Conan O'Brien was also well liked and regarded by the team of staffers on his show(s)...

Personally, I've never been a fan of the Fallon Tonight Show...  what I find off putting is that everything centres around Fallon...  from his guest interviews, to the game tributes that he plays with guests...  he in constantly inserting himself, and making sure the spotlight shines on him...  I think it is a sign of insecurity.

Maybe I'm showing my age, but I will always consider Johnny Carson, and later David Letterman as the definitive hosts of late night television.  Carson, imo, knew when to let the guests run with something and he would let them shine. His recurring cast of characters from "The Mighty Carson Art Players" were his opportunity to have his outlet and often with a guest...  Betty White, Carol Wayne, and others.

Letterman's Late Night was purely counter television... when his show could take an accepted TV norm and flip it on its head, the show worked!...

Like Carson, Letterman knew how to conduct an interview with guests...  and how to back off and let the guests answer, or tell their story.  He still had ample opportunity to get his share of the jokes, just not all of them....  again, just my opinion.


 

Conan has said a few times that he loved to act like a giant jerk to interns and low level employees and watch them clue into the fact that he was doing a bit.

There have been rumours of either drug use or alcoholism around Fallon for quite some time.

Last edited by Tomas Barlow (September 7, 2023 11:48 pm)

Glen Warren wrote:

Maybe I'm showing my age, but I will always consider Johnny Carson, and later David Letterman as the definitive hosts of late night television.  

I guess I'm showing my age too, because I wholeheartedly agree with you on that!

Of the more recent crop, I think Craig Ferguson was probably about the best. Just like Letterman, he knew how to take the talk show genre and turn it on its ear. Who doesn't love dancing horses and talking skeletons?


PJ
 

Paul Jeffries wrote:

Glen Warren wrote:

Maybe I'm showing my age, but I will always consider Johnny Carson, and later David Letterman as the definitive hosts of late night television.  

I guess I'm showing my age too, because I wholeheartedly agree with you on that!

Of the more recent crop, I think Craig Ferguson was probably about the best. Just like Letterman, he knew how to take the talk show genre and turn it on its ear. Who doesn't love dancing horses and talking skeletons?


PJ
 

Agreed. I was not a late night fan, per se, but I loved Ferguson's show. It was kind of the Pee Wee Herman equivalent of a 12:30 AM program - Geoff Peterson, a robot skeleton as the announcer, Secretariat, the dancing pantomime horse, flashing email at the camera for half a second, ripping up the questions before the guest came out, etc. etc. 

You never knew what they would do and it was as close to improv as I've ever seen. I still have the very last show on my DVR and have saved it all these years. There are samples of it on YouTube if anyone who never got the chance to see this very weird talk show wants to get a feel about what it was like. 

I was sad when it went off the air and I still miss it! 

And remember as the theme song said about staying up to watch and sleeping at work the next morning - "tomorrow's just your future yesterday."

Last edited by RadioActive (September 8, 2023 8:46 am)

I have always felt a bit cringy watching Fallon, especially when I learned he is a serious alcoholic and doesn't seem to want to stop.
Not surprised if the toxic atmosphere includes alcoholic rants Fallon might not even remember.
 

There are claims now that these allegations are old and refer to how things were under previous showrunners- but that things are better now under current showrunner Chris Miller (this both shifts blame away from Fallon and away from the present). Unless more allegations come out I think it's unlikely Fallon will be pulled before the end of his contract in 2026. Whether or not his contract is renewed depends on if these stories have the same corrosive effect on Fallon's reputation and ratings as the stories about Ellen Degeneres had on her and her show. 

Late night ratings have been sliding generally over the past decade with Axios reporting in April that "across the top six late-night programs, ad revenue is down more than 50% since 2014, and more than 60% from its peak in 2016." And the Tonight Show under Fallon has done particularly badly, going from being the #1 show for most of Leno's tenure to #4 last December when Jimmy Kimmel, Colbert and Gutfeld all outperformed Fallon.  

Even without the toxic workplace stories, I think it's quite likely NBC will be considering replacing Fallon when his contract is up but if this story sticks to Fallon then he's almost certainly on his way out. 

Last edited by Hansa (September 8, 2023 9:12 pm)

It sounds like BS but the networks claim that traditional ratings don’t matter for late night shows because they are now more concerned with bits going viral. Fallon has had many of those.