The Tonight Show

Carson's ratings usually substantially led his timeslot, in spite of the fact that he intermittently faced a litany of other late-night competitors including Les Crane, Bill Dana, David Frost, Regis Philbin, Alan Thicke, Jerry Lewis, Joan Rivers, David Brenner, Pat Sajak, Ron Reagan, Dennis Miller, and most notably Steve Allen, Arsenio Hall, Joey Bishop, Merv Griffin, and Dick Cavett (Carson saw his friend Cavett as his real competition but Cavett was on ABC, a much smaller network at the time).

As primetime variety shows such as The Ed Sullivan Show faded in prominence over the course of the 1970s, Carson's Tonight Show emerged as a showcase for all kinds of talent, as well as continuing the tradition of a vaudeville-style variety show.^[4][5] Carson's show continued Paar's tradition of launching the careers of a number of comedians, in Carson's case including Jerry Seinfeld, David Letterman, Joan Rivers, Jeff Foxworthy, Ellen DeGeneres, Freddie Prinze, David Brenner, Tim Allen, Drew Carey, and Roseanne Barr.

Carson also frequently used guest hosts, especially after 1981 when he negotiated a contract that gave him numerous weeks off every year, as well as Mondays. Frequent guest hosts (over 50 episodes each) included Joey Bishop (177 times, mostly in the 1960s), Joan Rivers (93, during the 1970s and 1980s), John Davidson (87), Bob Newhart (87), David Brenner (70), McLean Stevenson (58), Jerry Lewis (52, mostly in the 1960s), David Letterman (51, mostly between 1980 and 1981), and Jay Leno. By the late 1980s, Leno was designated the permanent and only guest host, and consequently hosted several dozen episodes each year, totalling 333 "guest host" appearances during Carson's tenure.

Jay Leno (1992–2009)

On May 22, 1992, Johnny Carson retired after three decades behind the iconic late-night desk, and was replaced by Jay Leno amid national and media controversy. David Letterman not only wanted to move into that earlier time slot from his Late Night spot (which had been broadcast following Carson's program) after The Tonight Show, and was considered personally by Carson (whose opinion was not revealed until several years later) as his natural successor^[6] despite Leno having been Carson's permanent guest host for several years.^[7] Letterman, having had his heart set on the earlier time slot in spite of Leno's ratings success as recurring substitute host, left NBC (on Carson's advice) and joined rival network CBS. Their new program and entry into the late-night television universe, Late Show with David Letterman, airing in the same slot, competed head to head against The Tonight Show with Leno in the host's chair and behind that iconic desk, for the better part of two decades,^[8] although Leno consistently enjoyed higher ratings after the first two years.

On September 27, 2004, the 50th anniversary of the show's premiere, NBC announced that Leno would be succeeded by Conan O'Brien in 2009. The network shocked Leno, who had been consistently number one in the time period, when he was told that he would be fired in five years, with O'Brien taking over the slot at that time. Leno told his audience about this unique network decision at the beginning of his next show, mentioning that he had accepted it, noting that he wanted to avoid repeating the hard feelings that had somehow developed with Letterman, and called O'Brien "certainly the most deserving person for the job" in the wake of his (Leno's) eventual departure. Five years later, what was to have been the final episode of The Tonight Show with Leno as host aired on Friday, May 29, 2009.

Not wanting Leno, who remained number one in the ratings, to move to a competing network, NBC signed the host to a new contract to host a new prime-time talk show beginning in September 2009, entitled The Jay Leno Show, with a format similar to his Tonight Show except that he was contractually prohibited from using a desk on the show. In a departure from network programming conventions of the time, the new show aired every weeknight at 10 p.m. Eastern/Pacific, competing with expensively produced narrative series on other networks and leading into affiliates' local news broadcasts and O'Brien's Tonight Show.

Conan O'Brien (2009–2010)

Conan O'Brien replaced Leno as host on The Tonight Show on Monday, June 1 from a lavish newly constructed studio inside Stage 1 of the Universal Studios Hollywood backlot, temporarily ending an era (since 1972) of recording the show in Burbank.

2010 timeslot conflict and Leno's return

After a strong debut week, O'Brien's total audience fell precipitously over the summer months, and the program began losing to Late Show with David Letterman in overall ratings. In contrast, O'Brien's performance in the crucial 18–49 demographic was favorable, and it was found that he had brought down the median age of The Tonight Show audience by a decade compared with his predecessor, indicating that a generational shift was taking effect as O'Brien established himself in an earlier timeslot.^[10] Taking this into account, columnist Tom Shales assessed in August 2009 that O'Brien was in a better position than Leno had been when he began his Tonight Show run in 1992; Leno consistently lost to Letterman in the ratings for eighteen months before eventually cementing his number one status.^[11]

The Jay Leno Show debuted in September 2009, three months into O'Brien's Tonight Show tenure, performing to significantly lower ratings than the primetime dramas it had replaced on NBC and trailing the competition. NBC had expected the drop, having calculated that lower ratings would be balanced by a talk show's correspondingly lower expense compared to more popular scripted programming.^[12] In the 11:35 period, The Late Show would largely maintain its lead over The Tonight Show in total viewers in early Fall, during which Letterman was receiving tabloid attention due to a blackmail scandal. In addition, The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien was in the unusual situation of being a talk show following a talk show hosted by its predecessor on the same network, and the booking war that resulted often left The Tonight Show getting second dibs on guests. One publicist reported that the aggression was such that The Jay Leno Show had signaled to potential guests that doing O'Brien's program before Leno's would be punished with secondary placement in the line-up.^[13]

Though NBC claimed that the performance of The Jay Leno Show offered no surprises and that O'Brien was meeting expectations as well, the network had failed to anticipate the impact that Leno's weaker 10 pm lead-in would have on the local 11 pm news, which suffered a drastic drop in ratings (between 25%–50% nationwide) as a demonstrable result. As the affiliates rely on the revenue generated during the news, this generated a furor from the local stations and placed pressure on NBC to quickly fix the 10 pm situation, which was contributing to a cascading effect on the ratings of The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon,^[14][15] although the ratings of O'Brien's Tonight Show had already nosedived months before Leno's prime time show went on the air.

On January 7, 2010, multiple media outlets reported that beginning March 1, 2010, Leno would move from his 10 p.m. weeknight time slot back to the traditional Tonight Show slot at 11:35.^[16][17] Under this proposal, Leno's show would be shortened from an hour to 30 minutes, which would make the monologue, Leno's most popular segment, the essence of the program. This would move The Tonight Show to 12:05 a.m., a post-midnight start for the first time in its sixty-year history, while Late Night with Jimmy Fallon would be pushed to 1:05 am, and Last Call with Carson Daly would likely be cancelled. Under NBC's (later contested) interpretation of O’Brien's contract, the host was only guaranteed The Tonight Show in name rather than the 11:35 pm slot with which it was synonymous.^[18]

On January 10, NBC confirmed it would be moving Leno out of primetime as of February 12 and intended to move him back to late-night as soon as possible.^[19][20] TMZ reported that O'Brien was given no advance notice of this change, and that NBC offered him a choice: The Tonight Show in a 12:05 a.m. time slot, or the option to leave the network.^[21] On January 12, O'Brien issued a press release that stated he would not continue with Tonight if it was moved to a 12:05 a.m. time slot, saying, "I believe that delaying The Tonight Show into the next day to accommodate another comedy program will seriously damage what I consider to be the greatest franchise in the history of broadcasting. The Tonight Show at 12:05 simply isn't The Tonight Show."^[22]

When Oprah Winfrey later quoted this statement to Leno during an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show in the aftermath of the fallout, he responded: "Well, if you look at where [Conan's Tonight Show] ratings were, it was already destructive to the franchise".^[23] Leno was criticized for his remark, which contradicted his statement that "I think Conan is doing fine" mere months earlier,^[24] after which O’Brien's ratings were on an upward trend.^[25] Some observers^[who?] considered the portrayal of O'Brien's ouster as being specifically about the host's ratings to be spin, as it ignored O'Brien's far less expensive contract (and thus far less expensive buyout), O'Brien's improving ratings before the controversy, and O'Brien's younger demographics, all of which suggested profitability.

After the decision was made to reinstate Leno, NBC executives and Leno maintained in the media that O'Brien's ratings were responsible for his removal from the traditional Tonight Show time slot, while O'Brien's supporters argued that the incumbent host had been denied the unambiguous transition, network support and time to grow that his predecessor had received. In addition, it was pointed out that Leno's 10 pm program, rather than O'Brien's performance, had forced the need for line-up changes, while Leno's penalty clause all but guaranteed his continued presence on NBC late night after the cancellation of his primetime show. O'Brien's rating surge during the controversy was also seen by some of his proponents as having the potential to be the host's "Hugh Grant moment" – an allusion to a 1995 interview on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno that aired shortly after the British actor had been caught publicly soliciting a prostitute.^[26] Leno's interview with Grant was widely watched due to the scandal, and Leno's fortunes in his rivalry with Letterman permanently turned around in its wake.

That O'Brien being the cheaper host to lose was the cardinal factor in NBC's decision to negotiate his departure was advanced by the New York Post, which claimed that Leno had an "ironclad" guarantee for $150 million if he had been taken off the air, far higher than what it would cost for O'Brien to depart the network.^[27] Skip Brittenham, an entertainment attorney and partner at the law firm that had negotiated Leno's contract, was later asked about this claim in an interview. Though Brittenham refused to comment on the veracity of the publicly reported penalty figure, he allowed that "I think the facts speak for themselves."^[28]

On January 21, it was announced that NBC had struck a deal with O'Brien in which he would leave The Tonight Show and receive a $33 million payout – effectively a buyout of his three-year contract, which was reputed to be approximately $12 million a year. NBC's earlier position that O'Brien did not have time-slot protection was seemingly abandoned by implication^{[original research?]}, as in that scenario O'Brien would have been in breach of contract by refusing to move the show and presumably entitled to no such compensation. O'Brien's staff of almost 200 would receive $12 million divided in their departure, making the total of the settlement $45 million. O'Brien's final episode aired on Friday, January 22, ending his relationship with NBC after 22 years. Leno resumed hosting The Tonight Show on March 1, 2010, after NBC's coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics concluded.^[29][30][31]

O'Brien returned to late-night television on November 8, 2010 (after his

On March 1, 2010, Jay Leno returned to The Tonight Show, with

For the second incarnation of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, a new bandleader was selected, though original bandleader Kevin Eubanks returned for a few weeks in the transition. He officially announced his departure after 18 years on April 12, 2010, with his final episode airing May 28. Rickey Minor was announced as his replacement, and took over on June 7. The show also inaugurated a new theme tune composed by Minor.

With the return of Leno's Tonight Show in March 2010, Melendez continued in the writing role, which he was assigned to on the prime-time The Jay Leno Show, although the announcing duty went to Wally Wingert.

Jimmy Fallon began hosting The Tonight Show on February 17, 2014; his house band on Late Night, The Roots, joined him, as did announcer Steve Higgins.

Broadcasting milestones

The Tonight Show began its broadcast at 11:15 p.m. ET, following an affiliate's 15-minute news broadcast. As more affiliates lengthened their local news programs to 30 minutes, the show began doing two openings, one for the affiliates that began at 11:15 and another for those who joined at 11:30. By early 1965, only 43 of the 190 affiliated stations carried the entire show.^[54] After February 1965, Johnny Carson refused to appear until 11:30, and Ed McMahon "hosted" the 11:15 segment. Carson was not happy with this arrangement since McMahon's monologue covered the same ground as Carson's, and he finally insisted that the show's start time be changed to 11:30. As a result, the two-opening practice was eliminated in December 1966.^[55]

When the show began it was broadcast live. On January 12, 1959, the show began to be videotaped for broadcast later on the same day, although initially the Thursday night programs were kept live.^[56][57] Color broadcasts began on September 19, 1960.^[58]

The Tonight Show became the first American television program to broadcast with

On March 19, 2009, The Tonight Show became the first late-night talk show in history to have the sitting President of the United States as a guest, when President Barack Obama visited Jay Leno.

Throughout the years, the starting time and the length of The Tonight Show has changed multiple times.^[59]

First run episodes

§Many NBC affiliates chose not to carry the first fifteen minutes of the show during this period, instead preferring to air a local newscast from 11 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. As of February 1965, Carson refused to host the first 15 minutes of the program, preferring to wait until the full network was in place before delivering his opening monologue; Ed McMahon hosted the program's first 15 minutes instead. This persisted for nearly two years, until the show's start time was finally adjusted to 11:30 p.m. in January 1967.

Weekend repeats

From 1965 to 1975, until the premiere of Saturday Night Live, weekend repeats of The Tonight Show were staples of the NBC schedule. These repeats ran in the following time slots:

Gags, sketches, and segments

Allen

• Answer Man: Allen would come up with the answer to an unknown question, then read the question, which would invariably be the punchline to a joke.
• Man on the street interviews: often featured actors Don Knotts, Louis Nye and Tom Poston
  , though Allen also performed impromptu bits with non-professional civilians.
• ... and Costello: Lou Costello would re-enact his classic Abbott and Costello comedy bits with Poston or Nye in the place of the then-briefly-retired Bud Abbott.
• Crazy Shots: Later known as "Wild Pictures". Allen's supporting cast and guest stars would participate in quick visual gags while Allen played piano accompaniment.
• old-time radio era when entertainment programs included vocal groups in addition to house bands). The two would marry near the end of Allen's run and remained together until Gormé died in 2013.^[61][62]

• Eugene: A befuddled and bumbling character largely performed in pantomime. The week of Kovacs's last episodes of Tonight, Eugene received a prime-time special, Silent Show.

Paar

• radio's heyday, was a segment on The Tonight Show in 1958.^[63]
• Stump the Band: Audience members are asked to name an obscure song and the band tries to play it. If the band does not know the song, it usually breaks into a comical piece of music. This segment went on to become part of Carson's Tonight Show.
• Telephone Game:[64] Another improvisational music bit, this one had Melis building songs around four-digit numbers (ostensibly the last four digits of an audience member's phone number).

Carson

• hermetically sealed inside a mayonnaise jar underneath Funk & Wagnalls
  ' porch since noon today"). Carnac holds an envelope to his head and recites the punchline to a joke contained within the envelope, he then rips open the envelope and reads the matching question inside. Sample: "Saucepan... Who was Peter Pan's wino brother?" If a joke falls flat with the audience, Carnac invariably passes a comedic curse upon them (e.g., "May a bloated yak change the temperature of your jacuzzi!"). Carnac appears to be modeled after one of Allen's earlier gags, "The Question Man," in which Allen is given an answer to which he then provides the punchline in the form of a question.
• The Tea Time Movie:, with "Art Fern" and the Matinée Lady (originally Paula Prentiss, then a parade of one shots including Edy Williams, Juliet Prowse and Lee Meredith, then for many years Carol Wayne, then Danuta Wesley, and finally Teresa Ganzel). Carson once said that Art Fern was his favorite character: "He's so sleazy!" Huckster Art usually wore a loud suit, lavish toupee, and pencil mustache, and spoke in the high, nasal approximation of Jackie Gleason's "Reginald van Gleason III" character. A parody of 1950s-style, fast-talking advertising pitchmen, the Tea Time Movie consists of a rapid-fire series of fake advertisements for products and companies supposedly sponsoring a mid-afternoon movie. Invariably the jokes refer to his buxom Matinée Lady assistant, and at least once in every skit a variation of the "Slauson Cutoff" joke is made (e.g., "You can find our store by heading down Hwy. 101 until you get to the Slauson Cutoff. Get out of the car, cut off your slauson, get back in the car."), as is a reference to "Drive until you get to... (a map is unfolded to reveal a table fork) the fork in the road!" Art would then return us to today's movie (like "Tarzan and Cheetah Have to Get Married" or "Rin Tin Tin Gets Fixed Fixed Fixed," etc.), followed by an antique, four-second film clip. Back to Art, caught necking with the Matinée Lady before announcing another movie and another commercial.

Leno

• Headlines (Monday): Humorous print items sent in by viewers. These real-life headlines and advertisements usually contain typographical errors, double entendres, mismatched juxtapositions and/or unintentionally inappropriate items (wedding announcements with peculiar name combinations were a recurring theme). The segment usually starts out with a fake, humorous Headline during the introduction for the segment, such as Arabs Wish Bush "A Happy Shoe Year!", usually reflecting some current event.
• Jaywalking: A prerecorded segment, "Jaywalking" is a play on the host's name and the illegal practice of jaywalking. Leno asks people questions about current news and other topics in public areas around Los Angeles (usually Hollywood Boulevard, Melrose Avenue or Universal Studios). Most responses are outrageously incorrect; for example, one person believed that Abraham Lincoln was the first president, and another could not identify a picture of Hillary Clinton. Sometimes the questions are of the "What color is the White House?" level, such as asking in what country the Panama Canal is located. Up to 15 people are interviewed in an hour or less for each segment, with about nine interviews used on the air.
• Stuff We Found on eBay: Outrageous, real-life items available on the auction Web site eBay are shown, with the audience asked to guess whether or not the item was sold.
• Unusual Mother's Day, Father's Day, Christmas gifts: Gift items appropriate for holidays are shown; some real, some phony, all unusual

O'Brien

• Twitter Tracker: In this sketch, Conan is interrupted by an overzealous announcer (voiced by show writer Brian McCann) while lamenting the increasing number of celebrities who are using Twitter. The announcer attempts to prove to Conan that celebrity tweets are exciting by reading some of his favorites, which all describe mundane activities. The sketch is accompanied by increasingly elaborate animations in which the bird from the Twitter logo is repeatedly killed. The announcer tries to persuade Conan to play a game by using a rhyming sentence in which he refers to him as CoCo.
• Wax Fonzie/Wax Tom Cruise: While visiting a warehouse full of poor quality celebrity wax figures, Conan identified two as his favorite and purchased them. One was of
  Arthur Fonzarelli (whose hand positioning caused Conan to comment that he had just finished up at the urinal), and the other was a creepy-looking figure of Tom Cruise
  . Both wax figures made appearances on the show, including skits being shot out of a cannon. Wax Tom Cruise for the most part survived, while Wax Fonzie's face became irreplaceable. Wax Fonzie ultimately met its fate when it was obliterated in an explosion, part of a contest involving blowing up the contest winner's old car.
• Ridiculously Expensive Sketches: As an act of mock revenge for NBC forcing him out of The Tonight Show's traditional time slot, O'Brien spent the last few episodes debuting sketches that ostensibly would cost NBC an extremely large amount of money. The sketches used rare and expensive props (usually on loan) and contained media with unusually high licensing fees.

Many of Fallon's sketches moved over from Late Night.

• Pros & Cons: Fallon weighs the positives and the negatives on a particular topic of current events, with the "Pro" setting up the punch line, in the form of the "Con".
• Tonight Show Suggestion Box: Fallon responds to written suggestions, purportedly submitted by audience members, about ways to improve the show. As a result, the segment usually features three or four unrelated short comedy bits.
• Tonight Show Hashtags: Fallon puts out a call on Twitter each Wednesday for viewers to submit funny or absurd tweets based around a particular hashtag topic. Fallon then reads a few of the most comedic responses on Thursday's show.
• Thank You Notes: Noting that Friday is when he usually takes care of "personal stuff" and that he ran out of time during the day, Fallon writes his weekly "thank you notes" on the air. Fallon thanks people in the news, current events, inanimate objects, and other random subjects to comedic effect. Each note is accompanied by reflective piano music from The Roots' James Poyser, and usually results in a comedic exchange between Fallon and Higgins.
• Tonight Show Superlatives: Usually done as a tie-in to that week's Sunday Night Football game, Fallon shows photos of athletes and gives them captions styled like those that might be used in a high school yearbook.
• Screen Grabs: Similar to Leno's Headlines bit, viewers submit actual screen shots from various media (phones, internet, television, radio, etc.) that contain typos or similar errors with humorous results.
• Do Not Read List: Jimmy shares real published books found in actual libraries that have awkward titles &/or subject matter, an ironic author's name, or contain some other humorous element.
• Ew!: Jimmy portrays a teenage girl named Sara and invites many celebrities to be in Jimmy's basement. Through the sketch, all "girls" say "ew" a lot. The most popular segment of this sketch is with Seth Rogen and Zac Efron.

Broadcast

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The Tonight Show airs on

In addition to its broadcast on CNBC Europe, The Tonight Show airs on One in Germany, with German subtitles, weekdays at 11:00 p.m., one day after its American broadcast.

In India and Sri Lanka The Tonight Show airs on

Also, in Sri Lanka CNBC Asia (CNBCLife) airs back-to-back editions of the show on weekends.^[70]

An early attempt at airing the show by London Weekend Television in the United Kingdom during the early 1980s was unsuccessful, sparking jokes by Carson. On the October 23, 1984, broadcast, guest Paul McCartney had this to say of the show's British run:

Carson: (throwing to commercial) OK, we're gonna have to cut away. We're just gonna see a commercial. We sell things occasionally. It's not like the British telly, you know. You just go forever, ten or twelve [minutes]. British television ends when they – you know, when they want to. McCartney: (jokingly) Yeah, you're just mad because they didn't like your show.^[71]

See also

• List of The Tonight Show episodes
• List of late-night American network TV programs
• The Late Shift, a made-for-cable film about Leno and Letterman's vying for host duties on The Tonight Show

References