Dave Berg — not the late MAD Magazine cartoonist — worked with Jay Leno on The Tonight Show for 18 years and has a "backstage" book coming out shortly. In this article, he makes the case for Jay's accomplishments not being sufficiently appreciated. I'm a big fan of Jay's but I think this piece may be overstating a few things.
And I am curious about these statistics…
Leno will have done 4,610 episodes when his show, which has aired 22 years, wraps. That's 79 more episodes than Johnny did in 30 years.
First off, I'd love to know the source of the exact number of shows Johnny did. Years ago, I remember a lot of TV historians wondering how many he'd done and there was a belief that while it could be estimated, there were no records that would yield a precise answer. Then one day, the number 4,531 suddenly was out there. Who calculated that and how?
Secondly, does anyone know how many times Jay hosted The Tonight Show as a guest host? Add that number to the 4,610 and it's even more impressive.
Thirdly, isn't it worth noting that all of Jay's shows have been an hour in length and that a lot of Johnny's were 90 or even 105 minutes? If you figured who'd done the most hours of The Tonight Show during their tenures, Johnny would surely be ahead. Then again, if you added in the hours of Leno guest-hosting for him…well, I think Johnny would still be ahead but it would be closer. Not that it matters a lot.
I don't mean to trivialize Jay's accomplishment. Assembling and delivering 4,610 topical monologues is all by itself an incredible feat and you just know he could have hung in there for another thousand or two. I just think Johnny was Johnny and Jay was Jay and there are so many differences between the situations in which the two men worked that a comparison is kinda pointless.