It was an early-January Monday in 1998, and I was the only Post TV department staffer working that day. What could possibly go wrong? I was already juggling about five other things when news broke that Jay Leno had just signed a new, multiyear deal to continue hosting “The Tonight Show.” Reflexively, I called the show’s publicist. Could Jay do a quick phone chat to talk about his new deal? I needed some fresh quotes for my story, and I’d interviewed Jay before. I hoped that made a difference.
TV’s biggest late-night host had dozens of other requests for interviews. He didn’t have to talk to me.
But he did. And that says a lot about the guy.
Accessible? Check. Amiable? Check. Not too high on his horse? Check.
“I did sign a new deal with NBC, and I’m happy about it,” Jay told me that day. “My raise is very generous . . . and I think NBC realized I’m not a guy looking to slack off.”
NBC got its money’s worth, and Jay kept his word. He never did “slack off.” In the 16 years that followed, he cemented himself as a late-night fixture, riding out bumpy times with NBC with class. On Thursday, it all comes to an end when he takes his final bow as host of “The Tonight Show.”
Without him, the late-night TV landscape will be a different place. They just don’t make ’em like Jay anymore.
He distinguished himself from his 11:35 p.m. cronies (notably, cranky David Letterman) with his comfy-shoe approach and his snark-less “Just happy to be here” attitude. He never judged his guests, but played the game of our celebrity-obsessed culture like a maestro. It started on July 10, 1995, with his Hugh Grant moment.
Grant came on the show a month after he was caught with his pants down in a car with Hollywood hooker Divine Brown and arrested for lewd conduct. At the time, the actor was very publicly dating movie star/model Elizabeth Hurley. Leno asked him the question on everyone’s mind — “What the hell were you thinking?”
With those six words, he turned everything around and vaulted past David Letterman in the ratings. He never looked back.
A large part of Jay’s appeal lay in his “everyman” approach. Early in his “Tonight Show” run, he revamped the set to give it a more intimate nightclub feel, which allowed him a closer connection with his audience. Every night, he bounced out from behind his magical curtain and shook hands with fans in the show’s Burbank, Calif., studio. Human contact with a wink and a grin. His comedy bits — like his “Jaywalking” segments and hilarious headline snafus — weren’t biting or caustic, but allowed us to laugh at ourselves, always the best medicine in a harsh world.
NBC thanked Leno for his years of service with two slaps in the face, “Three Stooges”-style. In 2004, the network announced, five years in advance, that Conan O’Brien would inherit “The Tonight Show,” after O’Brien, then hosting “Late Night,” threatened to leave the network if he didn’t get the gig. The peacock gave Leno a measly consolation prize in the form of a prime-time show. “The Jay Leno Show” aired at 10 p.m., essentially an early “Tonight Show” that was ill-suited for the time slot and received mediocre ratings. It lasted five months. Still, NBC had the chutzpah to beg Jay to return to “The Tonight Show” after Conan’s ratings tumbled five months into his run. He did, and “Tonight” and Jay reclaimed their places as late-night’s must-see TV destination.
The second, and fatal, blow came last April, when NBC announced that it wouldn’t be renewing Jay’s contract this year, and would instead be handing over “The Tonight Show” reins to Jimmy Fallon.
It’s a move that just doesn’t make sense. Jay is TV’s most popular late-night host, and he’s at the height of his popularity. He’s only 63, isn’t ill and still has a lot to offer. More than 4 million viewers a night seem to agree.
Fallon is talented and energetic, but he’s also relatively inexperienced, having notched just five years on his “Late Night” belt. What is NBC doing?
The answer, in boring industry-speak, is that it wants to attract the vaunted “younger” demographic. Ha! Jay’s numbers, including the coveted 18-to-49-year-old viewers we TV people obsessively reference, have grown in the 11-month countdown to his finale — almost as if sympathetic TV viewers are giving NBC a big Bronx cheer, a “Take that!” for forcing Jay to quit a show he never wanted to leave in the first place.
Jay has handled the network’s slow, incremental backstabbing with admirable grace and restraint. Sure, he’s poked fun at NBC regarding his forced departure, but never maliciously — that’s not his style. He’s been welcoming to Fallon, whom he genuinely seems to like (if it’s an act, then well-played, my friend).
Of course, it’s easy to be magnanimous about your early retirement when you’re making in the neighborhood of $20 million, but it’s never been about the money for Jay. A few years back, he cut his salary so NBC, in budget-slashing mode, wouldn’t fire his staffers. More recently, when NBC pushed him to bow out before his contract expires in September, so that the network could promote Fallon during its Olympics coverage, he agreed to leave early but stipulated that his staffers be paid through September. Class move, even for a guy with a huge weekly paycheck.
But Jay’s not a showbiz angel. He has his detractors in the business: Some say he’s two-faced, a nice-guy glad-hander in public, but a backstage conniver. Jimmy Kimmel, who has the competing 11:35 timeslot over on ABC, has been a vociferous and longtime Jay-basher, initially criticizing him for swooping back through the door in 2010 when Conan faltered, and continuing to pile it on thereafter. You can add comedian Patton Oswalt and Howard Stern to the list.
And, of course, there’s Jay’s decades-old adversary, David Letterman, who’s carved his own unique niche over at CBS with “The Late Show,” still going strong for more than 20 years now. Dave has never forgiven Jay for his Machiavellian maneuvering into Johnny Carson’s seat, and Jay’s ratings dominance hasn’t assuaged those bad feelings.
So now Jay leaves “Tonight,” this time for good (we think). He leaves a legacy on par with his predecessor, Johnny Carson, who was considered “The King of Late Night” when he retired in 1992.
For a new generation of viewers — and even for some of us who were lucky enough to catch Carson in his prime — it’s Jay, as much as Johnny, who has defined “The Tonight Show.”
Remember that when he takes his final bow this week.