Here's a half-hour of excerpts from The Tonight Show for New Year's Eve 1965, ringing in '66. Johnny Carson was (of course) the host of the show but you won't see a lot of Johnny in this. You'll see Ben Grauer reporting as he did in those pre-Dick Clark days, from Times Square. You'll see commercials. But most interestingly, you'll see the legendary First Fifteen.
During the Steve Allen and Jack Paar years, the program was an hour and 45 minutes, though not everywhere. Some local stations had a half-hour of news at 11 PM and some had 15 minutes. To fit in with both, Tonight worked like this: The show would start at 11:15. Then it would start over with a new opening billboard at 11:30. Stations that ran 30 minutes of late night news could join it at the 11:30 mark.
Over the years, more and more NBC affiliates went to a half-hour of late news. By the time Mr. Carson became the host, he was doing the first 15 minutes of the show (including his monologue) for less than half the country and that half didn't include New York or most other major markets. Eventually, as more and more stations stopped carrying what he considered the best part of the show, he decided things had to change. He told NBC to get their stations all lined-up to start at the same time. NBC said they couldn't arrange that. Johnny said in effect, "In that case, I may have a 15 minute flu every night."
Which is what he did at first. He'd announce he was ill and that he wasn't going on at 11:15 but hoped to be well enough to appear at 11:30. Announcer Ed McMahon and bandleader Skitch Henderson had to host the first fifteen minutes. Eventually, that became the format and Johnny dropped all pretense of sickness. His part of the show would just start at 11:30.
Apparently, this arrangement prompted more and more local stations to program a half-hour of news at 11:00 so before long, it wasn't necessary to do the First Fifteen for anyone. This made everyone happy except Ed and Skitch, who'd rather enjoyed having their own little network show every night. In this video, you'll get to see how that little show went and you'll see why it was no great loss…