George Schweitzer

okay so 1987 97 2000 like so for 30 years you were the the marketing guy for cbs i was i was the marketing guy for 30 years yes that's unbelievable i mean and i mean how many folks have gone into and out of the network television business and and and and worked their entire career but when they retired um had a two-page spread in variety about it oh my gosh like legendary career behind the scenes i started my my first job that wasn't a job it was more of a career was a marketing job for for costco wholesale i i know about marketing it fascinates me um not many folks have that long of a tenure with one company and such where by the end of it one of the top publications of that genre does a spread about you um you've been retired now for two years how much do you miss it if at all well you're very generous mike i appreciate that you and uh my my relatives uh appreciated the two-page spread and variety no it was it was honor i'm flattered um i uh i had a good run with great people that i worked for and worked with uh i was at cbs for 48 great years uh and you know i know that kind of longevity is not uh is not a uh a practice anymore in any kind of business so i feel very fortunate uh yeah and the last uh three decades as the essentially the marketing guy for cbs and my job was to get people to watch tv so that changed dramatically uh it was a lot of fun it was exhilarating exciting uh anxiety producing yeah frustrating at times many wins uh many losses um we we learn more from our failures than our successes as the as the adage goes it's all it's all true what they say uh but um it was remarkable and uh would would not have uh would not have given up a minute what i what i miss i think is what everyone who kind of leaves a long-term situation misses and that's the people i miss the action but i don't miss the um the pressure um they they say you don't know what kind of pressure you're under until you don't have it anymore and again i believe that is true because um you know the some of the lines in my face uh have uh disappeared and um i i missed the tank i don't miss the tension yeah it was a very tense business we were extremely competitive we got as you well know our report card every day with the ratings uh uh they came across first a fax machine and then a voicemail and finally email so um you know we were in a rare business where um you know we made a decision on on monday and we saw the result on tuesday yeah whether millions of people um responded as as viewers and so on so anyway that's kind of the capsule of it but uh it was a great run i really enjoyed it and um i i miss the atmosphere and the competition but not the stress and strain at all that that totally makes sense to me um you know i one of my favorite uh movies of all time it's actually based on a stephen king book but a lot of folks don't even realize that as a shawshank redemption and it talks about uh the idea of being institutionalized no matter what it is that you're doing when you do something for decades long and then suddenly your background completely flips and changes at the at the time of this recording we are uh just past the 29 year mark of when dave uh came over and changed late night forever i cannot wait to get into this with you oh my god this is amazing um but it's september right now and i just wonder is there some sort of uh like as the season begins is there a part of you going oh i i should be i should be stressed right now i should be like is there a party that's institutionalized at the beginning of the tv season or has that part left you and you haven't been institutionalized by this whole thing oh i always think about september but i think about october november december i mean we i used to say that the geography of our calendar never changed but the ingredients did so we knew that september was fall tv and football we knew that november was you know sweet period and and high interest specials december was holiday shows january was nfl playoffs february was the grammys march was march madness april was the masters you know we we kind of had this geography of the calendar set in our in our heads um no i look for the last i'd say 10 years we were on a steady decline of not emphasizing the fall premiere as much because um everyone we went to kind of like the universal calendar and everyone's premiering shows at different times so you know in fact you sometimes you were better off not premiering in september when everyone was attacking everybody else um but you know look i missed the hoopla of what the fall premiere was um and you know the the history of the fall premiere came many many many years ago before my time when the automotive companies all brought out their new car lines in september and needed a way to advertise it and so essentially when they talked about tv advertising it was the automotives that pushed in the sponsorship of programming when they sponsored full programs and they said we want you know the new chevrolet or the new fords to be unveiled on the so-and-so show and we'll do it in september and that's essentially after the summer hiatuses there's also a time when they did 39 original shows and then you had 13 weeks of repeats so i mean gosh life has changed but i like the current format of um of bringing shows out a few in september and you dibble dabble some in october november people have a hunger for the new uh and if you cluster a few new together uh whether it's at one network or several um then it becomes more of an event and you can get more focus yeah and i think the focus is important i mean i'm all for apple and hulu and netflix putting out a new show whenever they have a new show ready but it doesn't to me get the kind of attention that the focus of a fall premiere um did and remember there was you know something called tv guide yeah yeah the largest circulated publication in the world okay and it would put out a full preview issue that was three or four hundred pages yes most of that was advertised of course uh the the the it's funny how you talk about how this this preceded you and it was the automotive companies that uh that drove it uh we talked about marketing with this stuff and i'm fascinated like again fascinated by this because i have a background in marketing and the idea i think about broadcast history and marketing like like you know ironically westinghouse was the company that bought cbs later on like like you but you think about the past with appliance companies like westinghouse or ge and the car companies at its inception uh television broadcasting i mean all broadcasting but television broadcasting in particular and these companies hand in hand like absolute from product placement to like you said the placement of of of their new lineups being released all of that these two uh uh business i wouldn't say businesses but it's multiple businesses in bed with broadcasting goes right back to the very very beginning sure absolutely um you know tobacco yeah automotive and beer you know fueled the the industry from the beginning and commercials and uh presentations and that's the way that business went for a long time until i'd say the late 50s early 60s when that match so okay i want to uh i i can't wait to get into the letter minute of all i have a very very special top ten for list for us by the way to end this episode so let's not let's finish with that um cbs promo slogan best cbs promo i had that on my wall we're starting we're starting with that only in the sense of um bringing dave over okay i haven't had very many people who will go deep with me on this particular subject folks who are have listened to a lot of these or viewed a lot of these programs will will sort of roll their eyes until they hear used to start talking about it but i am fascinated i love bill carter's books um and and and talking about the history of late night all of that um folks today the genesis of this show is my 25 year old daughter-in-law who who saw a bit um and and and and didn't realize it was a letterman bit that she lifted that was that that person lifted and and i'm like no no you got to understand the history of this stuff and and i'll bore my kids to tears talking about johnny and and how powerful johnny was and and and how for 30 years no network could compete at 11 30 and every network tried they tried to figure it out to the point where abc started just kind of counter programming okay let's just do a new show instead and all of that i love cbs's role in in all of this um in the idea that they were always trying to counter program trying to come up with something that could compete with the franchise that was the tonight show and had had never been done ever and and uh you know flashes in the pan here and there with with joey bishop or or or somebody else but but but at the end of the day um cbs tried to counter program a couple of times i'm super curious about like i think about the late um it was the the the drama series that they tried to write prime time after prime time prime time after prime time thank you pat sajak like okay so you were there during those guiltiest charges it was there for jack okay i'm such a gigantic letterman fan and pat sajak is one of my favorite letterman punch lines of all time anytime he mentions pat i get a huge grin on my face and all that because it's it's people don't understand the stranglehold that nbc had and where i go deep isn't the fact that you know and i to all respect to mr leno and everything that he said he talks about oh we came in at number one and we left at number one yeah no no no it's not that you're number one it's the fact that somebody could come in and compete be on the same level never mind the first 18 months um but but could actually compete create a stranglehold you were the marketing guy who got to finally crack that nut you raised your hand with pat sajak okay crontan after print okay but then suddenly there's a summer where all you heard was same dave new new channel new like that's you right new time new time new channel if you go on to don giller's channel he has an entire retrospective of an entire hour and a half of the lead up to the very first late show we just celebrated the 29 year anniversary of when that happened can you talk a little bit about what late night was the stranglehold that johnny had what you guys did to try and counter program was it a frustrating thing was it a you know i want to hear about that and then i want to hear about what it was like during those times when when letterman steamrolled in there when you guys realized you had the chance to get them that whole thing this is one of the most fascinating times in broadcast history because a shift like that had never happened and i just i'm so grateful that i get to talk to somebody who as i'm saying these words you know you're you're actually someone who appreciates the fact that i'm interested in this stuff well i was afraid i told you that i would forget that i've forgotten a lot of this but now that you bring me back to the moment more of stories and thoughts are popping into my head um i i would tell you it's one of the great great times of my career if i if i had you know the top 10 moments it would be in the top two um getting letterman was so exciting i give all credit to howard stringer um who was the president of cbs broadcasting at the time and a great um believer as as mr paley was who founded the network who who founded started cbs and and ran it uh owned it um for for most of his life uh it's about show business and and howard um heard the rumblings that dave might be available and interested and then of course nbc made the decision to go with jay and that you know put it kind of a public then it was more of a public i wouldn't say auction but it was a showcase a presentation abc was in it you know oh of it's one of the greatest uh setups in history with what mike ovitz did to have these quarters show up yeah yeah and and the courtesans did uh but uh and i was not uh into the in the negotiations you know that was howard and the entertainment folks and the business folks but you know howard wanted letterman and howard knew the value of talent he had run the news division you know the value of talent there uh behind and in front of the camera and and he was determined and i'll never forget when he got the phone call uh we were in a phone booth there their attention viewers and listeners there were something called phone booths and that's where you put they were public telephones and you put money in them to make a phone call uh we were at a press tour event at the what's it called the lowe's santa monica hotel which is a beach front hotel owned by lowe's which was the lowest corporation which was owned by larry tisch who at that point owned cbs yep and howard was the president broadcasting and i was the marketing guy similar cast of characters and he was going to get or make the phone call uh or he was told that michael vitz was calling him yeah but he was not reachable because he was about to give a presentation at this cbs press event at this hotel uh in santa monica and so we went to a phone booth and made the he sat there making the call and i when some others were standing beside him and i don't i can't honestly tell you mike what the signal was or what the thing i think he just hung up the phone and said we got him the smile probably said it all i mean and we just well it was exhilaration and exhaustion and i think we just couldn't believe it we just couldn't believe it it was so great it was game it was game-changing yeah i mean look i was there also when we lost the nfl and that was game changing too well i'm gonna get into that for sure for sure that was yeah but anyway yeah getting dave um is you know getting a franchise and i i i liken it to when bill paley stole jack benny from nbc jack benny was the letterman carson whatever it was not late night he was a prime time comedy entertainer had a show the most popular show on radio at the time and paley went out offered him you know a ton of money and and and a reason to come and he switched from nbc to cbs and in fact i studied the strategies there when we got dave to see if there were any clues or little marketing gems we could pick up because i saw it as a similar situation that it was this same jack benny but going to a different home at a different time and it was just like that and i still have the jack benny is coming to cbs print ads um you know um in in my collection of uh of tv ephemera um so i i looked at those ads i i looked but it was it was a huge talent get and with you know thank you for your nice comments about you know what we did and what our team did but look david letterman is a singular franchise player and he brings his own audience what we had to do was convince other audience members who may not have been as familiar with dave to come you know the the the marketing uh you target much exactly like a bullseye and the center of the bullseye is your you know use your usual the low hanging fruit i mean the people are going to be there sure the people that be there are dave fans right so they're all coming yep so the his fans are coming they're the center then you go to the first ring the next ring um uh in the bullseye target and that's you know people who watch dave they wouldn't consider them you know loyal viewers every night but they're certainly familiar with dave and his humor and are willing to give it a try and then you go to the next ring the next ring and the farther you go from the center you know the more outliers you have they're often not worth chasing it's really you know getting it's really getting the the the center and the couple of rings there and then building the franchise and look we knew this was no secret dave is a franchise this monumental shift johnny is gone leno is on you know um letterman is coming to cbs in an hour earlier this is going to be just um the focus of everything and it was you know august 30th as i remember of 93 and uh on a hot and steamy day and um you know we worked all summer uh putting it on but believe me it was no secret not just with what we did but you know you talked about bill carter did a fantastic job getting the whole story and you know and all of his all of his counterparts and colleagues that it was a huge it was the press story well i i think about there's a couple of my youth i'm 46 at the time of this broadcast and i think about uh some of the monumental things that happened during the summers of my youth in 89 it was the michael keaton batman you couldn't go anywhere without seeing the bat symbol everywhere it was just the craziest the craziest um when it came to marketing it was it was literally that summer was the summer of batman um this summer that you're talking about here when it came you could not go anywhere without hearing those words same day new time new channel like it was it was everywhere and again when you watch giller's uh compilation of it i believe he shows everything almost everything just once and it's it's massive like it was everywhere dave was you know the cover of the magazines and all the things that were happening at the time i don't know if there was a celebrity more talked about i would even venture to submit that dave was talked about more coming to cbs than johnny was when he retired um at least i would say the two are very very very close to each other um but in my mind anyway uh from from my viewpoint i think dave was more talked about when he came over it was huge there was no celebrity being talked about more were you a part of um being proactive like time newsweek or time magazine or some of these these different articles that came out lots of rolling stone stuff throughout dave's entire career um was was that was that you trying to create opportunities here or or was that just the opportunities are there let's let's shape which one whichever one we want to uh build the narrative for because we have a certain message we want to bring out there with certain brands or publications or or things or was it literally anybody who wants to do a spread will figure out a way how to do a spread no we have a we had a terrific press department and they ran that uh press side strategy uh it was not it was not all comers um because of one day that makes sense dave did one press conference which was at the press tour which was the annual press junket that's the one with him in front of the eye there right yes uh cisco cisco and ebert were there which was really funny gene cisco asked a question during it yeah it's it's out there by the way yeah it's a it's basically a free-for-all kind of moderately controlled q a with with with talent of the new shows and each new show gets an hour and they bring the shows to um la the the the celebrities and producers and they sit there uh and because of dave dave um look god bless david he's a genius and and he and the way he's a genius and the way he stays and stayed a genius is he stuck to his brand okay he's not a sellout to anyone he uh is really smart and understands you know the strategies and what goes into it and has a point of view he was not going to sit for 42 press interviews so there were all comers coming to cbs and to the press department but believe me only a few really got only a few really got through for the one and one yeah for the one and one i think very few very few but he did agree to do the he understood the value of the exposure and he did that and i think you know i don't think is what was one of his most comfortable moments of of his time because you know it's uh it's just a difficult pressure you know you need to be funny you need to be witty you need to be this that but he did a great job he took care of it and believe me with or without president interviews they were writing about david letterman excuse me i'm going to ask you about that press conference real quick you were in the room were you one of the people who were uh because i i haven't watched it i should have watched it in prep here uh i promise you i am professional at this folks i just didn't watch it right before uh but i have a pretty good working memory of it um they did invite uh for for that press conference a few cbs folks up there first and i know the room was full of them were you were in the room for that press conference right now they're this is a different person oh oh i'm sorry the one you're talking about is when we introduced letterman to the press for coming to cbs yes that's right you're talking about an up front i got up there and called it a red letterman day yes okay that's the very first one okay with the introduction of dave at cbs yes that was done at blackrock which was the name of the cbs headquarters in new york the one for the show itself was done in uh i think the beverly hilton out in calif in la or or pasadena one of the hotels where they had the network press tour junkets for entertainment and that was basically dave taking questions was that recorded that one uh yes but i don't know where it is okay good to know well no no that's all we need to say now we're going to get a little bit walter dawn let's let's run after it if we can yeah cbs press it's called the press summer press tour 1993.

okay were you in the room for both of those oh yeah yeah okay um i i i'm a fan of of the energetic feel of like when you went into the ed sullivan theater um there was an energy there it just it just was you you walked into the place i'm a big sports fan a big hockey fan we talk about home ice advantage you walk into the ed sullivan theater and that place my god that place has a home ice advantage or a home field advantage um an energy to itself yeah i i can't imagine that either of those two press conferences uh both of them must have had a unique energy and feel and excitement to them that just uh the adrenaline must have been pumping during those events they were electric they were electrifying they were electrifying um even for us hard hardened veterans yeah they were electrifying we were so excited the press look dave commands tremendous respect and he gets it and i mean he's the real deal he is who he is the people love that his look number one he's loved by the basically loved or and and watched by the press so the media who follow television so that was a big plus right um and he was entertaining and this was a big freaking deal i mean this was a huge talent get look this this competition so to speak was on it was very public you know and you know all the stories about nbc is going to regret their decisions it's like i think dave had something to prove you know look he there's no secret dave wanted the tonight show yeah i mean johnny garson was his idol and mentor no question about it all do was with good reason and you know he has said and people around him know that's what he wanted and they said no okay so you know he he i think he had something to prove and he certainly did he certainly did uh well and and and i mean it's it's it's ironic again with that hindsight um being 2020.

um there there's a few magical things that happened because he wanted the tonight show so damn bad he wanted it so bad that i mean you know if you read carter's books and however however much of the the truth to that how at the 11th hour they're saying okay we'll we'll give it to you after you know all these conditions and all these things you know and and um there's even in the book i want to ask you about this too there's i don't know if you know anything about this or not but but when it was still at at littlefield's office or all my allmeyer's office saying well maybe maybe not you guys might have been talking to jay as well which is fascinating um but the idea though that he wanted the tonight show so bad and when they did decide to go in the leno direction um the deal that dave got was basically johnny's deal when johnny left ownership the 12 30 spot um like these things that he walked into at cbs were the things that he would have had to work decades for as a host of the tonight show to get he started with that and because of starting with that created a franchise um and a legacy that really will never be seen again the fact that somebody a civilian a civilian's production company could have two hours of network you know late-night tv um but of course giving the greatest gift of all time a franchise to cbs where right now that franchise is number one and and again that wouldn't have happened like there's so much tapestry here dave wanting the tonight show so badly is what got him that deal and again hindsight being 2020 um when you look at how the business changed over the next couple decades the business diluted and and can you imagine all these things that we know about dave uh perceived what we've learned and getting to know him watching him broadcast to us um can you imagine if he was the guy to watch the tonight show and the power of the tonight show dilute because of all these cable channels because of all these other shows that have come in because of just the landscape changing um i think that that would have broken his heart whereas instead he got to go be the john he got to go create something new and and and and the legacy there is completely different i just said a whole bunch of um if you want to respond to it am i am i on base first off that that's always been my theories but i've never really been able to talk to a ton of people who are educated enough to go yeah mike you're full of or yeah okay no you're exactly right or in the middle is that is that is that am i on page on that yeah i think you're in the right i think you're on the right track um look yes those were conditions of the deal and we agreed to those conditions again for this singular piece of talent and because there was shrewd you know negotiating by mike owitz who clearly well represented dave and look this is a big it's like getting the olympics this is a franchise that that that lasted for us you know decades and it was really really important and that's um all of that was understandable yes it's not real estate we've given up again i mean you know the current the current inhabitants of late night do not own their shows do not own their stuff in perpetuity not that um you know i don't think on any network but uh you know as you say times change and that's what hap and that's what happened that's what happened it's amazing um i love i'm so grateful for this conversation here that we're talking about this uh okay so a couple years in uh you know so things are crazy carter does a very very good job of talking about how the the deck was stacked against you guys ever being able to beat the tonight show for a variety of reasons geographic affiliates things like that that that and and when dave came in and did that it was like the unthinkable now you're the marketing guy who the goal would have been to say okay yeah no we're gonna take these guys out um did you think did you think it would happen or did it even surprise you those first 18 months in the momentum that he had uh going into uh his first part of the run i think we had a good cautiously optimistic feeling because the winds were at our back yeah there were really no headwinds the the head the winds were all our back because of the huge momentum of the interest i mean the first night ratings like a 10 something it's crazy enormous and look we expected that and by the way we knew that was the highest we were going to see okay for a long long time yes the curiosity factor was through the roof everybody was going to watch it no matter what so i mean it wasn't like uh we were you know dancing in the cops you know at that point uh even though we were at a bar the first night of the show i was gonna ask you were in the bar next door um i remember looking at bill carter peering into the window from from 7th avenue from broadway oh yeah we were in the bar that's the bar that jackie gleason used to sneak into the trap door oh yeah to to drink during the show um in any event and now we're getting ahead of ourselves well we are but okay i want to say that again you saw bill carter outside of the window peering in at you correct that is a very very cool image that i don't know i've never heard that before that is that's very cool it was a thousand degrees of humidity and humidity in new york city it was an august night and it was disgusting and they were piled into this bar which was a very small bar because dave didn't want executives in the theater is that correct yeah and and we understood that he never wanted executives in the audience in fact executives never were allowed to go into the audience if they had guests or wanted to have something they went to the upstairs balcony yes uh again because he believed you know he wanted guys in baseball caps in the in the front you know in in the audience with good reason and you know these are the things that we learned you know where he was right he had a particular point of view and a brand and that's the way he got it done he wanted you know he didn't want suits in the audience and you know what 100 correct so yeah we were all in there anyway because we you know we wanted the camaraderie and this and that and so we watched the taping of the first show yeah back in the day when they did use videotape as opposed to digital shout out to shecky by the way anyway yeah and um we we all watched it in there and you know bill murray and the whole routine was fantastic uh and you know i forget what happened afterwards it was all a blur after that i think i can imagine you must have been on cloud nine just yeah it's one of those moments with the adrenaline is just kind of taken over it's magic it's excitement yeah the feeling is the feeling is more powerful powerful or palpable than what you're actually seeing or hearing it's the feeling is overwhelming everything but i go back to the point that this dave is a real deal i mean this was nothing manufactured believe me we had a very small part to play in this very small i mean he you know just getting him over and having him do it and he you know he insisted his way i mean i can't tell you when we uh kind of were feeling our way through with his people with mostly with robert morton you know who was his executive producer at the time and had come over um great guy really creative and really new dave and understood wayward and talking about ideas for promo campaigns and this and that he kept saying george you know we this is dave we we got to go with dave and what it's all about and you know 100 100 and um we threw out a lot we threw a lot of stuff at them we threw a lot of stuff out and i came back this is what we dave wants to do and we'll come back and put it together and we said look here's our message you know you you know dave can sell dave any way he wants with his comedy they wrote the comedy we wrote the the structure same dave different time news station and you know what as long as we have that message that was the tag he did everything else and they were brilliant they were classic dave i mean you know the creepy ah what is that creepy eye and all that stuff was him you know it was all him and um so we thought we had the wind at our back uh and you know the momentum was great yeah and you know it's like halley's comet or kahutak or whatever you want to say these don't come around very often no so see it when you can um i i okay so i'm gonna do this again it makes it makes some people just maddening with frustration when i do this uh george i'm gonna ask you like we're not done yet but at the same time there's so much we've not even hit the tip of the iceberg please come back once another time and we can talk about more of this stuff i can go way deeper into stuff there's a few subjects i really want to talk about uh you talk about selling the first thing we got to do is and i love doing this i love uh getting my guest to be part of an um an unwitting hostage when i do a commercial we've got one sponsor here at the letterman podcast i don't know if you knew that or not uh that one sponsor is rupert g and the hello deli uh we are brought to you by rupert and the hello deli hey do you know one of the only places on earth that you can get late show with david letterman merchandise is the hello deli hello delhi cbs door closed the cbs store closed i'm going to talk we're going to segue out of rupert to that i'm going to ask you about that because i'm a letterman fan that for decades have not been able to buy a ton of letterman stuff and i want to talk to you about that the the separation of pants versus uh uh the cbs store stuff but uh go to hello dashdely.com if you want to they still have late show mugs there has your late show shirt kind of faded on you you can get a new one from rupert um he packs it with love if you are in new york go to the ed sullivan theater uh nestled within the womb of it is the hello deli have a soup have a sandwich go say hi to rupert take a selfie he's amazing he packs this stuff with care and sends it directly if you ask him real nicely he'll add onions to your order rupert we love you we're so grateful to have you as part of our family on the letterman podcast and uh i gotta ask that merchandising um i remember the cbs store in las vegas i almost i swear to god george this is a true story i want to say it's probably in oh 10 or 11.

in las vegas in the mgm grand there was a cbs store right and they had this gorgeous on the outside of the store high res poster of dave sit at the desk the big cheshire cat grin and he looked powerful behind that desk couldn't buy it as a fan could not buy that poster um one night my wife and i were walking through the casino and uh things are fading because it was like two in the morning and i i had this actual half-baked plan looking at it going i want to take that poster i really really want to take that poster was it was it frustrating at all being the head of cbs marketing but knowing that there's a division we've got worldwide pants here there's certain things that you could do and want to do but maybe couldn't do because of that division yes it was frustrating at times yeah um but the merchandise was small potatoes yeah um it was you know it's important it was not a bit it was not going to grow by the way it was the number one thing at the cbs store and we we had a split you know we had a royalty split with that but as a business it was a business driver but it wasn't a business maker yeah but look again they own the brand they own the logo they own the look you know it's like we look we deal with warner brothers for years on similar things you know warner brothers owned a lot of our shows that were on cbs and you know you couldn't sell everybody loves raymond merchandise um as cbs you had to license it for war brothers we understand that that's just kind of the reality of the business but you know the the the merchandise or the swag you know as as it's called in the in the in the trade and you know the crew jackets were great and the selling the t-shirts was was was a small business yeah oh i've got four of them and uh they're like treasured possessions if there's a fire in the house and i can only get a couple things out i'm probably grabbing a couple of my pants jackets i love those things you've made the right decision forget i'm talking to the right guy today oh my god yeah forget your family and your pets go right for the letterman jackets god no that that cotton is going to go way up that wall it's that beautiful wall from uh the company that he owns the flannel's place it's fields evansville oh that's so great um i'm bent in all the right ways the way i see it anyway um okay so a couple years in maybe god i can't believe it's already uh this much time a couple years in obviously uh things what goes up must come down things settle and the landscape significantly changes larry sells the network um i don't know the exact order of things but but but the new ownership group i think it's westinghouse that came in next um and then like nfl like olympics nfl like i think about dorothy at the olympics dorothy dave's mom at the olympics oh my god like so many highs on the international stage nfl one of the most powerful promotion machines uh available at the time um you guys lose the nfl and and i mean to the point where letterman talks about this in the trades again it's not a negative show this is we're just looking back and it's fascinating uh to see that like i think there's a rolling stone interview where he talks about that and and and he talks about he gets almost philosophical about uh you know leno um being more maybe for lack of a better term homogenized for everybody else versus him which is more nuanced i love that description uh the idea that he's pop music whereas letterman's like pink floyd or something like that like i'm a big believer in that where it's genius versus the popular three chord kind of structure um a few a few years later after he started these things started to erode um how much pressure you talked about at the front of this broadcast here um how much pressure did late night put on your office versus the rest of the cbs landscape that was also affected by this tremendous pressure yeah uh they really felt it i don't i don't blame them yeah because dave really hadn't changed yeah but as you say so well my the landscape changed around and look there's shifts things happen and you know it became much more serious much more competitive um a lot of pressure on us not a lot more we could do it wasn't a secret that david letterman was on he'd been on for a couple of years it wasn't a secret who he was and where he was okay it's what happens in people's people's tastes and station lineups and also prime time and you know did football have something to do with it i would say a little but not that was not the main reason i mean look losing football was it was basically nuclear winter for us for four years i mean we we could not come out of the shelter that's a powerful uh word description you just gave it wasn't that big of a deal on your nuclear whisper for four years it was dark dark dark yeah okay by the way having had it for you know 30 something years before yeah and basically helped build that brand of american television sports yeah you know look in the end what's it always about commerce money and that's what happened and um god it was awful it was awful uh we just lost so much circulation yeah which is not to say and i was the promo guy that you put a 10 second promo on for letterman in the nfl and all of a sudden you're going to be number one no no and they knew that too but there was a perception you know there was a perception um but you know we we got it back four years later and um you know all of a sudden trees were flowers were blooming and bees and insects were coming back and i think i saw like a pony you know things were happening the fields were fertile again and the grass was growing and the wind and if it sounds like one of those you know commercials now for some prescription drugs i was going to say for a pharmaceutical product that's what i was getting right you know you know and that it was it was it was euphoric yeah euphoric um but no dave we took dave and his and his producers and his production company people very seriously yeah had the highest degree of respect for them it wasn't always easy as as he well attests um and it wasn't easy from from our side but you know there was respect on both sides and you know in the end he stuck to his guns and we stuck to ours to the degree that we understood what we were working with well i tell you i appreciated it so much and there's a few examples that i want to talk about before this particular episode ends and then maybe maybe next time we can go a little deeper but um there's there's one in particular that i have to ask about it's one of my favorite every single time i see it whether it's uh on the official channel and it's a bumper going out or or or something i watch on on on something else that's out there where where uh they focus on it um it's one of the greatest as far as i'm concerned the greatest ad campaigns in history and it was one billboard and i think you probably know the one i'm talking about you know i'm talking about who's number one and then right across a much bigger billboard of dave with a big grin on his face number three and it makes me laugh even just saying it out loud right from my from the inside because it just encapsulated so much who dave is and and the fact that the and i'm gonna get to the super bowl promo here in a minute but but the fact that you guys were on board to do that um did that come right from your office whose idea was that do you remember the genesis of that david letterman shut up really hey hey hey george you know do you have some billboard space there where we can put a bigger billboard that's that's literally how it went was it him himself or was it burnett as an adversary no more morty came to me and said that was morty still a long time ago it was a long time ago oh i thought i thought he had left by that point okay okay yeah okay well you know what maybe it was as i said my memory is all good but they came to and said look dave hates that we're number one jay leno billboard as he should and he wants to have his own billboard great let's do a billboard okay and he wants to say we're number three i went you got to be kidding me i mean you know my instinctive reaction was are you crazy and then i went you are crazy that is great that's gonna get more and so we bought a bigger billboard down the street so you could see the jay leno number one and the dave's smiling eating grin we're three and you know what god bless him no the the best i gotta tell you again seriously all we were we were happy conduits of his great humor and ideas not all of them got through but most of them like this one did okay i gotta ask you just you just opened the door do you remember one that didn't get approved that they threw out there saying hey let's do this and you guys are like now that's that's too far do you remember one off the top of your head no okay i don't i just remember we would go kind of like uh really and you know they would go back we would go back somehow and there'd be a compromise yeah but not often look as i said dave's a genius and his work was genius and it was true to brand he wasn't going to be told or you know he wasn't going to read a script yeah you know he was going to make it what he felt was his brand of comedy and we were true to that it's the audience who have to respond not dave well i'll tell you this um as a viewer and as a very uh loyal member of his of dave's audience i'll tell you this i appreciated the fact that right away cbs embraced dave in my this is again my viewpoint i don't know you can confirm or deny if this is the exact thing but when he came over there the fact that you guys treated him right from the start as okay this guy is now a cbs franchise period he's going to be uh a carrier of the cbs brand for as long as he wants to be and all reports saying even as he aged and we're getting you know 15 60 20 years and down the line and he called his own shot when he decided to retire uh was not pushed out you know johnny carson can't even say that you guys basically said it's yours here you go all the way down there and the fact that cbs stuck with dave through the ups of course i mean they're great but more importantly the downturns whether it's in the business whether it's in the franchise trying to reinvent itself whether it's going on at 12 30 what's going on at 12 30 and how and eventually you crack that nut craig ferguson is like he is one of my favorite talk show hosts of all time as well um the fact that cbs it seems like made a conscious decision to say david letterman is our guy he is going to be part of our legacy similar to ed sullivan and and and some of these other uh uh franchise icons and and and because of that i think i think it makes colbert even even more powerful doing what he's doing now the fact that you guys have this storied franchise compared to the tonight show who's had you know they've shuffled their hosts around a little bit here and they didn't do that um and you know again i can go i can go long on that how they gave jay the chance but they didn't give conan the chance and it's it's so funny how not only did you guys give dave the opportunity to find his voice but to expand and and and just have his identity married to you guys i love that a conscious choice obviously sure yeah sure and you know you talk about the good times and the tough times let me tell you no one took it harder on the tough times then than he did he felt very responsible um he took a lot of it on himself when it really wasn't you know um fair to do that um and you know he he he took the competition very seriously and i had a tremendous amount of respect for that because he could have foisted off the blame you know on six different directions uh but we were all in it together and he knew that um and and while it may not have always been acknowledged he knew it and he knew that um he had the network behind him he had the leader of the network behind him and that no one was going to dilute what he did yeah i love that and there's so many examples of dave you know taking responsibility for anything whether it's uh i mean well okay here's one that i love to talk about you know i talk about how this show doesn't talk about we don't talk about scandal or gospel or any of that kind of stuff and and the example i use to our guests sometimes when when we're having a conversation talking about this stuff is like you know obviously if there's blow back from a bit like sarah palin for example oh yeah that's fair game we'll talk about that like we'll talk about his apology to her because it was it was a full-on i take responsibility for this but also i'm not gonna just because i'm taking responsibility for this i'm not gonna let you off the hook for that um and i just love the way that dave would do that he would take responsibility no matter what it was um it's cool to hear that not just on a public face to the to the masses he does that but behind the scenes he does that as well um oh god there's so many moments okay i can't go without talking about the super bowl uh you must have been one of the people who was in on what was going on for the super bowl ad the famous doritos at uh or testito's ad when did you get notified that oprah and mr leno were gonna be part of this or or were you part of the brain trust that came up with it i was not part of the brain trust but i was part of the go trust that once they decided that they would do it um well here here's the thing we we came to them six months and before the super bowl said guys we have the super bowl you're gonna get a spot in the super bowl please let's not just do a guest spot for monday you know let's make this a special spot yes but we're busy right now we have this show coming up and okay fine four months to go hey we we have the super bowl guys it's only you know 100 million plus people you know you complain about how many promotions you get on cbs this is worth a year and a half's worth of promotions please we've got to come up with special yeah yeah yeah we will we will okay good two months before the super bowl guys what what's with the super bowl spot you want us to write something for you that you could like throw out and maybe start on again you don't want to do a musical number or you know have paul write something or do that no no george look it's the sweeps we got a lot of we have a lot of high talent coming in here we're trying to book the show we can't we're not gonna do okay december i say hey the super bowl is like in 40 days you know i really yes yes that we have an idea we have an idea oh okay good you want to share it no they can't really tell you right now okay well we're still holding the spot but at some point you gotta you know you know if we have to do a backup spot for you no no no no okay all right then god i don't know what it was uh going to the wayback machine here but yeah we have an idea we'll need to shoot it in the theater we need a crew we'll need to do it one night after the show um we really don't want anyone around um okay great so they were being cagey at this point they knew what it was but they're being cagey even with you yeah did not want it and then it was rob and then rob said okay so here's the bit this is what dave wants to do he's on the couch he's eating the popcorn and remember the first one was just oprah that's right yeah this is a sequel that's right yes absolutely okay and leno decided sorry had to get permission from nbc to do it okay that hits your office at this point right no from nbc no okay no no but i mean he had to go to bob ryder at the time okay yeah yeah okay just said the oprah thing was the first one okay um and rob said and then he's eating on the couch and you think it's going to be like a doritos commercial or whatever and pulled that said you know isn't you know are you enjoying the game when we pull back and oprah's on the couch i want my mouth dropped i mean never in hundred million years i mean again on brand brilliant shocking shocking i mean i screamed when i saw this by the way america did we screamed every time we thought about it thing got shot she came in she showed up she did the thing with dave oh dave you're such a baby or whatever she said and that was it un frigging believable yep again brilliant brilliant brilliant brilliant um the way they were again we were just you know the happy enablers uh and support you know this game got it worked out got it in the game and it went crazy and then the jay leno won again another one he flew in on the nbc plane they shot it one night he went right back you know that was it and and oprah um again so we always call you know we we said to him that year where's our oprah thing where's our what are we going to do this year don't worry don't worry so i stopped worrying six months out i stopped worrying three months out um you know we still kept after them yeah yeah that was great that was great that was great um had you seen the leno bit finished before it aired yes i can't even imagine yes a few days you probably saw it a couple days before a few days before you how do you keep that a secret like did you tell anybody did you tell any family members or anybody or did you like i mean president obama called to find out immediately apparently during the game hey find me out how they did that they do you know like like the president of the united states when he sees leno on the couch oh that can't be real like like oh my gosh how did you keep that a secret i i can't even imagine it must have just been inside you or or had you been seasoned long enough that that something like that yeah big but you're able to compartmentalize it no there are secrets that you keep because you're proud to keep them you're so excited and there look there was a cone of silence but there were 50 people who were part of that shoot and you know i mean and in various levels of you know the editor the director this i mean look you know what we we knew we knew the significance of secrecy you know every you know everyone's on board they understand it it's well it's i i guess i would make it akin to you know if uh if you've got a birthday present for your kid that you know is gonna blow their mind you know you wrap it up and you keep it a secret so they can open it this was an international present that everybody was just because i mean if you look at the drama of what happened to the and i don't know if dave calls it the golden age of television tongue-in-cheek the the the shift the second shift that happened when he just got to sit there from his beautiful desk in this beautiful theater and just watch as nbc's late night and and executive team imploded at the at the debacle um you know that again just i love that part of late show history where he got a chance to do that that three or four weeks um and then the significance of just after that back that commercial happening with mr leno uh incredible incredible um television captivating television and i mean i can talk about these moments forever i would we are getting close to an hour here i want to um i don't for our audience here certainly don't want to um in any way diminish george what you have brought to your legendary career i started talking about the spread of variety like you weren't just late night but at the end of the day uh talking about i got one more semantic marketing question and then i've got a very special top 10 for you um i was going to get to hey look at our podcast here how would you market our podcast here we'll do that next time if you have an idea because i mean i i love i love doing this and uh if there's a mind that i could pick about how we could market this show this would be it but i'm going to save that um i do have one more question though um i have a i have a i have a history in the professional wrestling business i wasn't a wrestler but i i've been behind the curtain and i and i and i know the professional wrestling business a little bit from a philanthropy standpoint um there was a point where and i believe cbs was actually in bed with world wrestling federation for uh for for a cup of coffee uh or viacom was by that point um and and and um at a certain point the wwf the world wrestling federation changed their name to world wrestling entertainment but the talent always referred to it as the wwf and then uh when the change happened they referred to it as the wwe but that no longer grammatically made sense from a syntax standpoint the world wrestling entertainment no it's not a federation anymore now it's an entertainment company so the same thing happened with our good friend mr david letterman uh late night with david letterman you know franchise they come over and they're like okay well what are we going to change it to no it's going to be late show with david we're just going to change one word but syntax wise or grammatically the late show okay again nuanced here but to marketing people not not necessarily nuanced sometimes a situation you're nodding like this was a thing right like is it the late show or is it just late show right correct like it's 60 minutes six zero minutes or s-i-x-t-y there you go yeah the the the missing the the um what what was uh an issue at the beginning uh and again it was late night it should be late show and we didn't spend a lot of time on us i certainly didn't but it was a curious factor and number and also mike to this day there are people who call it late night okay the late night with david letterman was so so um ingrained that it's called it's people it means been on cbs longer than it was on nbc and they still call oh you know late night with david letterman so what can i tell you the v becomes pretty inconsequential they owe us a v and you know we'll we'll get it from someone somewhere one day but uh yeah i mean look the v is coming back in fashion in sports you know they say the ohio state university yeah totally you know well i think colbert changed it i think it is the late show with steven colbert now i think i think now that you guys he did yeah isn't it funny how we say you guys still like you still work there yeah i mean i i can't imagine you won't for the rest of your life refer to cbs as we yeah yeah it's in these veins so you know i still call it we also and you know what can i say still get a ticket here here or there um i hate to put you on the spot here do you watch dave's netflix show have you watched dave since he uh since he moved over to netflix and started the longer two one or two yeah if there's anybody you want to see him interview uh in a long form he's kind of doing the tom snyder thing with some video snippets now if there's anyone you would want to see dave to interview who would that be anybody you know you can think of no no i'd like to see him interview himself oh yeah that'd be fascinating um i appreciate this very very much before i get to my very special top ten for you uh george again i can't thank you enough for your time and i hope this has been an enjoyable experience for you i can't wait to uh to to pick your brain about things more um anything else you want to say about this before we finished this part and i moved to the special top ten yes i have enjoyed this i my greatest fear as i told you when you were politely hounding me which i respected you know i always say there's a difference between you know being persistent and being a nudge and there's always that line and you did not cross that line and i appreciate that you did a good job thank you you know it's not the it's not the corned beef sandwich from rupert's that i'm you know doing this um but i what i would say um you know your stuff and i have a great deal of uh uh of respect for people who know their stuff and who are you know one thing that you are that i was about my job passionate and that people come to me and say you know i want to be in marketing i'll do this and i said look i could teach you a skill but i can't take passion i cannot teach you passion pat a skill you can learn up here but passions in your heart and that's the most important thing and you have a passion and it's great i think your listeners have a passion because this is that kind of group i i respect them and admire them all i feel very comfortable uh and at home i'm happy to do this again for i don't know a brisket sandwich maybe absolutely a few pickles uh but seriously good job no you you know we got to the major points my greatest fear was that i would not remember and you've jogged that you know that database that's somehow far back in my balding head and i appreciate that it's been jogged and now i can uh i can live to see another day oh well i i appreciate all of those words very very much uh the the generosity that you've been with your time and and and with your experience um i'm i don't know what it is that's compelled me uh other than my my daughter-in-law like i i'll tell you this i've said this to a couple guests and i'll say it to you too i am astounded um by how quickly the world has forgotten johnny carson and and and uh i know youtube wasn't around and all of that stuff but johnny carson was the biggest star in the world and and um the reverence that dave has for him and and my father the reference my father had for for johnny uh johnny was my dad's guy dave was my guy uh and and and so for some reason i am compelled to pass this torch and and this knowledge um i i think that they mined for gold they found gold every day they dropped the gold because there was a new show the next night and they had to mine more gold well it's time to pick up some of that gold that 20 30 years later still holds up like crazy even in these politically uh different times from a critical political correctness standpoint most of it still holds up like crazy it's quality of the highest magnitude and so uh passing the torch thank you for your words i appreciate them you are way more than a letterman guy we're gonna do one of these um uh these things they do on the sports shows that i like so much uh when they interview somebody uh i'm gonna throw out i've got 10 cbs shows some of which you were already the marketing guy a couple of them was beforehand but still i think you might have a word or two i just want some some free word association uh one or two words or a sentence or two about uh 10 cbs shows from history if that's okay with you are we cool with that see if anything pops up maybe it doesn't you can pass anytime you want uh are we cool with that yes go all right number one northern exposure oh classic unique classic unique okay uh the dukes of hazard fun magnum pi cool airwolf okay was interesting was it straight up there's knight rider we're gonna make airwolf was that what that was or or yes i guess so okay okay um here's here's another one you may not have anything for but but i could go deep on this one the star wars holiday special the star wars holiday special i don't even remember that george lucas would be so happy to hear you say that right now um okay this is what this is one from my heart uh tour of duty oh really a class show really yeah you know smarter than its time you know really a good show really great zev braun was the producer and they poured their soul their heart into that thing you have just lit my body up with goosebumps right now that was a show that i was riveted for okay i'm sorry no in a good way in a good good good way jake and the fat man oh william conrad you can't beat that um hunter no that was on nbc hunter was nbc yeah fridge okay there we go thank you very much sorry about that yeah um and this one here's from my old friend tom dreesen who we've had on the show here and we love him very very much uh for his buddy uh simon and simon oh simon it's on gerald mcraney and um great show yeah fun they were fun they were fun absolutely um they you talk about fun you know how to segue it's like you're a pro at this stuff this has been a lot of fun it's been a tremendous amount of fun for me i feel like it's been a moderate amount of fun for you and uh george i can't thank you enough if it's okay with you i'm gonna do the i'm gonna do the clothes here real quick and then uh i will say a quick goodbye after after i hit stop okay so there we go uh they go that fast um george schweitzer has been uh a legend in in when it comes to broadcasting and on the business end of things and um at the end of the day you know when dave would talk about some of the uh folks that were on the executive level of nbc you know it's funny how that didn't happen as much at cbs and and and we see why this has been a prime example as to uh uh how dave was valued and treated and and the legacy of david letterman in my opinion is cbs uh built of course by his amazing legacy that led up to that um but then he took that ball and ran with it and created a franchise um the franchise that could finally compete with the tonight show his name is george schweitzer he was the marketing guy for the entire network and it's been a pleasure to pick his brain uh my name is mike chisholm this has been the letterman podcast now please again like share subscribe i cannot wait for the day i cannot wait for the day that i don't have to say that anymore the tips the the scale will tip to the point where i don't even got to say that anymore uh and chill the my own show um i can't wait for that but we're we're having so much fun doing this thank you very much for everybody who has given us as much love as we have so far please subscribe please like please share and we got lots of cool stuff planned uh his name is george schweitzer my name is mike chisholm this has been the letterman podcast with mike chisholm coincidentally that's who i am thank you and good night overcoat and underpants