Tonight Show | Heeeeeere’s Johnny !

For 30 years, Johnny Carson hosted the Tonight Showlong the only true late-night show in the United States. I still remember the scene very well, one evening in May 1992.

Like millions of people around the world, I saw Carson trade his usual monologue of jokes based on the news of the day for a love letter addressed to his audience, which he delivered sitting on a stool without artifice, neither fanfare nor trumpet. It was his last show. And, like everyone who watched him, he was moved, grateful, vulnerable and already nostalgic.

I have a strange fascination with morning shows and late night shows. Not only for their content and style, but above all for their business model, their profitability and their influence. Mornings and late-night are like bookends and, in between, lies all of American popular culture. Music, sport and cinema, obviously. But also politics and what’s happening on the internet. All these elements are inseparable.

In this year 2025, Johnny Carson would have been 100 years old. Tributes will therefore parade, in the form of documentaries, long portraits, podcasts and books like Carson the Magnificenta brand new biography. Before dying, the host had given the green light to author Bill Zehme.

This anniversary is an opportunity to highlight the legacy of this great master and, with hindsight, to learn lessons from the one who made Tonight Show an institution. This is perhaps also an opportunity to draw inspiration for the new year.

Except for the magic hour that started at 11:30 every night, Carson was reserved and shy. He hated revealing himself and rarely gave interviews. Lesson number one: We don’t have to always unpack everything, all the time.

The multiple divorces of Johnny Carson, an exemplary husband, have often made the headlines of the tabloids. At the time, his marital difficulties occasionally served as material for his jokes, but his audiences loved him anyway, refraining from judging him for his private life.

A kind of separation of Church and State, showbiz version. Would we be able to do it today? Lesson number two: it is not perfection that we should aim for, but rather the impact that we can have on our fellow human beings, the contribution that we can make.

At one time, The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson generated 25% of the revenues of the NBC channel, which broadcast – as is still the case today – the show. But beyond this financial prowess, Carson, throughout his career and in his own way, made things move forward.

Today, if names like those of Jay Leno and David Letterman are etched in the annals of comedy, it is because Johnny Carson gave these former young leads, who had become quite gigantic themselves, their first break. Carson had made them regular guests when they were aspiring comedians.

He did the same for Joan Rivers and Ellen DeGeneres, even though the comedy world was even more inhospitable then than it is today for women. There was also no sort of fairness in his selection of guests. For every opportunity given to an Ellen, there have certainly been five opportunities given to a Letterman.

Johnny Carson never wanted to comment on social issues, for fear that his positions would detract from the humor. Obviously, since then, several of his heirs have proven that one does not prevent the other. Despite this caution, Johnny Carson will have – in my eyes – made the most important and courageous gesture in the history of American television.

In 1968 and in the midst of social turmoil fueled in particular by the Vietnam War and the momentum of the civil rights movement, Johnny Carson offered the hosting of his show to singer, actor, but above all activist Harry Belafonte. Carson wanted America to be exposed to the realities of the country, but above all to people who had solutions to offer.

For five evenings, Belafonte had carte blanche. He took the opportunity to invite pacifists who marked history like Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, as well as a certain Buffy Sainte-Marie, long before the controversy over her origins. Lesson number three: use your influence wisely.

Rightly so, we talk a lot about streaming and the many platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime. But even today, nothing brings people together like television. Every natural disaster, every Super Bowl, and every election night reminds us of this.

In 1978, in the United States, an average of 17 million people watched Johnny Carson on television every evening. Today, there are just under 1.5 million watching Jimmy Fallon who now hosts the Tonight Show. Hundreds of thousands more watch his monologue and some of his sketches on social media. Although they are watched less than before, late-night shows remain influential.

We live in what seems to be a time of certain darkness. In addition to the entertainment we all need, television can be a light. It can also serve as a platform for change, a springboard towards rapprochement. It is also this exceptional strength that must be celebrated by highlighting the 100th anniversary of Johnny Carson.

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