AFTER 17 years, Jay Leno is leaving the “The Tonight Show” this week. But not everyone is crying about it.
“I think Jay’s departure certainly makes it more of a horse race” for anyone else who is on late-night TV, says Todd Yasui, Fox’s senior VP of late-night programming.
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“Any time you take the alpha dog out of the pack, people are going to be scrambling for a piece of that.”
Leno’s designated successor, Conan O’Brien, cannot expect to simply walk in and take the keys to dad’s car.
O’Brien, who starts as host of “Tonight” on Monday, acknowledges that he may not inherit Jay’s No. 1 status.
“Nobody has the answer,” he told reporters yesterday. “I can try to b.s. you and say it’s all going to be fine, but I don’t know.
“This move is unprecedented in TV.”
O’Brien may have been a proven personality at 12:30 a.m., the time his “Late Night” show aired, but Conan is untested at 11:35 — which is just about the best news David Letterman could hear.
Letterman has trailed “Tonight” forever and the change in hosts will be his best — and perhaps last — chance to overtake NBC.
That’s the obvious faceoff. But ABC’s “Nightline,” “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” Comedy Central’s late-night fake-news-show block or even Wanda Sykes’ upcoming Saturday night talk show on Fox may be the biggest benefactors.
Fox has long wanted in on the late-night game, and is hoping that the irreverent Sykes, whose show premieres in November, is the answer.
“Nightline,” which was revitalized three years ago with new anchors and a new format, has made huge inroads against Letterman’s audience at 11:30, particularly among older adults. Some nights, it has even beaten the “Tonight” show, that was practically unheard of when Ted Koppel anchored the show.
“I don’t think, by any means, it’s a foregone conclusion who’s going to be No. 1 in the timeslot,” says “Nightline” executive producer James Goldston.
“There’s an assumption it’s Letterman’s time [to move up], but more likely it will become very tight.”