# NBC sets mandatory retirement date for Jay Leno



## Steve615 (Feb 5, 2006)

According to the following link,Jay Leno's final "Tonight Show" appearance will occur on May 29,2009.Leno has not commented on the network imposed timeframe yet.Conan O'Brien will replace Leno on June 1,2009 and Jimmy Fallon will take over for O'Brien when he vacates the "Late Night" slot.NBC will air O'Brien fronted "Late Night" reruns until Fallon is deemed "up to speed".

http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/b147292_nbc_sets_jay_lenos_endgame.html


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## davring (Jan 13, 2007)

Look for Leno to be on ABC.


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## Sirshagg (Dec 30, 2006)

Note to self: cancel series link on May 29, 2009.


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## SamC (Jan 20, 2003)

On the list of the 10 least funny people in America, Leno occupies 3 spots.

That said, I would look for him to sign with one of the casino companies. He can clearly fill a mid sized Las Vegas room along with the standard tour of Tunica, Atlantic City, etc.


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## MikeW (May 16, 2002)

I've never been entertained by Leno. I'm one who believed Letterman should have taken that spot from day one. I find Conan even less entertaining. I actually prefer Kimmel over Leno.


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## phrelin (Jan 18, 2007)

Leno will not be considered a loss in our household. Letterman is our preference but I assume he'll retire shortly also. With that said, I wouldn't mind a Conan v Kimmel choice in that time slot in the future.


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## Nick (Apr 23, 2002)

Sirshagg said:


> Note to self: cancel series link on May 29, 2009.


Note to self: I just don't care anymore. :shrug: I'm getting too darn old for late night tv. :stickman:


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## davring (Jan 13, 2007)

DVR's are AARP approved


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## Drew2k (Aug 16, 2006)

MikeW said:


> I've never been entertained by Leno. I'm one who believed Letterman should have taken that spot from day one. I find Conan even less entertaining. I actually prefer Kimmel over Leno.


Agree 100% with you about who shoud have been helming the Tonight Show since Carson retired - it should have been Dave. Carson himself believed it should have been Dave...

I also agree that I'd rather watch Kimmel than Leno. Kimmel just needs to go HD and stop those commercials within the show!


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## MikeW (May 16, 2002)

Drew2k said:


> Agree 100% with you about who shoud have been helming the Tonight Show since Carson retired - it should have been Dave. Carson himself believed it should have been Dave...
> 
> I also agree that I'd rather watch Kimmel than Leno. Kimmel just needs to go HD and stop those commercials within the show!


Funny that we got Rosie O'Donnell (the View) in HD before Jimmy Kimmel. I wonder what ABC is waiting for. It would seem that they really should do something during the window of opportunity when Conan actually goes live.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

Back in the olden days I didn't mind Jay Leno as a guest... but I never liked him as a host. Back when he would fill-in for Johnny Carson I would just tune out those weeks... so I was really surprised when Leno got the permanent gig.

My interest in Letterman has faded over the years... and while I like Conan, I find I'm just out of the must-watch-late-night-talk-show mode now.


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## Steve Mehs (Mar 21, 2002)

When I worked nights, I used to watch all the late night and late late night shows for a while, I never found any of them to be funny, or even entertaining. If I'd have tp pick, I'd say Leno over Letterman. Stupid Pet Tricks is just well plain stupid and The Top 10 were lame and disappointing. Leno seems to have a less scripted feel, but hell what do I know.


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## trainman (Jan 9, 2008)

Sirshagg said:


> Note to self: cancel series link on May 29, 2009.


You might want to wait until May 30, assuming you want Leno's final episode to record.

I'm fairly certain "The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien" will be considered a brand-new series as far as the Tribune data is concerned...so the only reason to cancel the series link immediately would be if you're in danger of running up against the "50" limit.


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## Carl Spock (Sep 3, 2004)

The rumor I've heard is that Leno is being considered as the replacement for Larry King. 

No lie.

Somebody's got to replace Larry King, although Larry has continued to host his show even though he's been dead for years.


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## durl (Mar 27, 2003)

MikeW said:


> I've never been entertained by Leno. I'm one who believed Letterman should have taken that spot from day one.


I thought so, as well. Letterman was a far better interviewer than Leno and seemed a better fit as the successor to Carson.

That being said, I no longer watch Letterman. His show really went downhill to me.


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## durl (Mar 27, 2003)

Carl Spock said:


> The rumor I've heard is that Leno is being considered as the replacement for Larry King.
> 
> No lie.
> 
> Somebody's got to replace Larry King, although Larry has continued to host his show even though he's been dead for years.


Interesting rumor.

Honestly, I think I'd like to see Leno host an American version of the BBC's Top Gear.


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## Chuck W (Mar 26, 2002)

I have no idea why NBC is in such a rush to put Conan into the 11:30 slot. Conan isn't even winning his CURRENT 12:30 timeslot every night. Craig Ferguson won the timeslot recently.

As Davring said, look for Leno to head to ABC and start a competing show.


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## arundc (Jan 14, 2006)

durl said:


> Interesting rumor.
> 
> Honestly, I think I'd like to see Leno host an American version of the BBC's Top Gear.


Hey, that's actually a great idea! I love watching Top Gear. Leno would be fantastic as a host of a car show.


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## tcusta00 (Dec 31, 2007)

Chuck W said:


> I have no idea why NBC is in such a rush to put Conan into the 11:30 slot. Conan isn't even winning his CURRENT 12:30 timeslot every night. Craig Ferguson won the timeslot recently.
> 
> As Davring said, look for Leno to head to ABC and start a competing show.


I think it's part of Conan's contract, isn't it?


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## Stuart Sweet (Jun 19, 2006)

I've been a follower of Mr. Leno's for years. He hails from Andover, MA, not that far away from my old haunts, and I first saw him live in a gymnasium at the University of New Hampshire in late 1985. Over the years I've seen him in both live engagements and tapings of The Tonight Show.

It's fair to say he's no Johnny Carson. There will never be another person like Mr. Carson, and there will never be another time when the viewing public shared such common habits as staying up late to see "who was on Johnny."

That being said, he's an environmentalist, historian, tinkerer, and while he's rarely made me laugh so hard I lost my breath, he's been a generous host and reliable presence on the late night stage for... wow, sixteen years.

I don't watch _The Tonight Show_ much, as I find it's really only good in its original time slot. I don't know why some shows don't work well with the DVR. But it is always there for me. I don't know if Mr. O'Brien will be my cup of tea, but I do think that he's got some big shoes to fill, not just from Messrs. Allen, Paar, and Carson, but also those of Mr. Leno. I wish Mr. O'Brien the best.


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## Pete K. (Apr 23, 2002)

NBC is making a mistake. Love him, hate him or just don't give a c---, Leno is going to make NBC regret this decision.


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## BubblePuppy (Nov 3, 2006)

I think NBC should just take Carson out of the deep freeze that we all know that is where he is kept along with Walt Disney and thaw him out and get him back on the Tonight show.


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## Drew2k (Aug 16, 2006)

durl said:


> I thought so, as well. Letterman was a far better interviewer than Leno and seemed a better fit as the successor to Carson.
> 
> That being said, I no longer watch Letterman. His show really went downhill to me.


Letterman's actually experiencing somewhat of a renaissance, in my opinion. He's getting great guests, having a ball interviewing, and even has a new recurring character skit with an intern that always leaves me chuckling. I think the birth of his son really changed Letterman, and he's much more open and giving. He's also a great interviewer, not afraid to challenge a guest or deviate from what the guest expects to talk about (ex, typical "I'm here to promote my movie" blather).

Do a search on YouTube for recent Letterman interviews, for example, with Will Smith this year. It was a blast - both Will and Dave had a blast, too.

Now, regarding Conan on the Tonight Show, I recently saw an old interview when Letterman had Conan on after Conan got the Late Night gig. Conan had much shorter hair. I predict that when Conan gets the Tonight Show, he'll scale back on the hair to be more "approachable" or "marketable". Yeah, it's somewhat of a "trademark" look for him, but I think he'll get some pressure to change his hair ... I know that big red floppy hair has always bothered me.


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## Tigerman73 (Dec 1, 2006)

I like Conan O'Brien but I wonder if moving from the late 11:35CST slot to the 10:35 CST slot will hurt him. His show is based off of quirky, offbeat humor that's not going to really play well w/ older viewers so he'll have to tone down alot of what he does or flat out completely change what he's doing to fit in at the Tonight Show. I think the move to the 10:35 slot on CBS for Lettermen hurt him also, I just don't find his show very appealing anymore, it's gotten worse as the years have gone on. Of course that could have to do w/ the fact I've seen him at his funniest most creative timeframe and being put into a more conservative slot hurt him by changing what I had gotten used to over the years. I don't think Leno is the funniest guy out there but he's perfect for the Tonight Show, he's really middle of the road and non controversial, he's not Johnny and never will be, but neither is Dave or Conan or anyone else. I think NBC is making a mistake pushing him out. Time will tell.


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## n3ntj (Dec 18, 2006)

I hope Jay moves to ABC and beats the socks off Conan. Conan is sometime funny, but a bit weird. Letterman, I believe, just tries too hard to be funny and it gets old really quickly.


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## Nick (Apr 23, 2002)

> *Carl Spock quips:* _"Larry King...has continued to host
> his show even though he's been dead for years."_


 . . . . . :thats: !rolling :lol:


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## Doug Brott (Jul 12, 2006)

I find all of the late-night guys a bit weird, but it could be that's what it takes at that time of night.


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## BubblePuppy (Nov 3, 2006)

Doug Brott said:


> I find all of the late-night guys a bit weird, but it could be that's what it takes at that time of night.


The Tonight show is actually taped earlier and is not shown live. If my memory serves me correctly I think it's taped at 6pm EST. How else can previews be shown earlier in the evening.


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## Sirshagg (Dec 30, 2006)

BubblePuppy said:


> The Tonight show is actually taped earlier and is not shown live. If my memory serves me correctly I think it's taped at 6pm EST. How else can previews be shown earlier in the evening.


I thouhgt it was closer to 3pm.


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## Doug Brott (Jul 12, 2006)

BubblePuppy said:


> The Tonight show is actually taped earlier and is not shown live. If my memory serves me correctly I think it's taped at 6pm EST. How else can previews be shown earlier in the evening.


I don't think it's about when it's taped as much as about when it's shown


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## BubblePuppy (Nov 3, 2006)

Sirshagg said:


> I thouhgt it was closer to 3pm.


You are probably correct.


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## Sirshagg (Dec 30, 2006)

BubblePuppy said:


> You are probably correct.


Actually 3pm pacific is 6 pm eastern so we are both correct.


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## BubblePuppy (Nov 3, 2006)

Doug Brott said:


> I don't think it's about when it's taped as much as about when it's shown


Yea, I guess one would have to be a bit weird to tape a show in the afternoon but think about your veiwing audience watching in their pjs or even......


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## LarryFlowers (Sep 22, 2006)

The Tonight Show has been taped for years (all the way back to Johnny) in the afternoon and then transmitted to New York around 4:30PM. Final editing, if any is done by New York.

That being said, NBC screwed up when they let Letterman get away and they will now compound that error. There is no way that Conan will be able to maintain Leno's numbers doing HIS show, and if he does a more mainstream show, he wont be Conan anymore...

NBC is juggling a lot of talent and they dont have the space for them all. Leno, who will take this personally, will leave NBC and get paid an embarassingly large pot of dough by ABC or Fox... but he wont be happy.


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## trainman (Jan 9, 2008)

LarryFlowers said:


> The Tonight Show has been taped for years (all the way back to Johnny) in the afternoon and then transmitted to New York around 4:30PM. Final editing, if any is done by New York.


About 10 years ago, I was involved with the closed-captioning for the NBC late-night lineup. This is the way it worked back then; I don't _think_ it's changed any...

"The Tonight Show" is taped in Burbank from 5:30 to 6:30 Pacific time. New York gets a "live" feed, I believe via a fiber hookup. There usually isn't any editing involved -- they even play the commercials from the "Tonight Show" control room during the taping, so the result is a ready-for-air master tape. (If anything, Standards & Practices will order something to be bleeped. As far as I know, that would have to be done separately, in both Burbank and New York -- read on.)

Starting at about 11:10 Eastern, NBC feeds over the satellite, from New York, a graphic showing the timing of the local commercial breaks during Leno, Conan, etc. (10 years ago, the third show was "Later with Rotating Guest Hosts"). That information is for the benefit of the master control operators at the affiliates.

Then, somewhere between 11:20 and 11:25, NBC switches the network origination from New York to Burbank, and there's an exciting series of test patterns, eventually leading up to "The Tonight Show" at 11:35. It's fed over the satellite from Burbank, although New York's copy is running as a backup...

...until the final commercial break, when the network origination gets switched back from Burbank to New York. There's a brief visible glitch when that happens, although it's almost always being "covered" by local commercials, so the viewer at home only sees it if their affiliate didn't sell any ad time, or is asleep at the switch.

So New York is the origination point for the final segment of "The Tonight Show," which goes seamlessly into the first segment of "Late Night," and so on.


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## n3ntj (Dec 18, 2006)

Thanks for the info.


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## trainman (Jan 9, 2008)

Just remembered I had this on VHS. Here's the graphic that shows the timing of the local commercial breaks...










That's "coop" as in "cooperate," not as in "chicken coop." (The affiliates are cooperating with NBC by carrying NBC's programming and the national commercials therein, and NBC is cooperating with the affiliates by giving them time to run local commercials.)

And, yes, that 3-minute break starting at 58:26 is correct -- Leno ran 1:02:00 in 1999. I think it's 1:02:30 now, because it actually starts at 11:34:30 P.M. (and Conan has started at 12:37:00 A.M. all along).


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## CapeCodder (Mar 19, 2008)

I think there's a reasonable likelyhood Leno will become the Favre of late night TV. He once said he was going to retire, but now he really didn't mean it. He hopes NBC (the Packers)will take him back and give him his old job back instead of going with the junior guy. But if they won't, he will want NBC (the Packers) to release him from provisions of his contract and let him perform (play) elsewhere. Time will tell.......


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## hdtvfan0001 (Jul 28, 2004)

Sirshagg said:


> Note to self: cancel series link on May 29, 2009.


:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

Ain't it the truth...


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## phrelin (Jan 18, 2007)

trainman said:


> Just remembered I had this on VHS.


Gee, I hadn't seen one of those since my first years with C-band. Cool.


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## kc1ih (May 22, 2004)

Actually, I remember Leno announcing his plans to retire about 5 years ago,and at that time stating that Conan would be his replacement. Since Leno's production company owns both shows, it really was his call.

And that info on how they send the show timings is really out of date, they now send them through a secure internet system known as the Affiliate Partnership Tool (APT).


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## trainman (Jan 9, 2008)

kc1ih said:


> Actually, I remember Leno announcing his plans to retire about 5 years ago,and at that time stating that Conan would be his replacement. Since Leno's production company owns both shows, it really was his call.


Johnny Carson's company owned a piece of "Late Night with David Letterman," but that arrangement didn't carry over to when Leno and Conan took over. "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" is owned by NBC, Lorne Michaels's production company (Broadway Video), and Conan's production company (Conaco).



> And that info on how they send the show timings is really out of date, they now send them through a secure internet system known as the Affiliate Partnership Tool (APT).


Well, it _was_ 1998-99. I'm sure everything's changed since then. But it was fun, back when I was doing the closed captioning, to imagine master control operators sitting there with a pen and paper having to write down those times.


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## jwebb1970 (Oct 3, 2007)

Won't miss Leno--always been a Letterman fan anyway.

Although I dig Conan a lot, I also wonder if his Tonight Show will be "watered down" in terms of it's goofiness when he jumps to the 11:35pm slot.


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## SamC (Jan 20, 2003)

As with Leno getting the show over the vastly more talented Letterman, this is all about money.

Leno took the Tonight Show for 1/10th what Letterman was making. NBC could have made the quality choice of Letterman, in which it would have continued the Carson era of being the only game in town, but would have made less money even in domination due to Letterman's cost. So it went with Leno, who split the market with Letterman, but due to his lower cost meant more money to the GE bottom line. Now, with Leno's bargain basement deals expired, it has to pay Leno Letterman-size money or again go for the even less talented O'Brien. It will let Leno walk and that will be that.

I still look for Leno to go to Vegas, were 4000 a night is a monsterous success.


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## Steve615 (Feb 5, 2006)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/03/arts/television/03lett.html?no_interstitial


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## Steve615 (Feb 5, 2006)

It's been awhile since this thread has been visited,but anyway...
Reuters recently reported that Leno has been hospitalized in L.A. with an undisclosed illness.
He is expected to return to work next Monday.
This has forced Leno to cancel a taping of The Tonight Show for the first time in his 17 year tenure.

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE53N0BE20090424


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## trainman (Jan 9, 2008)

Steve615 said:


> This has forced Leno to cancel a taping of The Tonight Show for the first time in his 17 year tenure.


The tapings scheduled for September 11 to September 14, 2001, were canceled (of course, the situation last Thursday was more last-minute).


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## BobbySteelz (May 24, 2007)

Is Jay alright? Or was this just a precautionary measure?


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## phrelin (Jan 18, 2007)

There's a pretty good wrap up of the hospitalization event on E! Online. Apparently he had some bug that gave him a 103° fever.


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## frederic1943 (Dec 2, 2006)

I think NBC gave up on the mandatory retirement date for Jay if they're bringing him back at fill the 10 o'clock spot this fall.


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## pfp (Apr 28, 2009)

frederic1943 said:


> I think NBC gave up on the mandatory retirement date for Jay if they're bringing him back at fill the 10 o'clock spot this fall.


ok, mandatory retirement from The Tonight Show.


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## Steve615 (Feb 5, 2006)

Jay Leno's 17 year run on the Tonight Show concludes tonight.
The following link from Yahoo TV covers a few moments from his time on the show.

http://tv.yahoo.com/blog/a-last-look-at-jay-leno-on-the-tonight-show--370


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## mreposter (Jul 29, 2006)

I'm not much of a Leno fan, but watched his final Tonight Show Friday. It felt like they weren't sure how what to do and bringing on Conan didn't really work. The closing act with bringing out all the children of the production crew who'd been born during the show's run was nice, but not really as special as they were trying to make it. 

I know he's not retiring, but I think a career retrospective would have worked better. It would have been interesting to see how he got started in the business. The James Taylor performance would have fit better in this scenario as well. As it was presented, it didn't have much impact. They could have also done a story arc with the transition from Carson to Leno to O'Brien rather than just having Conan show up and do a few forced bits. 

It probably worked for big Leno fans, but for casual viewers like myself it fell flat.


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## Drew2k (Aug 16, 2006)

I've never been a big Leno fan, but I did watch because I thought it would have at least "some" emotional heft being his final Tonight show before the torch passed. However, I was disappointed, but perhaps I shouldn't be surprised that it was not that emotional, for this is not Leno's retirement from NBC, let alone entertainment, so Leno knew he was leaving but also knew he'd be back.

One thing I can say for sure is that I'll watch the first night of Tonight with Conan, but that's all NBC will get from me, because I really don't like Conan either. Sorry, NBC. You screwed up passing over Letterman.


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