Word: carsons
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...ever said replacing a TV legend would be easy, but NBC's problems following Johnny Carson's retirement from Tonight last May have been worse than anyone could have predicted. Picking Leno as Carson's successor seemed a logical move at the time; Leno, after all, had drawn good ratings as Carson's permanent guest host. But Letterman, once regarded as Carson's heir apparent, was publicly grumpy at being passed over. And Leno, a well-liked and hardworking comic, has suffered a shocking run of bad publicity, much of it stemming from the hardball booking tactics employed...
...Wright favors Letterman for the Tonight job, NBC program executives insist they are happy with Leno and contemplate no change. Leno's ratings, they point out, are on the rise, from a low of 4.1 in August to 4.6 for the important November sweeps. That is still substantially behind Carson's 5.4 score of a year earlier, but it does include a slightly higher proportion of the young viewers most sought by advertisers. Opinion on Madison Avenue is mixed: some call Leno's performance disappointing; others are upbeat. "Leno is holding up quite well with all the competition that...
...told Johnny Carson a few years ago that he singlehandedly is responsible for America's problems in the bedroom," she said. "'They stay up late to watch you, and then they are too tired...
...nation need all the unifying rituals and symbols we can find. They killed off Elvis. They forced Carson to retire. And they turned "Saturday Night Live" into repetitive, humorless drivel. Now they're trying to take Santa Claus and Christmas trees from us. It's time to fight back...
Stern and his groupies keep popping up, guerrilla-like, across the media landscape. Appearing with Jay Leno on the Tonight show during Leno's flap with < Arsenio Hall, Stern threw fuel on the flames by trashing Hall (a "moron") as well as former Johnny Carson cronies Doc Severinsen and Ed McMahon ("two of the biggest loads on two feet"). At her press conference last spring, Bill Clinton's alleged ex-girlfriend Gennifer Flowers was taken aback when a Stern reporter asked whether Clinton used a condom. When Today's Katie Couric opened the phone lines during a June appearance...