ShareThisBecause nothing lasts forever, every now and then there's an upheaval in late-night television. The last seismic shift came in 1992 when Johnny Carson retired from "The Tonight Show" to be replaced by Jay Leno. That led David Letterman, then the host of "Late Night" on NBC, to jump ship for a rival show on CBS.
Now, 17 years later, the late-night-talk-show landscape will change again.
In 2004, NBC announced that "Late Night" host Conan O'Brien, Letterman's successor, would replace Leno as host of "The Tonight Show." NBC executives like an orderly transition -- see the smooth baton pass from Tom Brokaw to Brian Williams on "NBC Nightly News" a couple years back -- so they gambled that by 2009 Leno's ratings would be down and it would be time to bring in the younger, hipper O'Brien.
But last year, when it became clear Leno wasn't ready to retire and would happily jump to ABC or Fox, NBC decided to upset its apple cart even further by giving Leno a talk show five nights a week at 10 p.m. ET beginning this fall. In the eyes of many observers, that makes the "Tonight Show" O'Brien inherits far less valuable than it otherwise would be.
The inheritor of NBC's "Late Night" (12:35 a.m. weeknights) may be taking on less of a plum gig, too. Not only will "Late Night" have to fight off the increasingly popular "Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson" on CBS, come fall it will be preceded by two hours' worth of talk shows (plus a 35-minute local newscast).
Jimmy Fallon, who begins hosting his iteration of "Late Night" from 30 Rock's Studio 6B in New York on Monday, said he's not concerned about being the third talk show of the night come fall. (Pity poor Carson Daly's "Last Call," which will be fourth, airing at 1:35 a.m.).
"I think either you're awake or you're not at 12:30 at night," Fallon said at a January press conference during the Television Critics Association winter press tour. "I don't think it will affect me."
In the same way, he doesn't see Ferguson as his competition.
"My only competition is sleep," Fallon said. "It's about how to keep people awake and keep people interested at 12:30 at night."
For his part, Ferguson doesn't see Fallon as competition, saying, "I think it's a different audience. I think Jimmy's competition is Adult Swim (on Cartoon Network). I don't think it's me."
Ferguson may be right. Fallon spoke of his desire to showcase more high-tech consumer gadgets on his show, citing G4's "Attack of the Show" as a favorite. (Former "Attack" executive producer Gavin Purcell serves as co-producer on Fallon's show.)
"I think we're going to treat a video-game premiere almost like a movie premiere," said Fallon, 34. "I'm interested in tech and I'm interested in gadgets. I want people to come on my show, whether it be Bill Gates or the guy who designed the new Palm Pre, and talk about the new inventions."
And, of course, music will be a part of the show with cutting-edge, youth-skewing bands dropping by to play. The Roots will be the new "Late Night" house band.
Fallon rose to prominence during a stint on "Saturday Night Live" that began in the late 1990s. He tried to parlay his popularity into feature films with less success.
"The box-office part of it -- that was the main signal for me to get out," he said of his movie flops, such as 2004's "Taxi." But he also missed the energy of being in front of a live audience. "It's a faster reaction time than a movie. You can film a movie for five months. Then you edit for three months. Then you market for two months. Then critics go, 'It (stinks).' That's a year of my life."
As he prepares for a new gig, Fallon's predecessor says he'll simply have to learn on the job.
"I've told Jimmy that nobody who hasn't done one of these shows every single day can possibly imagine what that's like, and so the way to learn is by doing it," O'Brien said in January. "There's no way that you can go off into a cave somewhere and completely conceive and conceptualize your show and then go on the air and start cranking out an hour a night. I learned how to do one of these shows by doing it. It was not pretty to watch sometimes, but it's the only way that you can do it."
(Contact TV editor Rob Owen at rowen(at)post-gazette.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
Must credit Pittsburgh Post-GazetteEmbargoed for Saturday release
