Dave and Ted -- made for each other

Letterman has decided to stay at CBS. But his real future belongs with Ted Koppel as a celebrity-hating, executive-bashing late-night tag team.

By Arianna Huffington

Mar 12, 2002 | What a letdown!

So after all the Sturm und Drang of the last 10 days -- the bruised egos, the corporate intrigue, the "I am too relevant!" New York Times Op-Ed -- the David Letterman-Ted Koppel imbroglio ends not with a deafening Nielsen-grabbing bang but a yawn-inducing whimper. Score one for entropy and the status quo.

CBS president Leslie Moonves offered Letterman 31.5 million reasons a year to keep the "Late Show" at the Tiffany Network -- plus persuasive bonuses and benefits. That, and the fact that hypersensitive Dave clearly didn't want to be known as the Guy Who Killed Nightline (though he still would've come off better than the guy who gave birth to it -- Ayatollah Khomeini), convinced him to stay put.

As for Ted, he earns only $8 million a year but works less than the men's room attendant at a Melissa Etheridge concert, so, now that Dave has demurred, the odds are high Ted will resist the urge to tell Mickey Mouse where to shove his time slot, and keep doing his show at the "happiest place on earth."

What a truly anticlimactic ending to what had been a promising new drama: With the ashen-faced David Westin, president of ABC News, blindsided by a news flash from his own front porch and the Garbo-esque Letterman off on vacation while his deep-pocketed suitors battled it out for his affection -- though I imagine him pacing up and down grumbling, not lounging by the pool. Would it have been too much to ask for a season-ending surprise finale, a breathtaking shocker just before the credits rolled and the lights came up?

Besides the coitus interruptus nature of the denouement, there is also the lingering question of these stars' wounded feelings. As a Letterman confidant told me (in the newly chic Quranic parlance): "Dave hates Les Moonves with the intensity of a thousand white hot suns." And Ted probably isn't feeling all warm and fuzzy about Disney president Robert Iger, who last week promised him that if the efforts to woo Letterman didn't work out, ABC would only replace "Nightline" with a top quality show. Which is a lot like promising your wife that you're not going to cheat, but if you do she should console herself with the fact that it will only be with a really, really hot woman.

Since no one seems to be winning in all this, I have a better idea, one that will provide both a more fulfilling ending to this late-night host-age crisis and the chance for Dave and Ted to stick it to their corporate overlords. In my scenario we all win.

Instead of competing, the two should do what all other industries are doing and merge. They could combine their award-winning programs and their complementary talents and take the new hybrid to another network, leaving the fickle mucky-mucks at Viacom/CBS and Disney/ABC choking on their dust. I'm sure Fox -- which was recently spurned in its attempt to land Conan O'Brien -- would kill to have them. So would just about anyone else.

Next Page: Who can forget Ted and Dave rollerblading through Manhattan?

• View blog reactions