and one exceptional offer from CBS that

he strongly urges Letterman to take. Letterman, seeing how NBC treated Johnny and how

wishy-washy they have been in the last year ultimately decides to take the CBS offer. By taking

the offer, this puts Letterman and Leno in direct competition for late night television. Letterman

was beating Leno until Leno had a controversial guest on and every since then Leno has

continued to be number one in the ratings.

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 TERM RELATIONSHIP

The first term to be discussed is distributive bargaining. This is a very broad concept and a very

integral part of the negotiation process. It means one side wins, the other loses, in this type of

negotiation, both sides could win, if you are considering only NBC and one host, but NBC had

three stars competing for one TV show, two of which represented the future of late night

television. NBC knew Carson was going to retire, and they knew they had to replace him with

someone. The general perception was that NBC had David Letterman in line for the job, NBC

however was torn, they wanted to keep Letterman and Leno but thought Leno would be best for

the 11:30 slot. So NBC had enough options to get what they wanted for the tonight show, the

focus of who wins and who loses then turns to the battle between Letterman and Leno. The quote

on the box of the movie reads “Two Heads, One Had to Fall” and one did, it was Letterman,

forced to sign with another network, CBS after finding out that NBC was going with Leno. Leno

won, Letterman lost, but his consolation prize was not small, he got a huge deal with CBS and

his own 11:30 slot. NBC won and lost in the way that they got their man for the Tonight Show,

but lost a huge talent in Letterman for the follow up show, and now had to compete with

Letterman’s show night in and night out.

The next term to be discussed relates to Leno’s agent Helen Kushnick, Helen was a stern

negotiator with a fiery temper, which is why it should come as no surprise that she was frequent

user of hardball tactics. Hardball tactics can be used to one’s advantage or disadvantage in a

negotiation, they can also be ethical or unethical. Kushnick displayed an example of all four of

those effects of hardball negotiations, which panned out well for Jay Leno, but ended up getting

Kushnick fired from NBC and Leno. First, all of her negotiations were distributive; she wanted

the best for Jay and herself no matter the cost. One ethical hardball tactic she used was when she

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told the heads of NBC that she could move Leno out of there if she wanted, and forced them into

preliminary contract talks. On the contrary, an example of unethical hardball tactics occurred a

week after she threatened NBC with Jay’s departure that she leaked a phony story to the tabloids

that read of Johnny Carson’s retirement, and named Jay Leno his successor. This was totally fake

and quite frankly was just propaganda that Kushnick used to heat the seats of NBC’s executives,

this put anyone that had a stake in late night TV in an uproar, it made questions of Carson’s

retirement surface, questions of what will now become of Letterman, and many more. This can

be equated to smear tactics that politicians are often slammed for using. That being said both of

these hardball tactics displayed an advantage for Jay Leno, it gave them more and more

bargaining power for their position, and NBC less bargaining power. Later on in the film,

Kushnick showed how too much hardball can be fatal to your position. Former President Reagan

was giving a speech and it was going to run into a special Live Tonight Show, for which

Kushnick was now executive producer, the speech ran long and she phoned the executive of new

operations for NBC, screaming and demanding they cut to the Tonight Show. When they did not

do that Kushnick made the audience leave, cancelled the show, NBC barley had enough time to

go to a repeat and almost went black. Following this irrational action by Kushnick, NBC gave

Leno an ultimatum, either he left with Kushnick or he could stay but had to fire Kushnick. Jay

chose the latter; he fired Kushnick because she failed to maintain a little composure and went too

far.

One part of the movie that stood out to us and was easily related to text we remember reading in

the book was how Kushnick used alternatives to gain leverage, everyone knows the importance

of alternatives but Kushnick leveraged them in a genius way. At a black tie event that harbored

big executives from all the networks, she approached the NBC executives and bluntly told them

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that she had gotten an offer from CBS that was pretty handsome and demanded that she and

Leno be offered some sense of security about the future. CBS’s offer was a viable alternative, but

she knew that due to Leno’s loyalty he wanted to stay with the Tonight Show. So now she had a

leveraged position because if NBC were to let Leno walk they would have to compete with him

every night, but they could not force Carson to retire, and they knew if they announced a

successor, Letterman would walk. Kushnick knew the kind of position the networks were in and

used an initial offer of an alternative agreement to push the side she wanted the deal with, NBC

into making an agreement.

Another point in this negotiation process that we personally found particularly intriguing was

when Letterman’s agent found a way to abandon a committed position by restating the

commitment, this concept can be found in chapter 2 of the main text. Letterman was signed to a

contract with NBC and a clause in that contract was that he could not pursue work for other

networks, and that was the committed position, the agent weaseled his way out with a couple of

loopholes. Letterman could not pursue work with a competitor, so the agent baited the

competitors to come to Letterman, once they all made initial pitches, the agent started

negotiating with the NBC people. The part that was genius was the fact that the two parties

agreed to a 3 month extension that in turn loosened up the reins on communications with

potential suitors. In the next couple of months Letterman was told that NBC could not offer him

the Tonight Show, but wanted to keep him at 12:30, at that point Letterman and his agent went

with the deal at CBS, a deal where Letterman made out huge, and got everything he wanted

except for the brand name Tonight Show.

The next point of discussion is a very pivotal idea for negotiations and is very important in the

context of this movie and the negotiations that took place in it. Agents, of course this was very

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important, the deals that occurred can almost be solely credited to the craftiness of the two agents

involved. First let’s talk about Kushnick; she was hired by Leno in accordance to the principle

described in the book as the unilateral strategy for employing agents for negotiators that have

low familiarity with the process. Leno let Kushnick do everything, he was quoted saying he was

“just the guy that tells the jokes” and as a result he was at the mercy of Kushnick’s decisions.

Luckily for Leno she was one of the best in the business and was a very large part of Leno

getting the nod for the Tonight Show. She had high familiarity with both sides, their cultures,

how they did business; she knew show business and used all the factors together to get what she

wanted. Letterman, on the other hand, decided later in the game that he should get an agent, and

his situation relates to the principle of the Joint strategy that assumes the negotiator has high

familiarity with the process and factors. In this strategy the negotiator explores all flexible

options to get what they want out of the negotiation, Letterman’s agent did exactly this, he

played the networks against each other and used the uncertainty in the NBC organization to get

Letterman, the stellar deal he got from CBS. These agents transformed the whole process and

that is why this movie was so compelling because it displays the behind the scene stuff that

really made the deals happen in the order in which they did.

The final segment of this discussion focuses on the Best Practices. We deemed this appropriate

for a wrap up segment of the term relationship portion of this paper because in essence the best

practices wrap up what it means to be a successful negotiator. The first practice to discuss is the

BATNA; the BATNA was the key point of leverage for both sides in this negotiation process, at

first Leno was offered the deal for CBS which compelled Kushnick to pressure the NBC people

into naming Leno successor. Letterman had offers from all networks including a deal from CBS

worth double what they offered Leno, this is what his people used to try to bargain with NBC.

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The problem for Letterman was that NBC had already negotiated a deal with Leno long before

Carson announced his retirement this almost voided his leverage position with NBC, but the fact

that he was on NBC and that many outside of NBC still thought that Letterman was in the

running, it made his bargaining power with the competitors stronger. The next best practice to

discuss is one that can be the strategy that grants a negotiator the most leverage, the willingness

to walk away. This is a very important aspect of negotiation, because it gives the negotiators the

ultimate leverage, and displays the fact that a party is willing to part with a deal they are not

committed to. Letterman used this practice before he had any offers from other networks, when

the NBC people took the liberty of telling him they chose Leno he told them he wanted out of his

contract, he let them know he would go as far as quitting to let them know he wanted the tonight

show and it opened a whole new can of worms for the process. When examining the proposed

deals that Ovitz got for Letterman from the competitors Ovitz mentioned the fact that CBS was

willing to make Letterman their go-to-guy in late night which he stated, “could not put a price

tag on.” This statement can be equated with the best principle of remembering the intangibles.

Intangibles are very important in any situation because they give the negotiator a sense of

purpose or accomplishment even if the financial terms could not be met. In Letterman’s case, the

privilege of hosting the Tonight Show was an intangible to an extent, but with the extra financial

perks, and the intangible of being the number one act held enough intrinsic value for Letterman

to accept the deal. Reputation, rationality and fairness are very important to any individual in a

negotiation, and it is a best practice any negotiator should follow. Kushnick did not follow this

best practice; she turned on the NBC executives and personally insulted them, forcing them and

Jay Leno to have nothing more to do with her. If Kushnick would have been more conscious of

this practice she could have saved her career. Finally, as a result of the overall negotiation, both

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Letterman and Leno used the experience to learn from, this can be justified by the fact that they

both have very successful careers despite being in direct competition with each other.

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 ANALYSIS

Jay's manager Helen did ultimately get the job done; she was able to land Jay the host of

the Tonight Show. However, she also could have led to Jay's downfall with the Tonight Show

had he decided to not fire her when NBC urged him to. This movie helped to show how nice and

honest Jay Leno really is. Helen's personality was abrasive and ensured that Jay did not get

walked all over by NBC or other networks. Once Jay got the position on the Tonight Show,

Helen became overly confident and did anything and everything to make sure she got her way.

Helen's negotiating style was always distributive. In every negotiation she encountered she was

only searching one outcome, to win.

As stated above, she released false information to the paper that Johnny Carson was

leaving the Tonight Show. She even lied to Jay when asked if she was the one who released the

information. Ethically this raises questions. Legally can she release that kind of information?

Yes, but is it ethically right to do so? In this case we think, no. A person should not resort to

lying or any other extreme hardball tactic to win a negotiation. Helen Kushnick however was this

type of person and this led to the destruction of her career in the end.

Letterman was very smart in his negotiating tactics. He made sure to plan and see how

many other stations wanted to book him on their 11:30 spot. The only stipulation in his contract

was that he was not able to pursue the other networks. His motive in this was to try and get NBC

to realize the star they had in Letterman and offer him the host position on the Tonight Show.

Letterman was determined to obtain a spot on a network at 11:30 PM. ultimately he wanted to

land the spot on the Tonight Show on NBC, but realized his chances were slim.

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 CONCLUSION

Letterman never used hardball tactics or did anything that raised any ethical questions

during his negotiations. Ovitz fully planned out the negotiations which ensured that Letterman

would get the best possible deal in the end. Jay Leno became the most successful when he took

over his career and Helen was fired. This movie shows that proper negotiating techniques

ultimately end in successful negotiations. It also depicts how essential planning is in the

negotiation process, Using illegal and unethical tactics may work in the short run, but it is

important to understand the proper process of negotiating to become a successful negotiator.

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 WORKS CITED

Carter, B., & Armitage, G. (1996, February, 24). In (Executive producer), The Late Shift. Home
Box Office (HBO).

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