Leno: 2nd 'Tonight' exit is quits
BURBANK, Calif. — Jay Leno, as affably efficient backstage as he is in front of the camera, avoids waxing poetic about his 22-year “Tonight Show” run that draws to a close Thursday.
Instead, he relies on numbers to tell the story. Leno's tenure is second only to Johnny Carson's 30 years; “Tonight” was No. 1 among viewers when he took it over and will be when he hands it off to Jimmy Fallon; he'll have taped more shows than any predecessor, Carson included, with the final and 4,610th one.
His dry assessment also may stem from a case of déjà vu. After all, he lived through this before when he surrendered “Tonight” in 2009 to Conan O'Brien, only to reclaim it after NBC's messy bobbling of the transition and O'Brien's lackluster ratings.
But this time it's different, Leno contends, offering another hard fact: The older generation has to make way for the younger one.
Britain's Queen Elizabeth II can keep 65-year-old Prince Charles cooling his heels. Leno doesn't have the power to do the same with Fallon, 39. The “Late Night” host is moving the show from its longtime Burbank home, near Johnny Carson Park and off Bob Hope Drive, to its New York birthplace when he debuts as host on Feb. 17.
“It's been a wonderful job but this is the right time to leave,” said Leno, whose once-dark mop of hair is now a neatly groomed silver. “I'm at that age where I don't really listen to the (current) music anymore. I'm not a big tweet guy. A 63-year-old guy reading Miley Cyrus' tweets is a little creepy. Move on.”
He makes the argument with the precision of one of his reliable monologue jokes, just as he did when he claimed to understand NBC's decision to evict him for O'Brien — even as he reamed the network on air.
The years between then and now have seen changes come at a quickening pace, with an evermore crowded late-night arena and a shifting media environment. Fallon's parody music bits with contemporaries like Justin Timberlake are perfect cut-and-pastes for sites like YouTube that drive young viewer attention and offer new potential for ad sales as network revenues shrink.
In 2012, “Tonight” laid off 20 staffers and Leno took a 10 percent pay cut. The show has averaged a 3.5 million nightly viewership in the past 12 months, which pales in comparison with the double-digit audiences it once claimed.
Leno is planning to expand the comedy club gigs he never abandoned and various outlets for his automotive passion, including the Web show “Jay Leno's Garage,” and the magazine and newspaper pieces he writes. He insists his schedule won't include another late-night show, which could only be what he calls “Tonight Light.”
“It's hard to re-create this moment. It's like the fighter coming back. You got to be world champion, so it's kind of silly,” he said.
