The Late Night Wars

Here's a blind item from the highly-competitive world of TV talk shows.  Let us imagine that a certain talk show is seeking to promote an attention-getting feud with a rival talk show that has much higher ratings.  They decide it might be a funny stunt to hijack some or all of that other show's live audience.  The idea is that they will send a bus over to the other show's studio, to where its audience members line up to get in.  The hijackers, either through fibs or bribes, will seek to get some of those folks to get on the bus and to go out and be wined and dined or otherwise entertained, then brought to the studio of the lower-rated talk show to see it, instead.  This will be humorous, the producers think, and will also promote the notion that the home audience ought to forsake the higher-rated show and watch the lower-rated one, which they otherwise don't seem to be doing.

But what happens is that a staff member at the lower-rated show tips off someone at the higher-rated show, which promptly changes the location where its audience members line up.  Instead of outside on the street, they are moved into the midway on the lot, past studio guards, where the hijackers cannot get to them.  The plot is foiled, but the lower-rated show isn't giving up.

Wouldn't it be interesting if that had actually happened the other night?  And how come a TV talk show seems to have better Homeland Security than Tom Ridge has been able to give this nation?