A recent online item made it official: By fall of 2014 ("at the latest") Jimmy Fallon will be the new host of The Tonight Show, replacing current host Jay Leno and doing said show from New York City, from where it first originated. According to New York Times writer Bill Carter, who has written not one, but two, count 'em, two books on the late-night goings-on, NBC moved fast concerning installing Fallon as the new Tonight host for fear that holding off any longer would would allow rival television talker Jimmy Kimmel to "lock up the younger-adult viewers that are the economic lifeblood of late-night television." The item goes on to disclose that Leno and NBC bigwigs "are also at a strange impasse in their relationship," as, despite the fact that he continues to be the highest-rated late-night host, they've basically turned against him and he's taking shots at them during his opening monologues (During one Monday-night routine, he termed NBC higher-ups "snakes" and the following night claimed that a lady who has an upside-down view of things thought that NBC was TV's most commercially-successful network). Later the aforementioned piece reported that, despite early word that Howard Stern was being groomed for the spot, The Hollywood Reporter claimed that NBC is strongly considering SNL "Weekend Update" anchor Seth Meyers to be Fallon's successor as its Late Night host, further pointing out that Meyers is SNL's "longest tenured cast member...only two shy of Darrell Hammond's record--he was on for 14 years." The item concluded by quoting Fallon as asserting, regarding future competing host Kimmel: "I'm so happy he's moved to eleven-thirty. It's a good move for him," and then enquiring: "When is moving to eleven thirty not a good move, Mr. Fallon?"
The piece (as has, it is hoped, been demonstrated) was quite sparkling and informative, a marvelous relating of show-business intrigue. However, it essentially danced around an all-important, all-too-true fact: Late-night television is and has long been very deeply in the toilet.
Sad but factual. The reality is that every single one of the late-night hosts--and this includes Leno and Latterman--are and have long been entirely not worth watching. They and their shows aren't intelligent, they and their shows aren't informative, they and their shows aren't even very funny (Indeed, these late-night folks by and large seem to think that pop-culture references by and of themselves are big laugh-getters). In point of fact, as the infamous network-programming executive Fred Silverman said during the 1970s: "Late-night television is a swamp."
There are, however, two--and only two--sure ways to clean things up, to improve the scene, to right the considerable wrongs that have been perpetuated upon us, the late-night viewing public:
1) Bring back Dick Cavett. The fact is, late-night TV lost somebody intensely valuable when it willingly (!) let this fellow go. Come on, admit it: When you watch any of these late-night bantamweights, don't you yearn for the good old days when Cavett could be seen five nights a week, every week? Indeed, his witty, incisive, always lively conversations with the creme de la creme of show business, public affairs, and the arts genuinely elevated not only late-night television but the entire medium as well. Cavett is in no sense too old to make another comeback--he's probably only in his late 60s--and, even though he's flatly said that he has no desire to be "back on [his phrase]," surely if a network held out the right conditions (an absolutely free hand as far as what guests he'd have on, positively no being leaned upon to, as Cavett put it, "open with stars"), he wouldn't hesitate to re-enter the fray. Really and truly, this iconic host/interviewer/conversationalist would be the one man--and the only man--who would make late-night TV worthy again (In truth, it was the esteemed Australian writer/television performer Clive James who called Cavett "a genuine sophisticate with dazzling intellectual range" and even Fallon termed him "a legend and an inspiration to me").
2) Revive the made-for-TV film. If late-night TV is not going to invite Dick Cavett back, then it should do the next best thing and dump the talk-show notion entirely and bring the made-for-television picture back to life. Truth be told, late-evening audiences have in the past shown considerable enthusiasm for flicks that have been presented at that time--when The Tonight Show was the sole late-night program being offered, rival stations would run old-time films which would very often score higher Nielsens than would Tonight--and made-for-the-tube pictures, more often than not, would be a source of real and true quality (one such film, Another Woman's Husband, starring the small-screen sex symbol Lisa Rinna, came damned close to matching the quality of the best theatrical pictures. Also: The Robin Givens made-for-television film The Penthouse served as a letter-perfect vehicle for my heroine's glossy beauty, her quicksilver energy, and her high-toned intelligence). Surely, in terms of offering attractive and stimulating performers alone, the reappearance of the made-for-television flick would mean an end to the uber-lame political "wisecracks" and the shallow sociocultural posturing that are far too much staples of the current late-night shows.
It was the infamous NBC shitcom Caroline in the City that offered an episode wherein a passing character flatly declared that The Tonight Show hasn't been worth viewing since Jack Paar left. How ironic it is that perhaps the most incisive verdict on late-evening TV came during an episode of one of the Big Three networks' shittiest shows--and one of their most monumental flops.
