It's been announced that Seth Meyers will be the new host of Late Night. A friend of mine over at NBC tells me that despite many submissions, no one else was seriously considered for the position. What was considered was not installing anyone in there at all and instead putting The Tonight Show back to 90 minutes and moving up what follows. "It came down as it always seems to these days to a matter of money," he writes. NBC is looking for the parlay of Fallon and Meyers to cost a lot less to produce than the combo of Leno and Fallon. My friend also speculates that in an effort to make things different from the hour before, Late Night with Seth Meyers may wind up looking a bit more like The Daily Show (or SNL's Weekend Update) than the shows formerly headed in that time slot by Letterman, O'Brien and Fallon. My guess is they don't know what the show is yet…but they do need to find a way to make it different.
Here's the New York Times piece on the announcement. There's no mention of earlier reports that NBC was signing Alec Baldwin to do a late night interview show. There's also no mention of Last Call with Carson Daly, which under different names has been there now since January of 2002. But then there's never any mention anywhere of Last Call with Carson Daly.
Several weeks ago here, I asked folks to send me their explanations for what it was that Jay Leno did during the whole Jay/Conan do-si-do that was so treacherous and unethical. I only got a few entries, most of them prefaced by, "Well, I don't believe this but some people say…" I'll be running a few along with my responses shortly but if anyone would like to get on this, we're still accepting indictments.
Not that anyone cares much but lately, I'm more bored by the late night shows than I've ever been. I can't get into either Jimmy or Conan at all. I like Jay's monologues and when he has a guest on that excites him. I like the latter with Dave but don't see that often. My fave is still Craig Ferguson but I wish he'd cut down the dancing and mugging. He also has nights when he seems to think the job description involves not letting guests finish paragraphs. I just got but have not had time to install a new TiVo for my office. It can record four stations at the same time so I may record more of the late night shows…but I bet I wind up watching them for less total time, especially when Jay goes off.