The Tonight Present No Longer Appeals to Pre-Boomers

In case you missed it, on June 1st the baton was passed from Jay Leno to Conan O'Brien, the brand new host of the Tonight Show new tv shows 2012 . I didn't watch the transitional present, because I was asleep. However there was a time when many pre-boomers, myself included, made it a degree to often catch the late night time program.

The present debuted in the fall of 1954 with Steve Allen as host. This coincided with my freshman 12 months in college. I was an enormous fan of the loopy antics of Steve and his cohorts, and notably loved the man-on-the-road recurring routine. In early 1957, Steve left for primetime and the present changed its format to news and entertainment. I stopped watching.

During the summer season of '57 Jack Paar took the helm of the floundering present, however his type and demeanor left me cold. So I didn't tune in very often. When Johnny Carson got here on the scene in '62, I was working for an ad agency in New York. It is a late night time city, so I often saw at least part of the Tonight Show. And since it was taped at 6 PM, I was part of the audience on more than one occasion. So, I was hooked for the next 30 years on Johnny's monologue, his characters resembling Carnac and Art Fern, Johnny's relationships with aspect-kick Ed McMahon and band chief Doc Severinsen, in addition to the way in which he introduced the most effective out of his guests. What a great way to end the day. The present moved to the west coast most popular tv shows in the early '70s; coincidentally, I followed just a few years later.

Jay took over the present in mid-1992. He's a hard-working, entertaining man who made changes to suite his audience, which was extra the boomer crowd. I seen this when attending a taping early on; in fact the ratings already indicated what demographics he was reaching. This can be why I rarely watched the present together with the very fact I not stayed up late. I did catch Conan just a few times, after I could not sleep. His time slot began at 1 AM. Again, he is a vivid, intelligent man with a sense of humor that I do not quite get. However younger people love him. So Conan goes to enchantment to the twenty and thirty one thing's, and Jay is getting a primetime slot starting this fall in hopes of garnering a larger, slightly older, audience for NBC.

It will be interesting to see how the changes shake out, however it's obvious the community will not be programming comedy for the pre-boomers. Within the meantime, guess I will have to trade in my better of Johnny Carson tapes for DVDs, because he is still good for a laugh.

Don Potter, a Philadelphia native, was born in 1936 and is a 50 12 months veteran of the advertising agency business. Now dwelling in Los Angeles, he has written two novels in retirement, incessantly writes on advertising and marketing points, and has a blog devoted to pre-boomers (these born between 1930 and 1945).