Meyers goes for a sort of updated Dick Cavett feel, carrying himself with buttoned-down restraint and actually allowing literary authors (Marlon James, Hanya Yanagihara) onto his soundstage. Kimmel’s and Maher’s shows are naughtier, a little more insouciant, a little more Dean Martin. Fallon’s and Corden’s shows might be considered post-Letterman or even pre-Carson, more sunny, wholesome variety shows than smoky Playboy After Dark-style debauches. Conan is indeed the purist’s choice, where you go for absurdist, smart comedy in the lo-fi tradition of NBC-era Letterman, back when Dave and crew MacGyver’d a funny show out of little more than subversive writing, the host’s awkward interplay with guests, and a hot band. And the point is: we, the viewers, are freer than ever to choose what we like, either à la carte or, thanks to streaming and DVR-ing, in combo-platter form. O’Brien duly upbraided his employee, but, impolitic as du Bouchet’s words were, they’re helpful in differentiating the programs. And in March, James Corden replaced Craig Ferguson on CBS’s Late Late Show, out in L.A., where the three relative grandpas of late-night, 59-year-old Bill Maher, 47-year-old Jimmy Kimmel, and 52-year-old Conan O’Brien, have been holding steady at HBO, ABC, and TBS. Last year, Stewart saw his most obvious heir apparent, John Oliver, establish his own beachhead at HBO with Last Week Tonight, and instead handed off The Daily Show this year to the relatively unknown Trevor Noah. In the spring of this year, Letterman gave up his roost at CBS’s Late Show, providing an opening for Stephen Colbert, whose departure from Comedy Central in turn provided an opening for Larry Wilmore. To recap: Jay Leno hung it up at NBC in February 2014, yielding The Tonight Show to Jimmy Fallon, who in turn yielded Late Night to Seth Meyers. So, given the circumstances, change is good, even if it comes at a disorienting pace. Weird, wild stuff.” The real Carson was canny enough to get out just before things got that grotesque. A Saturday Night Live sketch from the period found Dana Carvey playing Johnny as “Carsenio,” his white hair buzzed into an Arsenio Hall flattop fade, fighting off obsolescence by boogying down in a boxy red suit and telling Phil Hartman’s Ed McMahon, “It’s not called a band anymore-it’s called a posse. As Stewart himself said in February, The Daily Show “doesn’t deserve an even slightly restless host, and neither do you.” And, though hardly anyone remembers this today, Carson, before he announced in 1991 that he would retire the following year-prompting a renewed appreciation of his silvery cool and perfect comic instincts-was not the unassailable King of Late-Night that we now hold him to be. And when these men stepped down from their jobs, their departures were the cause of grieving and anxiety, a sense of “Who else could possibly see me through the end of my day? How will life go on?”īut life does go on, and these transitions have a way of working to everyone’s benefit. Three successive generations grew up without ever having known a time when, respectively, Johnny Carson, David Letterman, and Jon Stewart were not on late-night television.
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