JMalcolm: It was never my intent to dominate this particular thread. However, I maintain that Jay Leno's Tonight Show is a helluva lot funnier than Letterman or Conan O'Brien. As far as having to be cerebral to appreciate David Letterman's lame attempts at humor i.e., "will it float?", the stage hand bit and/or the nightly top 10 list, the only thinking that I do, is when I try to decide should I change the channel now or 2 seconds from now. What is there to think about? How stupid Letterman's sight gags are?? How funny some deli tray is? You must have an incredibly dry sense of humor if you find that stuff funny. The only time that Letterman is remotely funny is when he is interviews someone like Madonna. Guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this one. Leno's ratings speak for themselves and to suggest that Leno's fans are a pack of idiots simply because some people prefer Leno's humor over Dave's is not entirely logical for a "thinking" person.

Jimmy Fallon is going to be an awesome host, I can't wait. All you goons keep arguing about "who sucks," "who's the worst," "who's the greatest," "who's the best of all time," etc etc. You're all kidding yourselves. Who cares? You probably believe Bigfoot rides around in UFOs, dropping off crates of rations to the Loch Ness Monster. Big woop. You probably think All Dogs Go To Sam's Club. So what? The point is, everyone's gonna be fine. Nobody's gonna die if Jimmy gets the job. Although they may die of laughter!

Leno used to be funny when he did stand up. When he took over the tonight show, it was clear he was there to hold the little old lady and NASCAR crowd. His early unabashed right wing worship of W drove off what few thinking viewers he might have had. The genius of Carson is the little old lady crowd liked him because he was loveable but his humor was smart and original for decades on end. Leno could not sustain that challenge.

But hey, he has a slot on TV. If someone didn’t like him, he would not have held the job for 15 years. Most thinking viewers bailed to Letterman and then to Stewart who now is much closer to what Carson had going than any of the competition. Conan is a funny guy but he recycles his bits constantly and after a while, his audience could do his act.

Fallon as a talk show host? The man can’t get through a 3 minute skit without giggling and losing his place. He flopped in the movies so now he thinks this will work just because he’s cute? Who knows? Maybe he can get Horacio Sans as his side kick and the two of them can giggle at each other for 90 minutes a night.

Sara, way to go making the thread all about you. You can go ahead and be a Leno worshipper. That’s why we have alternatives on TV.

I really have to wonder if this "Sara" ever saw Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show. To argue that Jay Leno is an improvement on Carson is almost heretical. I'm 38 years old and I was formerly a fan of Jay Leno's stand-up. Does that make me ready for the home?

Thank god it's not going to be Daly. He really sucks as an interviewer and his monologues suck.

I met Carson Daly last weekend in Chicago (some exhibitor at a booth paid him to show up, I think) and I thought he was very nice. I can't stay up that late, so I have never really seen his show.

Jimmy Fallon would be a poor choice for the 12:30 slot, I think. Though I still don't believe Conan will become the host of "The Tonight Show" (my money is on a defection to CBS to replace Dave), assuming he does NBC needs to find a 12:30 host who will retain the same audience who will watch Conan. As other comments have outlined, the audience for Conan does not match-up with the audience for Johnny or Jay. It's a younger, edgier audience and a lot of the older and more conservative viewers will not give Conan any chance. Accordingly, NBC needs to program 12:30 with someone who will retain those younger, edgier viewers, and I'm not convinced Jimmy Fallon is anywhere close.

This is a great conversation that gets to the heart of a television institution - who really deserves the title of "King of Late Night" and is that still a relevant title?

I'd like to throw out that is the "Tonight Show" even worthy of being a destination at this point? As NBC experiments more streaming Conan's show, does time even really matter any more?

I am not a typical consumer of television, but who among us is these days? But I say boldly that I feel the Daily Show and the Colbert Report are the true heirs to the "Tonight Show" and the title "King of Late Night" or at least, "King of Creative Late Night."

Colbert is evolving into something special - a performer who can establish a routine, but is just as willing to break it up in order to entertain his audience. He's willing to do something new, every night, in order to get the laugh.

Now, Conan I like, and Conan I will watch more of once they figure out how to make it easy to me to subscribe to an RSS feed of his shows.

(hey, tvsquad folks - how can I change the redirect on my user name to a URL that actually works?)

Sara - First, Conan wrote for two of the most well-respected, well-recognized, and decades-old institutions of TV comedy, SNL and The Simpsons, before he got the late night gig. As to the NBC affiliate that you say did not put Conan in the 12:30 slot, I imagine this was only during Conan's first few rocky years in the early 90s when he as still getting the hang of it all, and when most TV critics at the time were making the same comments then that you still make about him now. You don't have to like Conan, and yes, his quirky humor may not be for all (I 'spose that's what we'll wait to find out for sure in 2009)

Second, though I admit this is yet again a matter of taste and personal opinion, Letterman's ostensibly silly bits like "Will It Float" and those involving Rupert/Hello Deli are amusing to die-hard fans of Letterman due to the fact that they are not *that* funny, if you can grasp this concept of laughing at something b/c it is ostentatious and overblown. Take how he gives audience members who win games a platter of deli meats. It makes no sense that deli meat would be a prize, and thus, it is ridiculously funny (in a somewhat Dadaist way) to the audience viewing at home.

I could go around and around in circles about this whole 'Leno vs. every other late-night talk show host' discussion, so I will try to end it here by quoting you:

"Jay is pure humor at its very best"

Leno has his merits. He's not unwatchable in the way that Carson Daly is. Unlike Daly, no one is wondering how Jay Leno has managed to host a show for this long. It's just that "humor at its very best" is a title applied to those who have managed to forge a new kind of personality, a new kind of style. In short, a new way to laugh at things.

Leno may be funny, but he will be remembered as sufficient, but never as "humor at its very best"

Now I'll excuse myself for the night and get back to watching Conan

At least we all agree at one thing:

Carson Daly should just disappear.

Um, Conan never wrote for Letterman.