Can't lie.. I'm pretty excited about this!
After weeks of hype and speculation, NBC announced that Jimmy Fallon will take over The Tonight Show in 2014 - bringing it back to its original home at 30 Rock, with SNL EP Lorne Michaels at the helm. Leno spent 22 years hosting the #1 late night talk show.
The always humble Late Night host thanked the staff, crew and house band The Roots. He thanked his predecessor and viewers saying, “I have to say thanks to Jay Leno for being so gracious. It means so much to me to have his support. I just want to thank the fans for staying up to 12:35 a.m. and watching us.”
Leno, graciously called Fallon "a great guy" and said "he's going to do a great job". He couldn't go out without a dig at rival host David Letterman, “I had a really awkward day today. Had to call David Letterman and tell him he didn’t get The Tonight Show … again.”
NBC wasn't spared with Leno kicking execs while they're down about the rapid decline in ratings, saying “We’ve all fought, kicked and scratched to get this network up to fifth place, now we have to keep it there! Jimmy, don’t let it slip into sixth! We are counting on you.”
Either way, CONGRATS JIMMY!
Will you watch The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon or are you on Team Coco? Gonna stick with Letterman? Think I'm going to be watching The Tonight Show.... in 2014.
Now, let's do a little "industry talk": 1. We know that The Tonight Show is moving to New York. It looks like this means Fallon's crew gets several more years of job security and a major job upgrade. Unfortunately, for Leno's people this means retirement or finding another job. 2. Has anyone noticed that Lorne Michaels is building quite an empire for himself? Once Fallon takes over Tonight, he will have a show on television every night except Sunday! (sb: the past few hosts of SNL's Weekend Update have gotten their own show... Does this mean an automatic takeover of Late Night for Seth
Myers?) 3. PR and press will go through a bit of a change. The only LA based host competing with Fallon is Kimmel. He has access to all LA based celebrities with no other shows in that time slot filming. Every celebrity will go through quite a press day running between daytime (Today, The View, GMA, Colbert, Daily Show) then over to Fallon and Letterman, many of these shows live or taping within the same time frame. Changes, changes!
No comments:
Post a Comment