King of Late Night bids a heartfelt "Good night."

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on January 24th, 2005

We were slogging our way through West Montreal, having booted the turn to get on the Pont Champlain (We always get lost when we try to leave Montreal!), when the announcer on the all-news Montreal radio station started one of those paragraphs with the long dependent clause– “Johnny Carson, the man who defined late-night television…”– and we just knew before she even got to the second comma how the sentence was going to end.

We were all stressed out because of the weather. We were monitoring the storm via CNN, because the Canadian version of the weather channel just didn’t provide enough detail about “the states.” But CNN was mainly interested in scaring people and sensationalizing the precip– focusing mainly on the Boston area and giving little useful info about travel. But all the stress took a backseat to the sorrow upon hearing of Carson’s death.

One fine day in 1990, we found four tickets to The Tonight Show in our Burbank mailbox. Because of demand, one had to order Tonight tix months in advance. Traci had ordered them and forgotten all about it. We called up the Saccone’s and made plans to attend the taping. We sat in the back row and saw Dianne Schurr, Lance Burton and Bill Cosby.

On the night that Johnny quit, nearly two years later, I was in a fevered haze in the bedroom (a victim of a flu bug of some sort) as Traci watched and actually wept. It was the end of a television era, but it was also the end of a comedy era. It is safe to say that any sane comic aspired to appear on the show. And we all assumed that he’d be there when we were ready– after all, he had been there since before we were born (or, for some of us, since we were little).

At the same time he was making the decision to leave the desk, the business of funny was going through profound changes, changes from which it is only now, more than a decade later, recovering. So, as the dream of getting the “okay” sign from Johnny was evaporating, the reality of making a living as a comedian was, for many, becoming a slippery proposition. Double bummer!

More than a decade later, there still isn’t a single, powerful show that can jump start a comedy career like Johnny’s Tonight could. Comics come up, collect credits, work hard, build followings, accrue power. But there isn’t a stand-alone, high-profile one-shot TV appearance that imparts the same concentrated prestige that one got from standing in front of those garish curtains in that studio at Olive and Alameda.

Johnny wasn’t just the host of a television show. He was an icon, a symbol. His approval meant a lot– to us and to America. We’ve been grieving for a dozen years. Johnny will be missed again.

from → News • 0 Comments - Let's discuss! • Print-Friendly • Back To Top