Kim's Reviews > The Late Shift: Letterman, Leno & the Network Battle for the Night

I started reading this author's Leno/Conan book first, and then I realized that I would get more out of it if I read the Leno/Letterman book first. It was really interesting to see how much flying by the seat of one's pants television executives do in real life.

That said, the author's attention to detail gets a little excruciating at points. If you are one of those people who can't keep track of elf names in fantasy novels, you are going to get tired of trying to keep track of network executive names in this book. They fly by with great speed.

Carter does a really good job of trying really hard not to be cruel to Jay Leno but at the same time getting across what a weird inhuman robot he is. At some point, however, the litany of "stuff about how Jay is not great" gets extremely repetitive. A little more editing could have resulted in a much tighter and more elegant book.

I think Gen-X (and older) readers who remember Johnny Carson will like this but younger readers are going to be puzzled about why people care so much about late night television.