Goodnight Jay-The End of a Late Night Era

"I don't like goodbyes.  NBC does...I don't care for them" and with that opening line to his last monologue Jay Leno's final Tonight Show's valentine began.  

In front of an audience of VIPs and dear friends who would serenade him with a "So long, Farewell" Jay Leno said goodbye to what he called "the best job in show business" and did what Jay Leno does better than anyone, he hosted the Tonight Show with wisecracks, grace, and an uncharacteristic emotional goodbye.  Calling himself the "luckiest guy in the world" Jay Leno stepped out of what was the most coveted job any comedian could ever have.  The Tonight Show for many of us will always mean Johnny Carson and there was a great deal of controversy when Jay took over after Johnny, but never from Jay.  He was the focal point of a swarm of show biz nonsense but he always remained centered, gracious, the consummate gentleman,truly a rarity in his business- a class act.

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Jay Leno came of comedic age at an extraordinary time for stand up comedy, Robin Williams, Billy Crystal, Jerry Seinfeld, Richard Pryor...these were his buddies and stand up comedy defines who he is.  He has been playing the same club every Sunday night since 1978, he had the biggest stage any comedian could have for 22 years but would still do 100 shows a year on the road, honing his craft, trying out bits and staying close to what made him the best in the business.  He was often criticized for not being edgy enough, but Jay Leno knew that at 11:30 every night he was in people's bedrooms making them smile before they went to sleep and he played to everyone.  This was not his first goodbye to the Tonight Show, in 2009 for a bad 7 months NBC put Conan O'Brien there in what was a train wreck for late night TV, and through all that Jay Leno was the calm in the craziness, taking it all as just part of the game...a game that took the working class kid from Andover, MA with learning issues and a love for cars to the highest point in his field-whatever else NBC may have done wrong in the Leno era, and despite all the rivalry with his friend David Letterman, NBC did get the right guy.

 "I don't need to be fired three times..I get the hint. I get the hint"

Jay knows that he is over 60, the world is moving faster than he cares to keep up with and that television, media and the audience has changed and that this may not have been his decision but this time he is OK with it.  The late night audience is fractured with a great deal of competition and what once was a viewership of over 12 million has dropped to five million... but Jay started at number one and leaves at number one.  His was a run that was second only to Johnny's and with a brand like the Tonight Show he has left an historic mark on American comedy.  It is doubtful  that The Tonight Show will ever look or feel the same, Jay was always in the model of the traditions of the Tonight Show and was careful to keep so much of what Johnny Carson built in tact while still making it his own but it could not have been an easy task to step into a legend's shoes but Jay never tried to be anyone other than who he is and that may have been the key to his real success.  Jay Leno is  genuine, and that sparkles through every night.  Jimmy Fallon is a talented guy but this is a different world and it could be that The Tonight Show no matter how cool and hip the host may just be a dinosaur...there are lots of places to go at 11:30 at night--It would be nice to think we could all be in the same place laughing together, goodness knows this country could use a good laugh, but those days are probably gone.

"It's fun to kind of be the old guy and sit back here and see where the next generation takes this great institution.... It really is time to go and hand it off to the next guy. It really is."

 As Jay Leno took his final curtain call as host of The Tonight Show he dropped the wise cracks for a bit, talking about the losses in his life and how the Tonight Show staff became his family, and to reveal a man who gets it and who never tried to be anything other than a guy who likes to make people laugh and that he did every night for 22 years. Jay Leno is a complete and pure comic with a respect for his craft and for those that came before him. As he said goodnight he told his wife Mavis "Honey, I'm coming home."...but there is no doubt that Jay Leno will find himself a spotlight to stand under and keep us laughing for years to come.  Thanks Jay. 

 "Jay, you've made a whole lot of jokes about me over the years, but don't worry, I'm not upset," Obama said, adding that he was making Leno the U.S. ambassador to Antarctica. "Hope you have a warm coat, funnyman." Barack O'bama

Tune in Tomorrow...Not Any More-The End of a Genre

 "Tune in Tomorrow"-the phrase that ended each episode of almost every Soap Opera on daytime TV...soon there will be no tomorrow as the traditional television networks cancel these institutions of popular culture one by one...on Thursday ABC shut the door on All My Children and One Life to Live after over 40 years . Long before Reality TV, The Jersey Shore or Gray's Anatomy there was Daytime Drama...Soap Opera.

True confession... from probably the 5th grade straight through grad school I was a soap opera fan-watching or taping shows such as The Bold and the Beautiful, Capital, Guiding Light ,As the World Turns, Santa Barbara, Days of Our Lives, All My Children, One Life to Live, Ryan's Hope and General Hospital. At one time I think the only series I missed were the Young and the Restless and Another World-couldn't fit them in I guess. In college many of us scheduled our classes around our soaps, often we divided up who would watch which show and report back the day's episode. These were very bright politically and socially aware women but we never missed an episode! Soap Operas were a part of our day.

Soap Opera began in radio and the daytime dramas were sponsored by companies such as Colgate Palmolive and Proctor and Gamble selling ...soap. Many radio dramas continued into the new medium of television, best known of these was Guiding Light which CBS canceled  last year after 70 years of broadcasting. Soaps were not just for daytime TV -Peyton Place was must see TV in the 60s and in the 80s there was Dallas, Knot's Landing, Falcon Crest and of course Dynasty. Long before the Twilight series there was even a vampire soap which I was not allowed to watch-Dark Shadows. In Great Britain Soap Operas such as East Enders and Coronation Street celebrated less glamorous everyday lives but became a national pastime to rival English soccer. Tuning into a favorite soap was a unifying event. In the days before cable and iPads soap operas were something everyone listened to and television was a natural medium for the genre with a need to fill the air and sell to women who were the main consumers. The core audience for televised soaps was housewives but it was not only housewives watching and the shows changed over the years to reach younger audiences --gone were kitchen table chat over coffee cups and in came bedroom scenes and shirtless heroes. Daytime TV despite the fact that it aired when kids came home from school was often much racier than nighttime could be and the long format allowed story lines to be done in depth...one event could go on for weeks on daytime, a wedding storyline could last for days-there was always that hook to make you tune in tomorrow.

Romance and great looking men, who cared if they could deliver a line, became a key reason to watch. At the end of the day, however, soap opera was an escape from everyday and those characters and stories gave people from all backgrounds and generations a unifying experience. No matter your age or social strata if you watched All My Children or As the World Turns you had something in common and something to talk about...I can remember visiting my mom after she had some surgery and we had the television on one afternoon in the hospital...Ryan's Hope I think, and every nurse and a few doctors poked their head in to see what was happening-General Hospital's Luke and Laura wedding was one of the highest rated programs in ABCs history, daytime or nighttime..

Actually the misconception about soap was always that the scripts were terrible and the acting worse but soap opera was very often ground breaking popular culture...dealing with topics of race, gender roles, drug and alcohol addiction, rape, adoption,adultery, cancer and other disease awareness. Long before mainstream media would or could ..writer/creator Agnes Nixon who oversaw many of ABC's soaps has been credited for taking the genre and breathing real-life into the scripts adding topics of relevance and educating its audience. Many very respected actors such as Tommy Lee Jones, Juliane Moore and Meg Ryan, Marisa Tomei, Brad Pitt, Ryan Phillipi, Kevin Bacon... got their starts on soaps as it was considered a great training ground and with a good role very steady work, of course until they gave you a disease. It was also where many veteran actors from stage and Hollywood found steady work. Very often popular characters were brought back even if they had been killed off and it was not unusual to see famous actors,athletes and celebrities make cameo appearances as Elizabeth Taylor did on General Hospital.

Somewhere it all got really very silly with plots that bordered on absurd. Reaching and keeping audiences became harder and more competitive as older audiences were replaced with a new generation that had many other distractions and outlets for their attention. Soaps became littered with younger and younger actors and fewer good characters and stories.  In 1991, according to Nielsen, daytime dramas had an overall audience of 6.5M people. In 2009, that number dropped to 1.3M people. .Popular culture has of course changed dramatically yet ironically soap opera is built for the need to know now generation...but the networks who are all struggling to figure it out have seen a dramatic drop in ratings -Soap Opera Digest,the bible of the industry which had a circulation of 1.2 million at its height in the 80s now has a 150,000 readers

One day I too just stopped watching...maybe they were always silly and vapid but somehow I had piles of taped episodes and didn't care anymore and apparently I wasn't alone. Networks began canceling show after show including last year canceling Guiding Light after over 70 years on CBS..and this week ABC said seeya to Erica Kane and Pine Valley along with One Life to Live axing these TV institutions after over 40 years leaving only 4 daytime dramas on the air. The genre will never die but the daytime televised drama ritual of so many, stories and heartthrobs that got us tuning in each afternoon are gone. The networks will  fill the air with more reality and talk as they try to figure out how to capture audiences and a new generation of iPhone and twitter devotees. Networks are struggling with both daytime and nighttime to get and keep audiences and many feel the age of network television as with network news is over with too many outlets for information and entertainment..gone are the days where one show had the nation sitting and watching together.

I don't think soaps will or can  disappear --the format is a cornerstone of popular culture and our social fabric. They will may simply take on new technologies...an iPhone app or gaming??  Good storytelling, however, will never go away. Younger generation have certainly embraced serialized dramas such as the Twilight series and even Harry Pottter.  If you care about characters you want to know what happens to them-it goes back to Shakespeare and of course Dickens who was originally published in a serial format. Mad Men, as slick and exquisitely written as it is is still soap...as is Upstairs Downstairs... it comes down to how you dress it up-The Tudors, Desperate Housewives,  Gray's Anatomy, Brothers and Sisters...all soaps formatted with characters and storylines designed to get you involved and coming back every week.  For those who may be going through Daytime drama withdrawal there is always Masterpiece or a good book!

Wheeere's Johnny??

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 that knew a little magic, how to tell a joke and how to play 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.

The most glamorous years for the Tonight Show were under with the brilliant Jack Paar who hosted from 1957-1962. Perhaps best known for his famous walk-off exit after NBC censored a joke-when he declared that "I am leaving the Tonight Show. There must be a better way to making a living than this." only to come back after a month's hiatus and state "As I was saying before I was interrupted...there must be a better way of making a living than this. Well, I've looked...and there isn't." Paar sat with Broadway legends, historic figures, newsmakers, and politicians and pushed the comedy envelope along with his audience.

The guests were a bit less "high brow" and a lot more Hollywood under Johnny's reign but there was an "old comfortable chair" feel to his style and you knew what to expect each night at 11:30, and he never disappointed.

Sure guest hosts came and went over the years, often for long stretches, but even though Leno and Letterman had their turn at his chair it was Johnny that owned that chair.

It would take Americans being held hostage in Iran for Johnny's audience to turn the channel away to what would become Nightline and his handpicked successor to get his own job at CBS for the reality of a changing television landscape to reconstruct the Tonight Show model.

Jay Leno was not Johnny's first choice to follow as host but he has served the seat well while Letterman thrived on the east coast putting his own signature on late night.

The two would divide the time slot and each established their own viewing crowd-Leno an older traditional late night audience and Letterman the younger, professional crowd.

The audience has of course changed and so has the comedy they respond to as new hosts and numerous attemots to capturee the late crowd come and go---but there is always the shadow they all stand in of the man who showed them all how to do it and who they all emulate and respect. Despite their years in the time slot and their individual success they would all still admit without a doubt that they are wannabes.

The reality of this media overloaded world we live in is that there is simply too much competition, too much distraction, and too many other outlets that fracture our collective viewing. This nation no longer watches anything together and that includes major sporting and news events. We don't even watch traditional television broadcasting any longer. We stream video, we watch on cellphones, we TIVO, we watch on laptops and download from YouTube. Gone are the days when we sat and watched television as a nation. When we did,however, we all went to one place each night, a comfortable place where we all knew a guy that could make us laugh before we fell asleep Monday through Friday, the same cannot be said no matter who sits under the tile of host of the Tonight Show...Johnny we still miss you.