A reader who asked me not to mention his name wrote…
I have a question about the Tonight Show reruns they have been airing on Antenna TV. Thanks to your heads up, I've been watching them regularly for some time now, and I know, as you've been pointing out, that they have to be edited somewhat because of certain music rights. But why is Ed McMahon's naming of the guests during the opening credits always edited out? We only hear him saying "Heeeere's Johnny" after the guests are silently introduced via onscreen titles.
For a while, I though they were doing this to more easily splice a few episodes together, but that doesn't seem to be the case and the episodes appear to be intact, apart from the edits in the musical numbers. Have the heirs of Ed McMahon somehow prevented his original voiceover introductions from being included in these reruns? Additionally, the opening montage that plays during these Antenna TV openings seems to be different from what I remember during the original airings.
I don't know anyone at Antenna TV but I'm sure it has nothing to do with Ed McMahon's family and probably everything to do with the fact that (a) they wanted to standardize the openings and (b) this show, rerunning old episodes of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson is not called The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. It's called simply Johnny Carson and they don't have clean audio of Ed saying the name of this program in a manner that sounds like he's announcing the name of the program. Also, a lot of the openings were done by Doc Severinsen or even other substitutes when Ed was off selling Budweiser or doing Star Search.
Doing it the way they do means they always have the same opening with the same performance of the theme music (which is probably a lot easier and cheaper for clearances) and they don't have the awkwardness of Ed or someone billboarding the guests but not saying the name of the program. I believe that when they started these reruns of Antenna TV, some of the 90 minute shows on the weekend had the original titles that called it The Tonight Show but that they then switched over to the newly-made opening that doesn't.
Thanks for your question, Reader Who Asked Me Not To Mention His Name. Your identity is safe with me.
