In the midst of all the commotion over Jay and Conan and Dave and ... the question of who will sit behind the desk at 11:30pm eastern on NBC really seems irrelevant and pointless--does anyone really care anymore?
There was a time when that desk was the most famous desk in the country, next to the one in the oval office, and who sat there had relevance and was a fixture in every American's daily, or nightly, life. America went to bed with the Tonight Show and the man that kept us up after the nightly news and kept viewers tuned in even after they knew the sports and weather, was a guy from Nebraska who knew a little magic, how to tell a joke and how to play out a gag... Johnny Carson.
There was a time when that desk was the most famous desk in the country, next to the one in the oval office, and who sat there had relevance and was a fixture in every American's daily, or nightly, life. America went to bed with the Tonight Show and the man that kept us up after the nightly news and kept viewers tuned in even after they knew the sports and weather, was a guy from Nebraska who knew a little magic, how to tell a joke and how to play out a gag... Johnny Carson.
For over thirty years Johnny Carson tucked us all in and made us all smile before we closed our eyes for the night---truly one of the toughest jobs in television! You watched Carson, not the Tonight Show. No one ever did it better and though the format remains pretty much the same as it was when Steve Allen began hosting in 1954-a desk, a band, a monologue, a revolving door of celebrities and luminaries-the job of entertaining an increasingly diverse, stressed and multi-tasking audience has become more than one host can handle. Come Visit Applause!
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