Friday, December 12, 2008

The Tonight Show


We first came across The Tonight Show - or more precisely Jay Leno - when we were in Berlin and had NBC piped through our cable. Needless to say, it quickly became the highlight of our evening's TV watching.

When we moved to France, we were robbed of this privilege, and subsequently spent the next 6 years pining for a Jay Leno fix, satisfied only with the occasional foray onto the show's online site (incidentally a great source of clips from current and previous shows).

Imagine our joy therefore when we learnt that we would be moving to Lenoland itself, and could watch the man himself live every weekday evening

Well, the joy was shortlived. The Tonight Show is recorded in Burbank, California, i.e. a completely different time zone, and primetime viewing on the West Coast is night-owl TV around here. That means we have to wait until 11.30pm to even get a glimpse of our comic hero, whose Monologues, Headlines and Jaywalking sections are televisual classics - not to mention his interviewing style.


Worse still, we found out about a month ago that NBC thinks Jay Leno is getting too old for TV (he's been hosting the show for about 20 years now), and was going to axe him next spring. Having waited so long for the pleasure of seeing him, this was truly a tragic blow.

Luckily for us, help is at hand: rumour has it that NBC has not only relented, but offered Leno a primetime EST show from May. O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! Now all we need is for Saturday Night Live to become Saturday Evening Live.

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