Tonight Show With Jay Leno Archives

Starting in the mid- to late-1980s, television talk shows, both daytime and late-night, multiplied in number. The in-studio talk program was inexpensive to produce and audiences were increasingly drawn to the sensationalism and celebrity showcased each day and night on television. Some late-night talk shows--including those hosted by Joan Rivers, Chevy Chase and Pat Sajak on the FOX network--came and went quickly. Arsenio Hall's show was on the air for several years before cancellation. Especially successful in late night was the up-and-coming David Letterman. Late Night with David Letterman started out on NBC, airing immediately after The Tonight Show from 1982 until 1993.

Passed over for the host position on The Tonight Show when Leno was chosen for the post, Letterman moved to CBS where his new show ran in direct competition with Leno. Johnny Carson will be forever known as the king of late night television. His 30 years as host of "The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson" serves as an achievement—both in longevity and artistically—for current and future talk show hosts to aspire to. Changes in Leno's show reflected other major changes in television since its earlier days.

By the late 1980s late-night talk had become slightly less a white male domain. Joan Rivers hosted her own talk show for a short time, and popular black comedian Arsenio Hall had his own show which enjoyed a wide following, attracting mostly a young black audience, a segment previously ignored in late night talk. The first leader of Jay Leno's late night studio band was the accomplished black jazz musician Branford Marsalis. The second band leader and Leno sidekick was Kevin Eubanks, also black. A big change for The Tonight Show during Leno's tenure was its first serious competition. In an effort to improve ratings and return Leno to late night , NBC suggested that The Tonight Show be pushed back by 30 minutes to accommodate a new program for Leno.

O'Brien, however, rejected the proposal, and speculation soon began that Leno would rejoin The Tonight Show. After several weeks of heated negotiations, O'Brien left the show in late January, and Leno returned as host in March. The program's ratings soon rebounded, but in 2013 Leno announced that he would be stepping down as host the following year. Leno's primetime program was flailing in the ratings and O'Brien wasn't doing much better with his younger version of "Tonight." Through all of this, NBC felt pressure to bring Leno back to late night. Leno had the last laugh, though, regularly beating his late night competition in the ratings.

In the audio above, Leno talks about one of his first acting gigs, which was on the TV show Good Times , about how his comedy has evolved as he's aged, and how the daily cycle of late night television affected how he did comedy. Leno also received pre-recorded farewells from celebrities such as actors Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg, Charlie Sheen, sports broadcaster Bob Costas and his successor Jimmy Fallon. Even President Barack Obama, who in 2009 became the first sitting president to appear on a late night talk show when he joined Leno on "Tonight," delivered a pre-recorded goodbye. Another messy transition saw O'Brien relinquish his role as host, break his contract with NBC, and bolt for greener pastures on TBS. Leno returned to late night after a little more than nine months away from ​"The Tonight Show." When Leno left late night to take a shot at primetime in 2009, "Late Night" host Conan O'Brien stepped into the role of "Tonight Show" host.

After Carson retired from "Tonight," comedian and regular guest host Jay Leno took over the late night desk. You know Johnny Carson, Jay Leno, and Jimmy Fallon, but do you know all the other hosts of "The Tonight Show"? This iconic late night talk show has had a number of talented and very funny men walk through the stage curtain and deliver the monolog over the years. While longtime late night mainstay Jay Leno retired as host of the Tonight Show a few years back, he continues to tour extensively, including a show here in Houston Friday night at Jones Hall. "I am the luckiest guy in the world. This is tricky," said an emotional Leno, stepping down for the second and presumably last time as host of TV's venerable late-night program.

In terms of ratings, Leno's last episode didn't come anywhere near Carson's finale which was watched by an estimated million people. At the same time, the episode did deliver the Tonight Show's highest Friday night rating of the show's 17 year run. Leno's farewell averaged an 8.8 household rating/20 share in the 56 overnight metered markets with an estimated 10 million viewers. I watch the monologues, and I don't watch interviews too much, because I talked to that guy .

But I really how hard it is to do a different version of the same joke every night. Because let's be honest, the news doesn't change a whole lot from day to day. And then you have to watch all the other shows, make sure you don't have the same joke as Conan or Samantha Bee or whoever it might be.

For a stand-up comedian whose high school guidance counselor suggested he drop out of school, Leno has come a long way. Born in New Rochelle, New York, in 1950, he grew up in Andover, Massachusetts - where he ran into the guidance counselor. Instead of dropping out, he went on to Emerson College, earning a bachelor's degree in speech therapy and starting a comedy club. In the 1970s, he landed mostly minor roles in several television series, but his big break came in 1987. Rumors had spread that comic Letterman was next in line for Carson's throne.

Leno first departure came in 2009, when he was briefly replaced by Conan O'Brien but reclaimed the show after a messy transition and O'Brien's lackluster ratings. In '09, he was moving to a prime-time show on NBC; this time he's out the door, and has said he'll focus on comedy clubs and his beloved car collection. When you're mining the news for laughs, it's inevitable that some jokes will have similar punchlines as those on rival programs, but that doesn't mean anyone's stealing material, according to former "Tonight Show" host Jay Leno. On Friday night, NBC aired the last episode of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. The end of Leno's 17 year tenure on the program is very impressive and is second only to Johnny Carson in his longevity on the program.

After a 22-year run, mostly spent atop the ratings, an emotional Jay Leno bid farewell to "The Tonight Show" for a second and final time Thursday night. James Douglas Muir "Jay" Leno is an American television host, comedian, and writer. He was the host of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno from 1992 until 2009, later returning in 2010, and had his final show on February 6, 2014. He first appear in the Jay Leno Short, voiced by himself, where he spoke to the children of South Park about Thanksgiving, only to hear jokes regarding his chin.

When Amy Winehouse, who was on 'The Tonight Show,' was singing that song about 'I won't go to rehab,' there were a lot of jokes about that. Then she died and then people were, 'Jay Leno did a joke.' But I did it with her blessing, she was there (on 'Tonight') when I did it. Stephen Battaglio writes about television and the media business for the Los Angeles Times out of New York. His coverage of the television industry has appeared in TV Guide, the New York Daily News, the New York Times, Fortune, the Hollywood Reporter, Inside.com and Adweek. He is also the author of three books about television, including a biography of pioneer talk show host and producer David Susskind. In March, Leno apologized to the Asian American community for the many gags he's made about Koreans eating dogs.

Among her issues was a dog-eating joke made by Leno that was cut from the program. Browse 131,319 the tonight show with jay leno stock photos and images available, or start a new search to explore more stock photos and images. NBC appointed O'Brien in 2004 to be Leno's successor when he left the show in 2008 to host his own primetime program on the network. Letterman left the network for its competitor CBS, and launched his own talk show in the same timeslot as "Tonight," going head-to-head with Leno and initially beating him in the ratings. NBC picked Leno over Letterman, then the host of NBC's "Late Night" talk show, to replace Carson in 1992, resulting in a very public, bitter feud. Leno's departure and Fallon's hire marks NBC's second attempt to transition the "Tonight Show" into a program appealing to the year old demographic coveted by advertisers while still maintaining its top spot in the ratings.

"It really is time for me to go and hand it off to the next guy," the comedian added. Regardless, the monologue was still a pretty fun bit, and it was once again strange to hear jokes about Donald Trump and the modern D.C. Era coming out of Jay Leno's voice, which is more familiarly suited to jokes about Obama and the Clintons.

Thankfully, he did get to poke some fun at Bill Clinton's morals, so the old times were felt. Leno returned to ​"Tonight" after ​the cancellation of ​​"The Jay Leno Show" and steered the program toward relatively stable ratings. Nearly every major talk show host of the last 20 years including David Letterman, Jay​ Leno, and ​Conan O'Brien, cites Carson as both an inspiration and an influence.

Perhaps most famously, Paar abruptly quit "The Tonight Show" after NBC censored one of his monolog jokes. After delivering his monolog the following evening, Paar walked out, leaving announcer Hugh Downs to fill in for the remainder of the program. Lescoulie was a radio and television announcer and one-time host of "The Today Show." Collins was a deejay, radio personality, and recording artist. The duo hosted the show for six months in 1957 after Allen retired. Allen is considered the originator of the talk show monolog, the comedy sketch break, and playful banter with the audience. In a very big way, we could consider Allen the father of the modern-day talk show.

Steve Allen was the first host of "Tonight." His run on the show set the bar for nearly every talk show to come. The show's former host will be a guest on Jimmy Fallon's version of "Tonight" on Friday. It will be the first time he's been back at the NBC institution since signing off after nearly 22 years as host last February. Finally, he admitted that it "really is time to go and hand it off to the next guy ," before channeling Johnny Carson's words during his final "Tonight" appearance. Leno, 71, remains a gag machine seven years after leaving NBC's late-night franchise "The Tonight Show," where he was host for 22 years and No. 1 in the ratings for most of them.

Friday's announcement, first reported by Deadline, wasn't the first time Leno received a "Tonight Show" end date from NBC. The latenight host was famously ousted in May of 2009 in order to make room for Conan O'Brien, who only briefly sat behind the "Tonight Show" desk before Leno took over the show again in 2010. But Fallon's ratings have also been rising, with the "Late Night" host up 16% from last year in adults last quarter, averaging 1.78 million viewers. For the first time The Tonight Show shared the late-night spotlight.

The two host/comedians, Leno and Letterman, were polished performers with large audiences. They became, as Carson had been, the gauge by which mainstream entertainment and politics were measured. On both programs comedy was delivered--and guests and issues of day treated--the same way, as gossip and light entertainment. After four decades The Tonight Show was still outlining and defining, even when not at the forefront of, the essence of contemporary televised culture. The two programs, quite similar in format, became locked in a struggle for ratings supremacy, though The Tonight Show typically prevailed. The Tonight Show, long-running American late-night television talk show.

Airing since 1954 on NBC, it is the standard against which others of its genre are judged. Through the years, "The Tonight Show," a late-night TV marathon on NBC, has been a kind of barometer of what makes Americans laugh. Leading the laugh-athon as host for many of those years is a portly, smiley, stand-up comedian named Jay Leno.

Each night he faces the camera with a bemused, somewhat unbelieving look as he waves his arms and comments on the latest folly to befall the American way of life.