Leno Looking Forward to Earlier Nights

Comedian may be getting the boot, but tomorrow's looking pretty bright

(NEWSER) - Jay Leno might be losing his beloved "Tonight Show," writes the Hollywood Reporter, but the host still has a ratings punch and an enviable set of options (in decreasing order of probability):

1. Take ABC’s 11:30pm-12:30am slot, displacing Nightline and Jimmy Kimmel Live and competing with Letterman and O’Brien.
2. Launch a show on Fox at 11 or 11:30pm—Fox doesn’t currently run late-night shows, but could use Leno’s brand to push into the new territory.
3. Sony Pictures TV puts Leno’s Tonight Show into syndication, which could eventually lead to another late-night gig.

As 'Late Night' winds down, the landscape of network television moves as well

(NEWSER) - As Conan O'Brien gets ready to move from Late Night to the Tonight Show—tomorrow is his last post-midnight show before he decamps for LA—the value of the coveted 11pm slot has been seriously undercut. With current Tonight host Jay Leno heading not into the sunset but into the 10pm slot, O’Brien finds himself still Leno’s follow-up and, observers say, sandbagged by his own network. More»

Is there any joke that can save the big-chinned one?

(NEWSER) - The public has largely branded Jay Leno the villain in the Conan debacle, but if there’s anything that can repair the damage it’s a good joke right? So New York magazine asked a bunch of local comedians how The Chin should open tonight’s show. Their suggestions:

• “Ladies and gentlemen, the only reason you see me standing here is I was NBC's Plan B. Plan A involved the corpse of Johnny Carson and a lightning bolt.” —Jay Black

Tonight Show ad implies Conan O'Brien never belonged there

(NEWSER) - NBC aired the first promo for Jay Leno’s return to the Tonight Show last night, and it seems to include an underhanded dig at Conan O’Brien. The ad, a sequel to last year’s Super Bowl promo for the Jay Leno Show, shows a “10” decal flying off Leno’s sports car to reveal a new one: “11:35.” The mean part? The Beatles sing, “Get back to where you once belonged” in the background. More»

Ousting Conan was only the first step; Jimmy Fallon is next!

(NEWSER) - If you think about it, isn’t Jay Leno a lot like Hitler? After all, he's “a master of making secret demands for foreign territory and then acting like the wronged party,” reasons Joe Queenan, writing for the Wall Street Journal . Leno pretended he wanted only the first part of his old time slot, just as Hitler insisted he merely wanted to annex Sudetenland, not all of Czechoslovakia. More»