Well now! It's now being reported — by Bill Carter, who knows enough not to pass around rumors as fact — that Jimmy Fallon will indeed succeed Jay Leno as host of The Tonight Show next year and also that the show will shift back to New York. Carter's article, being for the New York Times, acts as if the change of venue is more interesting than the change of hosts.
So ignore most of what I said about how this didn't seem likely to me…and note that I did say NBC execs might do what seemed unlikely to me. It still seems unlikely but that's one of the fun things about show business. The unlikely sometimes happens. A lot of folks are going to say this is an even more lunkheaded move by the network than the Conan thing — replacing one of the few guys on the network who's consistently delivered for them at a time when most of their schedule is plunging like Louie Anderson on Splash.
Obvious questions abound…
- If Jay stays on until his contract is up (in September of '14, as I understand) will he spend every night hence trashing the network? My guess is that they'll take him off the air well before then so they can "bench" him for a while; that is, unless he agrees not to reappear immediately in a competing show and to compare any more NBC executives to reptiles. But he will be on the air for a while…
- …and will he then reappear in a competing show? You don't have the kind of success he's had and not get other offers. Leno ain't the retiring kind.
- Do they have someone in mind for 12:35? And will they then do that show from New York, forcing it to subsist on the guests Fallon doesn't want? And totally bypassing the talent pool available out here in Los Angeles? That pool of potential guests includes a lot of stars on NBC shows that desperately need promotion and The Tonight Show has always been one of their most potent tools for promotion.
- Will Lorne Michaels exec-produce The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon? And the new 12:35 replacement? That would pretty much make Michaels "The King of Late Night" in a sense that even Johnny Carson never was.
- Could Jimmy Kimmel be any happier? And could David Letterman have more mixed feelings? He wanted to outlast Leno but once he does, will his career be about anything else besides when will he step down and let CBS follow suit and stick a younger, allegedly more competitive host in that slot?
- And, uh, so what exactly does NBC do if this doesn't work? If Fallon doesn't significantly improve on Leno's numbers (which Conan couldn't do not that long ago) and if the new 12:35 entry doesn't fly high, could the execs there look worse? One of the big complications in installing O'Brien at 11:35 was that for the first time ever, they tried to replace both of their late night shows at roughly the same time. They had two shows that were working and tried to install two new ones in the hope of not only equal but greater success. They only batted .500 and even that was way ahead of the usual pass/fail rate for new programming. And now once again, they're taking out two shows that are working where they are and hoping to make different ones simultaneously flourish on those hunks of real estate.
- And I just thought of one more: What kind of contractual guarantee does Mr. Fallon have that he won't be cut loose after seven months and sentenced to Basic Cable?
Those are just the immediate questions that come to mind. There will be others. Methinks those of us who follow late night programming as a spectator sport should keep our seat belts fastened and our tray tables locked in the upright position as we stow all portable electronic devices. It's going to be that kind of flight.