Self-Discipline Controls Late Shows, Not Censors

It would seem at first that late-night shows are the freshman dormitories of the TV world. After all, both really only come to life in the wee hours. They are relatively independent of adult supervision. And in this sort of loosely structured environment, the boundaries of taste in both can get stretched a bit thin.

“According to our writing staff, no, there are no limits to how far you can go,” says Lizz Winstead, head writer for Comedy Central’s comic news show, “The Daily Show.” “We’ll try to push through anything we can.”

The truth is, though, that just as college freshmen tend to mellow after a couple of bad hangovers, late-night TV talk shows have apparently come to understand that a little self-discipline is not such a bad thing if you want to have a future.

“We all have a pretty good internal monitor,” says Jonathan Groff, head writer for “Late Night With Conan O’Brien.” “Often, we’re ready to cut something even before the censors. Conan has to have a comfort level with the material before it goes on. We’re less likely to do biting social commentary on this show. I doubt we’d ever do, say, any abortion stuff.”

Even at this late hour, with an audience more willing to accept some biting humor, the talk shows sometimes learn the hard way that there are limits to what they can do.

“Tonight Show” host Jay Leno, who says he sees his monologue as “a funny version of the news,” cracked jokes about Olympic bombing suspect Richard Jewell, but when Jewell was cleared of suspicion, Leno offered an on-air apology.

“Politically Incorrect” host Bill Maher made light of the case surrounding an admiral who killed himself, only to realize later that one of his panelists that evening happened to be friends with the dead man.

Sure, each network and cable channel has a standards and practices division ready to weigh in on situations like this, when the jokes may seem a bit tasteless or hurtful. NBC has curbed the “Late Night With Conan O’Brien” staff from writing parodies of the network’s public-service announcements, in which O’Brien would have given “really horrible advice” about using drugs and driving drunk.

But such incidents of network involvement are rare, late-night staffers say.

None of the standards and practices executives approached for this article would comment on their job, although an NBC spokesperson did issue this statement: “While our standards and practices department monitors all programs and sometimes will raise an alert on sensitivities to real world events, we are fortunate that we have late-night hosts, performers and writers who are highly aware of comedy that may cross the line on issues that are too real and hard-hitting to be handled with humor or insensitivity.”

Which leaves the students pretty much in charge of their own dorm. The network censors, as the writers and performers call them, more often voice technical concerns than comedy constraints.

“I’ve never had anyone say, ‘You can’t do that,’ ” Leno says. “A lot of times we’ll have [standards and practices] on the phone to check out a quote, making sure someone actually said something.”

Once on “Politically Incorrect,” the censors did send a Michael Jackson joke back. The gag--about the press and public being excited about the singer’s return to America, as were his neighbors “who had been informed in accordance with state law”--was not rejected because it was offensive.

“We could joke about him being a child molester,” says Chris Kelly, the show’s writing supervisor. “We just couldn’t imply that he was convicted.”

“We talk to a censor on a regular basis, but I think those people are realistic. They don’t conform to the old stereotypes,” Groff explains. “I don’t feel oppressed by them at all.”

If there’s any oppression, it’s best when it’s self-imposed. For example, some “Late Night” writers recently came up with a sketch in which O’Brien and sidekick Andy Richter would scan the satellite dish to look at G-rated pornographic films. The bit was vetoed by the staff, however, when everyone realized “it felt kind of creepy.”

“We’ve done Marion Barry jokes in the past, just like everybody else, but when he went into rehab, we made sure to say we’d made fun of him in the past but hoped he could now get control of the situation,” says Eddie Feldmann, head writer-producer for HBO’s “Dennis Miller Live.” “If we were the sort of show that said, ‘It’s cable, I’ll say what I want,’ then we might as well be in talk radio. We’d be that guy you get stuck next to on the bus.”

Representatives of CBS’ “Late Show With David Letterman” declined to be interviewed for this article.

Leno recalls two different times that he made jokes about planes crashing during the 5 p.m. taping of his show, only to discover, shortly before the program aired at 11:35 p.m., that a plane actually did go down. In both cases, he felt it was best to edit those gags out.

“You always have to put yourself in the role of the person who might be the victim of your joke,” he explains.

If there is any rule to late-night comedy, it’s let the writers do what they want and have somebody else at the top sort it all out.

“I refuse to have writers censor themselves,” says “The Daily Show’s” Winstead. “The writer should be as far out there as possible, and I’ll pull him or her back if need be. I’d rather say no at the very end of the process than limit what somebody can freely come up with right at the beginning.”

“Bill’s instructions to us are, ‘Go as far as you can go and let me see everything,’ ” says “Politically Incorrect’s” Kelly. “When he calls you on a joke, he’ll say something like, ‘Oh, I see. And that’s funny because she was raped and killed.’ That puts the joke in the proper perspective.”

That means, for instance, no JonBenet Ramsey jokes. Still, the show did offer up at least one TWA Flight 800 joke, about how the in-flight movie was “Forget Paris.”

“Bill’s monologue comes on after you’ve seen the news, and then you’ve seen ‘Nightline’ discussing the news,” Kelly says. “You want to give people the feeling that we’ll get through this somehow.”

Those are, after all, the same people who are the final judge when a late-night show oversteps its bounds. O’Brien’s show pulled a recurring character after hearing complaints that he seemed to be homophobic, and “Politically Incorrect” backed away from using Christopher Reeve as a discussion topic because of the angry feedback to an earlier, unrelated debate about animals being used for human re-creation. After an exceptionally gross news piece on a farmer’s pig sperm business, “The Daily Show” heard from enough disgusted viewers to reign in its boundary of taste, at least a little, for future segments.

Leno regularly hears from viewers with complaints. Not all of them are worth listening to, like the ones complaining about his Jack Kevorkian jokes.

“A good part of comedy is death and the fear of death, so how can you not joke about a guy who travels around the country in his van, knocking people off?” he says.

Then again, there was the outcry from several African Americans when he did a sketch about “the Ebonic plague.” He realized he’d “equated ebonics with a plague that wiped out much of Africa.”

“I told them, ‘I just did it because it sounded like Bubonic plague, but all right, it was a mistake.’ You live and you learn,” Leno adds.

It’s tricky to keep your balance. You’re out there on the edge, unable to lean over too far without alienating even a late-night audience. These shows do try to keep themselves in line, but still, don’t expect any late-night show to become, say, “Live With Regis & Kathie Lee.” There’s a golden rule they have to follow.

“Comedy isn’t based on nice,” Winstead says. “It’s based on mean.”

Craig Tomashoff is associate bureau chief for People magazine’s Los Angeles office.