@@Rytoc12 Conan wouldn't enter the talk show host game if it wasn't for David Letterman leaving NBC. Conan probably would be working as a writer on the Simpsons or anything else.
@@NHatemN he still would’ve. who ever didn’t get the TTS was probably gonna go to CBS. in this case Leno would’ve left the network. i do argue he wouldn’t have been as popular if he made the jump. i just don’t see him (Leno) agreeing to take on the Late Night franchise when he already did over 300 shows guesting hosting TTS
@@markjackson6431 that’s the way I see it Letterman takes over The Tonight Show. Leno would’ve went to CBS and Conan still would’ve come in for Late Night.
Letterman and Conan were able to share their talent while not hiding behind the comfort of NBC executives. They were always so versatile, absolutely my favourites.
Anybody interested in the late night tv battles of the 90's and 2009-2010 should read Bill Carter. He's an excellent- and un-biased- authority on the whole saga.
@Harvey Smith While late night has lost its relevance, there is still a ton to write about it. Bill Carter’s recent CNN special about the history of late night was excellent.
I remember Chevy Show lasted like a month or less than a month which was hilarious, because the critic was right. Arsenio show was on CBS or FOX affiliates and still believe Chevy should of been on at midnight for those FOX affiliates. FOX always to be different from the big 3
I heard an interview with Warren on Barry Katz 'Industry Standard' Podcast. I too was a HUGE Letterman fan from my mid-teens to early 20's when Letterman was a few years into his CBS stint. The big takeaway from LIttlefield was that Dave was asking/demanding some large percentage shares of things with lots of control as well. He figured NBC was able to save/earn close to $700,000,000-800,000,000 with the Leno deal vs the Letterman deal. This was obviously a recent interview I'm certain it was 2015 so he got to see it play out for basically a quarter century. Was I enraged when I heard Leno was to get the Tonight Show over Dave? Heck yeah. But as a businessman, I can see the Leno route was going to earn NBC hundreds of millions of dollars more, it's a no brainer.
The reason why Jay Leno's Tonight Show eventually beat Letterman from the summer of 1995 onward was that Jay was seen by many as a safe pair of hands. What they wanted at 11.35pm was to have easy comedy, calm, reassuring, the perfect hot milk and cookies of talk shows, and Leno proved he could deliver. Letterman was the cold beer of late night.
@@slapshot01j I noticed interviews with David in 1995 he was a bit rough to CBS, mocking their prime time line up etc. Loyalty to CBS started to slide then
@Gavin James It all depends on your mood at 11.35pm at night. Some are just exhausted from the day and want something easy to watch, whereas there are people who are not tired, and like the edgier material. Depends on your mood. For me, I am in the middle.
@Gavin James Larry King's show was superb, used to air in Los Angeles around 6pm when we got home. It was re-run at 9pm also. Letterman and Leno was a big deal in the 1990s and 2000s. I have to be honest, I chose Leno more often than Dave. I liked Headlines which Leno did, sometimes he got snips from English newspapers on it. Letterman was superb with Stupid Pet Tricks but you are right, I think he used to go to sleep during interviews. Leno used to do interviews a bit better, but Leno was king of the monologue. You could not fault his delivery. I have always found it strange that England never caught on to a nightly talk show. Maybe it was just a different culture, where in the states sleep does not matter much to us, whereas sleep might matter more to the English. It was common for people to end the night with Johnny Carson who until 1980 had his show on to 1am. Then bed time and be up again at 6am to watch the morning news on our local stations before heading out to work at 8am. One of the benefits of the states is we had a huge amount of stations to pick from, even in the 80s compared to the UK right?
For our generation, we were all pro Conan. My mom liked Carson and Letterman but she always said she doesn't "get" Conan. And I always told her that everyone responded to Letterman very similarly. But peeps my age def watched repeat Conan on Comedy Central and he is overall our dude. I agree about Ferguson and I actually liked Craig Kilborn too
I love that this is from ABC-the one major network that lost out on this sweepstakes!! Not to mention they couldn’t get Letterman or Leno to leave, hence Jimmy Kimmel’s show.
Helen Kushnick. If the anecdotal evidence personal accounts and film (i.e., "The Late Shift") provide are to be believed, she was a scheming, conniving, often brutal businesswoman and was responsible for planting a story in the press which prematurely started the process of Johnny Carson's retirement from, and Jay Leno's ascendency into, the Tonight Show host slot.
@@leonardstilwell1894 Hit the nail on the head. Story goes also: She also got wind from NBC Senior Management back in late 1989, that they were worried that Arsenio Hall was going to take over as the late night king, because of the numbers he was putting up. What NBC execs didn't know was, Hall was pulling the so-called New Urban, Hip Hop culture audience , that 21 - 30 age group, that didn't see Carson as their cup of tea. Johnny has solid numbers with the 30 and over crowd. So Helen Kushnick, played on that, and that Johnny was going to retired. Now as everyone knows Johnny has a contract war with NBC through the 1970's, always threatening to leave the show. So it was looks at as, he wanted to leave. Carson didn't want to leave for at lease, rumor has it, 5 more years. What Johnny should of done was come out, as he did in 1979, and state on the show, "I have no plans on retiring in the near future, and then sat Jay Leno down one on one and told him right out, that if that bitch ever said anything like that again I will make sure you never sit here as my guess host ever again. Of course years later, Leno got rid of her for the crap she was pulling, and I think she die of cancer 10 years later.
@@paulandzik7190 I don't like what Helen did with the leaked story, but part of the reason the network went with Jay was because of Johnny's stubborn refusal to admit he was passed his prime. Had he left around year 25, *NBC* almost certainly would've chosen the by then well-established Dave Letterman to take over. But Johnny stayed on, taking frequent vacations, only doing 3 shows a week while relying on guest hosts to fill in. This allowed the audience to get accustomed to seeing Jay Leno sitting behind the desk, bringing in younger viewers with him. Dave didn't get along too well with *NBC* anyway, but Carson sure didn't help him out by staying till he was 67.
It really is a shame Arsenio's show didn't last - especially due to Chevy Chase's absolute dud of a program. I read in Carter's book that he was offered a show on Fox after he killed as a guest host during its waning years but the network wouldn't give him executive producer rights to the show while Paramount did. Wise choice on his part but after Letterman made the move to CBS and Fox gave Chase his show, it was pretty much over for him.
Was it merely coincidental that Ted Koppel (the regular host, and thus by definition a competitor rather than an impartial observer) was not anchoring THIS particular edition?
@@FIXTREME ABC wasn't really on board with the whole late night thing, so they missed their chance with Arsenio. Sometime in the 00's, ABC tried to court David Letterman to leave CBS.
5:13 Everyone makes fun (rightly so) of "The Chevy Chase Show," but a forgotten part of that show's legacy is its role in curtailing Arsenio's run. Sure, Letterman's new show did the most damage but Chevy sure as hell didn't help. Only five(ish) weeks and yet, by merely existing, he inadvertently slayed a show that had run successfully for four years to that point. 6:12 Really ironic given her hardball tactics on guests. The host pretty much seems to be alluding to what she did...and yet she's the one provided as saying "nah, guests aren't that important." 10:16 That tie... 11:05 Someone's still salty. They'd broadcast their last game nearly two months later, it's 2020 and CBS still hasn't gotten MLB back. 16:00 And despite this, ABC continually flirted with getting out of the "news at 11.35p" game until they finally gave in in 2013 with Kimmel. They aggressively pursued (and very nearly got) Letterman in 2002 and when Leno's first TS show run was winding down, they were hovering around him also. I think they were always keeping one eye to the future without Koppel and didn't think there'd be a successor to make it work in that timeslot. 24:06 No he won't... 24:50 Despite the widespread proliferation of cable options in late night TV, minorities are still not widely represented, and certainly not at the major networks.
Is there like a limit percentage that everything has to hit before we consider it represented? As someone who's seen various people of all shapes and sizes men and women white and not for 30 plus years..... I'm just curious as to what exactly equates to widely represented. And that being said any work is going to feature its majority audience because it's probably written by its majority audience. If it's not then they're probably going for multiple audiences at once.
@matthewrock4725 I don't know what widely represented is but I'm pretty certain it's not "all white guys on the network late night shows." The Tonight Show has always been hosted by a white guy. The Late Show has always been hosted by a white guy. ABC's late night option has always been a white guy. And so on. You have to get to the 1;30a "Later/Little Late" NBC block to see them breaking out of that mold. We had Desus & Mero on Showtime for a few years. That's something, I guess. I'm not bagging on any one particular host in the legacy lines, FWIW. But the stats bear out that if you're a late night host, you're probably a white guy. What good that will do in 2023 with the traditional concept of "late night" fading away, who knows? 🤷♂️
8:40 I really want to know what this commercial was all about and what the heck actually happened on September 9th involving a fork literally sticking up in the road, lol.
There was no Carson "empire" to speak of. As Jerry Seinfeld pointed out some years on, when he finally left (proximately caused by having his beloved show shifted from 23:30/22:30 to 23:35 eastern/22:35 central) he essentially took "Tonight" with him! Had Carson departed after 25 years, either Dave Letterman or Garry Shandling would most likely have succeeded (never replaced) him. His overstaying gave an opening to Arsenio (with his appeal to the urban and the under-30 demographics), which in turn led the suits at NBC to look to one James Muir Leno as their savior.
Late Show with David Letterman would rule late night as the number one rated late night talk show from September 1993 until around April 1995, and then it all went down hill, after CBS lost football coverage and their prime time ratings for fall 1995 tanked. The July 1995 appearance of Hugh Grant on Leno proved to be the start of Leno's rise.
I have heard that Leno was a guy that studied ratings and ratings trends and worked very hard at being someone that could be accepted by both America's. " I knew that he would get all of the cool kids and the critics and we would go for the popular vote" - Jay Leno
I wish she asked Littlefield about Bill Carter saying they had thr best two hosts under one roof and couldn't keep them and Stringer about Carter saying they tried to get Leno then went for Letterman
With VHS, it didn't matter what was on. Tape it and watch it at a better time. Tape Simpsons, watch Cosby. People taped the late shows. Scheduling became far less important.
Seems all so quaint now. Also that year at a ‘cutting edge’ art gallery I attended a demonstration of a new form of entertainment; virtual reality. Lol
that Jay Leno _ever_ out-rated David Letterman is unbearable to me. that Jay Leno, for decades, _consistently and thoroughly_ out-rated David Letterman is one of the hardest, most toxic, most HUMILIATINGLY lame facts about humanity. _oh, look. he's got a baseball glove rear-view mirror! ho ho ho. how hilarious. how WACKY. how utterly, utterly amusing._
13:08 do they not understand that people can fall asleep with their TVs still on?…. the talk shows can be playing in their bedrooms while they already fell asleep 🤦🏻♂️ lol…..and that happens with alot of people
If hall moved to ABC even after Nightline they would respond to NBC and CBS’s successful bids for talk show hosts but I didn’t, Maher and Kimmel have some degrees
Why did they make every female newscaster wear that hairstyle back then? It’s like the moment Bill and Hillary moved into the White House, that look became the standard female journalist haircut. Except for Connie Chung. That must be why CBS fired her.
he's a great stand up, and a not as great talk show host. i think he wouldve been funnier if he stuck with stand up and maybe did some specials, but he obviously did very well financially and with network execs, which may be even more important to him.
They seemed to at the time. Leno was a highly skilled stand up, Dave was a bit campy and juvenile in comparison. But as comedy talk show hosts go, Dave was the best.
I'm a Dave guy. Dave had the critics and support of most of the comedians, but Jay had middle America. But in the end, Dave and Conan will live on forever on platforms like RU-vid. No one will be watching Jay-Walking on RU-vid in 25 years.
Jimmy Fallon succeeded Jay Leno as host of NBC's "Tonight Show" in February of 2014-then-in May of 2015-Stephen Colbert succeeded David Letterman as host of the CBS "Late Show"; I prefer Jimmy Fallon.
The NBC Executive that Cokie Roberts kept dunking on looks like someone who enjoys the comedy of Jay Leno. "Looks like they enjoy Jay Leno" is the worst thing I can say about a person.
And respect from his peers. And reverence from both established and upcoming comedians and writers who cite him as an influence. And a post-Late Night career. Currently, Leno has a bunch of cars and a chin that is still more upsetting than Letterman's gold prospector beard.
@@JapaneseDenim I dunno'. Jay seems to have a lot of friends and admirers in the entertainment industry, too, and "Jay's Garage" has been running for years.
Once Jay Leno took over the tonight show Arsenio lost the hold on the younger viewers. Arsenio was getting his butt kicked enough when it was just Leno but then once David letterman signed with Cbs it was over
How much longer was he going to stay on the job if he didn’t retire in 1992? The day was going to come eventually, and if it didn’t come then, it would have by now. What I still don’t understand is why NBC waited as long as they did with Joan Rivers’ contract. Were they intending to just let her get away to another network, which happened anyway and sent this chain of events in motion? Garry Shandling did a sitcom on Fox around the same time, and I don’t remember Johnny Carson, holding it against him, nor his HBO sitcom where he played the host of a fictional late night talk show. In the case of the latter, it was likely Jeffrey Tambor doing the “holding against.” But it still took Garry out of consideration as Johnny’s replacement.
Looks like overall NBC made the right choice. Dave had a huge high that slowly wore off even before 1995. By 1994 It was getting real close. Much like anything, this was a marathon and not a sprint. Jay changed course and created more of a comedy club format with the studio instead of trying to have Low Rent Johnny Carson show and it worked. Play to what you are good at. Letterman flamed out after 1996 and slowly after a while stopped caring so much. Comedy is a matter of taste. As far as who was watching in the Demo and viewership, Jay brought in more ad dollars. But Letterman to his credit got a brand established at CBS they never had period up until that point.
*NBC* going with Jay was the best thing that could've happened for Dave Letterman's career. After all, he didn't get along with the network anyway, and if he'd brought in year after year of the kind of second place ratings he scored over at CBS, it would've been Dave instead of Jay getting sacked in favour of a younger host- and a lot sooner, too. *CBS* gave him a home, didn't can him over that sex scandal, and despite his lesser ratings they allowed Dave to outlast Jay. Going to *CBS* worked out far better for Dave than staying with *NBC* likely would have.
@@gallery7596 Yes I can't argue with you there. Dave would have likely done the same thing as he did on CBS and would have likely went to second place in a few years and that would have set NBC on edge. CBS, on the other hand, never had a late night franchise and was vastly more forgiving of the ratings than NBC ever has. I often wonder what will happen now since the Tonight Show, now, is losing in the overall ratings and often times even in the Demo
@@PokeyBessie A D presidency next year may yet turn out to be the saving grace for Fallon, whereas continued "Trumplican" reign is likely to be good-to--great news for Colbert - who has demonstrated that he is a much more openly harsh on-air critic of the current WH occupant 😎
I think the fact that NBC “picked” Jay over Dave had a big impact on the general publics perception of who they should watch... like “oh he’s the dude they passed over, jay is probably better” and tbh that’s enough for the mob to go with one person 🤷🏻♂️
They claimed Leno started to win only because of the NBC primetime schedule but whenCBS started having better primetime shows leno still kicked lettermans but
That's true. Jay didn't need a big prime time lead-in to win in late night. To his credit, Dave said himself that the audience just seemed to prefer Jay over him.
to this day i will never understand why they chose leno for the tonight show. did he have some dirt on someone? did he attend some wild part with nbc execs? it makes no sense why nbc chose some random comedian who hadnt been hosting a late night show. the whole thing seems shocking still. i coulda seen if it was a huge name comedian at that time like eddie murphy, or howie mandell. but jay leno? i think everyone was shocked
It's not entirely accurate to call Leno random. He'd been TTS permanent guest host for several years and as early as 1989, whenever there was speculation on who would succeed Johnny if he ever retired, Leno's name was always in the mix.
