Burbank-Manhattan Switcheroo : It’s No Coasting in the Late-Night Battle: Letterman and Leno Go On the Road, Looking to Build Up Audience Loyalty

The battle for late-night network television dominance intensifies during the next two weeks when David Letterman and Jay Leno invade each other’s home territory.

Starting Monday, Letterman, the late-night leader since switching his New York-based series from NBC to CBS this season, will originate his show from Los Angeles for a week.

And then, on May 16, the Burbank-based Leno will return the favor, pulling up stakes for a week and taking his NBC “Tonight Show” to New York.

It is all, of course, part of the networks’ May ratings sweeps hype, but there is something more involved here, as both Letterman and Leno acknowledged in interviews:

Both are disappointed with their ratings in the other guy’s back yard, and they hope their forays help erase the home-court advantage.

New York and Los Angeles are the nation’s top two TV markets and thus are critical to the success of both Letterman and Leno, whom some industry observers believe benefit naturally from the community loyalty of their home audiences.

The two comedians, while planning to switch coasts on the weekends before their sweeps excursions, have already made preliminary visits, shooting comedy sequences to beef up their shows--indicating the competitive importance they attach to their trips.

Of the brief move West by Letterman and his staff, the late-night host cracked: “It’s the largest civilian airlift in the history of aviation.”

Acknowledging the sweeps and promotion factors in the visit, he added: “We want to try to give our ratings in Los Angeles a shot in the arm. They’ve always been a little less than rewarding, from my point of view.

“The people at CBS are doing their best to make us feel comfortable--they want us to come back, like, every three or four months. They’re hoping that we will establish this as our second home.”

Despite CBS’ refurbishing of the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York for the Letterman show, does that indicate that any thought has been given to an eventual move of his series to Los Angeles, the way Johnny Carson brought “The Tonight Show” West?

“I don’t think that’s active, no,” says Letterman, who formerly owned a home here. “Who knows what the future holds? But I think for the time being, we’ve had such good luck in New York.

“It’s funny--whenever I mention it in New York City that we’d be doing the shows in Los Angeles for a week, people start to boo. So you begin to think, gee, is this really a good idea?”

Leno, well-known for his on-the-road comedy gigs throughout the years--which helped to build his popularity--seems to like the idea of visits to other cities. What, specifically, does he think can help improve his ratings showing in New York?

“We picked New York because that’s where ‘The Tonight Show’ originated,” he says. “There’s a lot of history with ‘The Tonight Show,’ and we should try to capitalize on that. If it works, we’d like to go to a lot of other cities as well.”

Leno and “Tonight” caught some flak when their live show in Boston with the “Cheers” cast following the sitcom’s finale got out of hand amid wild partying, but the comedian nonetheless maintains: “There was excitement, and people like to see you get out on the road and do something a little different.”

Where else would he like to take “Tonight”?

“I like Boston. I like Chicago. I like Detroit. I like Texas. You know, when I had Ann Richards, the governor of Texas, on, she said if I would bring the show to Austin (the state capital) for a week, she’d be my co-host and sit in every night and do the kind of Ed McMahon things. She sent me a letter confirming she would do it. I think it might be fun.”

In the meantime, both Letterman and Leno have loaded up on guests they are counting on to boost their showings in the next two weeks.

While in Los Angeles, Letterman’s scheduled list includes Bette Midler, Billy Crystal, Magic Johnson, Michael Keaton, Elvis Costello and Ray Charles. In New York, Leno will count on such names as Bill Cosby, Michael J. Fox, Spike Lee, Farrah Fawcett, Sam Donaldson, Julio Iglesias and Cindy Crawford.

Shooting the advance sequences for their visits proved instructive for the comedians.

“We could have done it without coming out there (to Los Angeles),” says Letterman, “but we wanted to make sure that the week we were in Los Angeles was loaded with special stuff. I mean, normally we don’t have the luxury of that kind of production schedule. But we wanted it to be a little like our first week of shows, so we took the extra time.”

Some examples?

“We spent a day with Zsa Zsa Gabor going to fast-food places. Then we did various little location tours. We interviewed valet parking attendants. We went door to door taking a survey regarding our shows from California. We also spent the day with Florence Henderson.”

And the differences in attitude toward his show in Los Angeles and New York?

“Well, it’s a little different,” says Letterman, “because there’s not so much very special about another TV show in Los Angeles. I mean, you’re driving to work on the Ventura Freeway and you’re stopped in traffic next to Jamie Farr.

“From an emotional standpoint, for us doing the show in California, we just feel like we just happen to be another project in production, whereas here in New York City--despite the fact that there is a lot of television here now--we kind of feel like, geez, we got this big theater, we got a show and I think that we all feel a synthetic sense of importance that you wouldn’t get in Los Angeles.”

Nonetheless, Letterman doesn’t expect his show to project a different attitude in L.A.--but Leno feels the opposite about doing his program in New York.

“Yeah,” says Leno, “I think you do adjust the attitude of the show. I think we can be a little more, sort of, in-your-face. We shot a bunch of stuff in New York on the subway, on the streets. When you walk on the street in Los Angeles, you meet a guy and then 50 feet later you meet somebody else. In New York, it’s somebody every six inches.”

Despite trailing in the ratings, Leno thinks his “Tonight Show” is “doing great. This has obviously been David’s year, and it’s a great success story. But I think also that when we went against the Olympics with their lead-in (for Letterman), we still only dropped to a 4.3 from a 4.6 or 4.7 (rating). That’s pretty good. That shows you have a core of people staying with the show.”

The Letterman-Leno battle to succeed Carson on “The Tonight Show” so captivated the American public that HBO is planning a film based on “The Late Shift,” the book by New York Times reporter Bill Carter that chronicles the story.

Letterman had been wooed by NBC to take over “Tonight” this year, even though Leno already had the job. And Leno calmly acknowledges NBC’s interest in retaining Letterman:

“It’s the type of thing where, as I’ve said, no matter what happens, everybody walks away a millionaire. I mean, egos may get bruised, but this isn’t Bosnia.”

Sizing up audience interest in the late-night story, Leno adds: “It’s the classic struggle everyone’s involved with. I mean, if you take David’s situation--underappreciated at NBC--it’s a wonderful story in that it translates into everybody’s story of what they think their own life would be: Your boss doesn’t appreciate you, you leave, your boss tries to keep you, you say no, you go across the street and you build a bigger business than your boss.

“It’s just the kind of story I would make fun of, were I not directly involved.”

Leno also speaks matter-of-factly about the decline of Arsenio Hall, who once threatened to kick the comedian’s butt as a competitor but whose show now is going off the air May 27.

“We’re both in the same business,” says Leno. “It’s still better for TV and the business to have him on than to have him off. I would much rather have Arsenio and David on than reruns of ‘Night Court’ and ‘Roseanne’ and all these sitcoms. I mean, if people would rather see a show they’ve seen 13 times than a brand-new show, how do you compete with that?”