The Johnny Carson website, which sells DVDs of his old shows, has some neat free stuff available for the downloading. You can listen to "podcasts" (a fancy term for MP3 files) of some old Carson monologues on this page. And you can watch video clips of Carnac the Magnificent on this page. Make sure you if you go to the latter, you at least watch the infamous "Sis Boom Bah" clip — a joke reportedly written by the late Pat McCormick. There are also some neat video clips on this page.

The one thing I don't like about the site is that it has some of its history askew. A page called The History of the Tonight Show includes the following paragraph…

"Tonight!" was originally hosted by Steve Allen in 1954. Allens regular side-kick was Ernie Kovacs. Kovacs became known as "the first commercial tonight show tv television artist." Ernie Kovacs alternated hosting the show with Steve Allen. However, it was Steve Allen who established many of the standards of late night television, introducing the desk and couch and an emphasis on conversations with guests.

There's a lot of stuff wrong with the above paragraph. Steve Allen first hosted Tonight as a local show in New York beginning in July of 1953. The show went on the NBC network on September 27, 1954. (You can view an excerpt from that first broadcast on this page.) Ernie Kovacs was not his regular sidekick. Allen had a lot of regular performers on the show, including announcer Gene Rayburn who might be called his regular sidekick, but Kovacs only appeared with Allen a handful of times. In late 1956, Allen cut back and Ernie Kovacs began hosting the Monday and Tuesday night editions much as Johnny turned Monday nights over to Joan Rivers and then to Jay Leno. Neither of them were Johnny's "sidekick."

I have no idea by what criteria Ernie Kovacs would be called "the first commercial tonight show tv artist." And while Allen did do conversation with guests, that was not a big feature of his Tonight show, which included a lot of stunts, games, sketches and musical performances. If anyone, it was Jack Paar who established the emphasis on conversation.

Also, Carol Wayne was not the original "Matinee Lady." Many actresses — including some big stars who were otherwise guesting on the show — played Art Fern's bimbo assistant before Ms. Wayne got the steady job.

But other than that, it's a great website and I recommend their DVDs. I also really like the guest search feature on the site even if it isn't complete. If you do some browsing, you may note what I mentioned here a few weeks ago, which is that Johnny had a knack for sensing when some guest had run out of things to say or otherwise been on too many times. If you search for a lot of recurring Carson guests, you'll see how many a star would appear every month or two for a few years and then, all of a sudden, not be invited back for a long time. Look up Jaye P. Morgan or Stan Kann and watch it all come to a halt.

Eugene Volokh makes a point that's long been a gripe of mine: The assumption that it means something when a person is "nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize." I'm not sure it even means a lot when someone actually wins one…or at least it hasn't since Henry Kissinger did. But just being nominated for the Nobel is not like being nominated for an Oscar or an Emmy. It means one person out of hundreds of thousands has put the name up for consideration.

It's fascinating to me how the TiVo, which not so long ago looked to be teetering on the verge of extinction along with Aleutian Geese, Northern Spotted Owls and Congressmen who've dealt with Jack Abramoff, has made a partial clawback to viability. TiVo is still announcing as good news things like the fact that they didn't lose as many millions of dollars last quarter as they did the quarter before. But they're also announcing a mess of new features and business relationships that show that the keystone Personal Video Recorder is still in there, punching away against all those new machines people are getting from their local cable companies.

Very shortly, those of us with Series 2 TiVos hooked up to the Internet will have some special pages viewable on our TiVo screens like the Fandango site to check local movie showtimes and purchase tickets or the Yahoo pages for local weather and traffic. Here's a link to a page on the TiVo site which lists the forthcoming features. Obviously, this is redundant for those of us with computers but I somehow like the idea of my TiVo making progress. As long as they keep adding features, I feel like they're still in business.

The feature I'd really like to see TiVo introduce — and I don't know why they haven't — is a piece of software you could have on your computer that would enable you to choose shows to be recorded. You can program your TiVo online but not on your own computer. What I have in mind is software that would download the entire program schedule and allow you to search it or even program it with simple macros — i.e., "Show me all episodes of Saturday Night Live that are on later than 6 PM and which list Dana Carvey but not John Goodman." Or "Automatically record The Late, Late Show any night Late Night with Conan O'Brien is a rerun." Or it could perhaps even build a database of what you've recorded in the past and note if you recorded this week's CSI: Barstow rerun the last time it aired. Something like that. It seems to me this would be very easy for them to do.

The other day, I linked to Forbes Magazine's list of the fifteen richest characters in fiction. An e-mail today from a gentleman with Forbes informs me that I accidentally linked to their 2002 list. He provided this link to the 2005 Forbes Fictional 15 and notes that "the complaint about Richie Rich and Uncle Scrooge still holds true."

Thursday night, Letterman got his fourth-largest tune-in ever when he had Oprah Winfrey on — a 10.1 rating and a 24 share, meaning that 24% of all sets in use at the time were tuned to his show. Leno, by contrast, had a 4.6/11, which is roughly what he always gets on a Thursday.

Last night, as predicted here, things went right back to normal. Leno had a 4.5/10. Letterman had a 3.6/8, meaning that he got about a third of his Thursday tune-in. 3.6 is about routine for The Late Show on a Friday.

Yes, once again, it's time to play the game that's sweeping the nation…There's No Such Website! Below are descriptions of five websites and links to all five of them. Four of these websites actually exist on the 'net and when you click on the link, you'll go there. One of these websites is a figment of our imagination and the link will tell you so. So now…for the Maytag dishwasher, the 2005 Honda Civic, the case of Rice-a-Roni (did you know it's the San Francisco treat?), the all-expenses-paid vacation for five days and two nights in Mazatlan, and the autographed picture of your sister, pick out the phony website! You have ten seconds…

• Jeeper's Beepers – WAV files of over two thousand different automobile horns, collected from all over the world. Experience what it's like to get stalled at a green light in Zurich.
• The Balloonhat Experience – Photo gallery of people all over the world wearing hats made by twisting colorful balloons together. What clown made these?
• Modern Moist Towelette Collecting – For people who collect Wash-and-Dry wetnaps and other moist towelettes sealed in foil packets. A very refreshing website, especially after eating spareribs.
• Men Who Look Like Kenny Rogers – A website devoted to guys who know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em and who bear a striking resemblance to the guy who used to have all those great rotisserie chicken restaurants.
• I Found a Duck – Researchers in Europe are releasing hundreds of plastic ducks into the wild and tracking their migrating habits. See how far they travel.

Over on Salon, there's a rave review for the new "coffee table edition" (which means it's about the size and price of a coffee table) of Winsor McCay's Little Nemo in Slumberland. And here's an Amazon link so you can order a copy, just as I have.

One of my favorite comedians, Robert Klein, has a new HBO Special that debuts tomorrow night. It's his eighth and I've yet to see one that wasn't well worth watching. So my TiVo's set.

Mr. Klein discussed it this afternoon on The Paul Harris Show, a fine program heard on KMOX radio in St. Louis. You can listen to the conversation here.

Which reminds me: Every time I host something, someone with even less expertise than I have asks me for tips on being a good interviewer. The only way I've ever learned whatever I've learned is by studying people who do it well. One of those who's shown me how it should be done is Paul Harris.

Gary Emenitove writes…

I don't think that repetition on Letterman (or Leno, for that matter) is a bad thing. I cite the Master — Johnny Carson — where I, and presumably millions of others, looked forward to Carnak, Art Fern, and other bits. They were predictable (recall the moment where he paused just before "…THE FORK IN THE ROAD!") and they were cornerstones of a segment of The Tonight Show of that era. Just how is "Will It Float?" any different? The point is not whether something floats (just as the point with the Tea Time Movies were not the brief movie snippets themselves). The thing I look forward to is the production of it — the theme song for the segment, the hula-hoop and grinder girls, the sound effects, the interplay between Dave and Paul. Sure, it's predictable. And that's precisely why I do like it.

Well, the big difference between Dave's "Will It Float?" and Johnny's Tea Time Movies is that Johnny only did Tea Time Movies three or four times a year. Dave seems to do "Will It Float?" three or four times a week.

A certain amount of repetition is not a bad thing, and it's great to develop recurring segments that viewers look forward to. Carson, however, had a terrific instinct for when something (or in the case of guests, someone) was appearing too often. That even included his own appearances. Johnny took his many nights off, in part on the premise that America would tire of him if he did five shows a week.

I get the feeling that a lot of TV shows these days that are done in front of a live audience don't know the difference between entertaining the warm bodies in the seats and entertaining the folks sitting at home. Live audiences are a different breed. They go in, wanting to see all the recurring bits. They want to hear all the catch-phrases. Basically, they want to see in person all the routines and show elements they know well from watching at home…and of course, they're usually bigger fans of the program than the average viewer. A lot of sitcoms — including at least one I worked on — have suffered from playing to that dynamic for cheap applause. Even those same people wouldn't want to see all that stuff if they were sitting at home.

Letterman plays to a studio audience of Dave worshippers. At times, that audience is even pre-screened with a trivia test to make sure they're steady watchers and know all the running gags. It's nice that he wants to reward his loyal viewers but I think he'd have a better show if he had some people out there who didn't love every single thing he does, especially if they've already seen it eight hundred times. I sure like him better when he's doing things he's never done before.

Forbes Magazine picks the 15 richest fictional characters. They say Richie Rich can buy and sell Uncle Scrooge. As someone who's written both, I'm here to tell you they're wrong.

[UPDATE: The above link is wrong. It goes to their 2002 list. Here's the link to the 2005 list.]

One of the great things about the Internet is that you can use it to listen to BBC radio. Let's all do that on Wednesday, December 7 when BBC Radio 4 broadcasts an interview/performance of my hero, Stan Freberg. Here's the info but I'll remind you of it when we get closer to the date.

In the meantime, you can listen to a half-hour biography of master humorist S.J. Perelman on this page. It's narrated by some guy named Woody Allen and that link won't be good for very long so don't dawdle. There's also a series about Woody's stand-up years and you can hear the first part from this page.

This article on the Reuters news service says that newly-released documents from 1964 say that U.S. officials lied to justify escalating the Vietnam War. It's one of those things that you'd like to believe didn't happen but it probably did.

Almost as a P.S. to the preceding link to a Michael Kinsley article, I'm linking to this article in The New York Times. There's a potential avalanche of scandals looming in Congress over lobbying and pay-offs and influence peddling, much of which may get jarred loose by the trials 'n' tribulations of Jack Abramoff. That link will take you to a good overview of the situation.

Michael Kinsley on corruption in the hallowed halls of Congress.

Last night, on an episode that remains as-yet-unwatched on my TiVo, David Letterman had Oprah Winfrey on as a guest. Oprah had told interviewers for some time that she'd never set foot on the Letterman stage again…a vow she kept until it seemed like a good way to promote her new musical, which is playing a block from where Dave tapes. I gather from this morn's Internet chatter that the event was rife with polite conversation, whereas some viewers were hoping for The Morton Downey Jr. Show to erupt. I'll watch it later.

What I wanted to mention now is that the early ratings suggest Dave got a monster tune-in — one of his highest-rated shows ever, if not the highest. That was expected…and good for Dave. Putting on shows that people want to watch is what the game is all about. What wasn't expected was Leno's rating. In an article last week, TV critic Tom Shales predicted, "Leno might as well air a rerun. Only the TiVo machines will be watching." This morning's Nielsens say otherwise. Jay got his usual Thursday night rating, which ordinarily would beat Dave by a point or so. Just as many people as ever were watching him. There were just more watching Dave and Oprah kiss and make up.

A friend of mine who analyzes ratings for a living told me some time ago that we are long past the point where anyone is pondering if they prefer Dave over Jay or Jay over Dave. "There are no Undecideds in this election," is how he put it. There are those who opt for Jay, those who prefer Dave, and those who can go either way, depending on the guest list. This last group, he said, is smaller than you'd think.

Jay has been consistently winning in the ratings for two reasons, only one of which is that his partisans are greater in number. The other is that they tune in more often and stick around longer. The Jay fans watch 4-5 times a week and are more likely to stay 'til the end of the show. The Dave fans watch 3-4 times a week and tend to go to bed or check out HBO before that show is over. That's an oversimplification but the principle is correct, at least for average nights. On an "event" night — Dave returns from heart surgery, Dave has on Hillary Clinton, Jay has Jerry Seinfeld after the last Seinfeld airs, etc. — all of that host's regular viewers tune in at once, plus a lot of viewers who rarely watch either late night show. Last night, Dave stole away a few of those who normally watch Jay but not enough that no one was watching Leno. Mostly, all the folks who like Dave but who feel his show has gotten repetitive thought, "Ah, tonight it'll be different." So they watched, and you also had the folks who ordinarily don't care about late night. They just thought something eventful might occur. Add in the Oprah fans who watched just because they love her and you have a huge rating…but not at Leno's expense. Tonight, Dave has on Luke Wilson and a rodeo champ, Jay welcomes Ebert and Roeper plus Tyra Banks, and things return to normal.

Lots of people remember that the first time Leno passed Letterman in the ratings was the night Hugh Grant came on The Tonight Show for his first public appearance after being arrested with a hooker. Some of Dave's fiercest loyalists still try to insist that Jay's 10+ year dominance in the ratings is only due to that; like America was tricked into watching that one night and all their remotes got stuck. In truth, Jay was gaining on Dave in the weeks before and would have passed him soon, even without Grant. His show had a remarkable bounce-back after trailing Letterman for a while and has since demonstrated great, unacknowledged strength. Even the excuse that he was just beating Dave because NBC had a stronger prime-time line-up has since collapsed now that the Peacock Number is flirting with fourth place and Jay still wins.

Personally, as I've said before, I think both shows could and should be a lot better and less prone to recycling. If the right host were on ABC opposite them, I think both Dave and Jay would be in a fair amount of trouble and might have to ditch some of their easy, dependable bits and put in a few more hours a week. But the Letterman fan who writes me every month to try and convince me that Dave is about to be Numero Uno again is wasting as much bandwidth as the people who tell me I've won the International Lotto and just have to send my bank account number in order to collect millions. Dave will win nights when the show is all about a spectacular guest or a monumental event in The Life of Letterman. But Jay wins any night that's just about Dave and Paul playing "Will It Float?"