duff beer

They should just can his interviews and stale skits like Jay on the Street or when he talks to someone on the audience trying desparately to squeeze out a drop of humor from their unfunny stories which is hard enough for him as it is and just start off with his monologue, then the next 50 minutes should be devoted to headlines each day and that's it.

It would get so much better i promise.

Rivero

Agreed. It boggles my mind that some people actually listen to him and laugh at his lame-ass jokes and forced, pedestrian interviews. The perfect host for the undemanding, dumb 'Middle America' viewer.

duff beer

Can you imagine how many headlines get sent in every day and he shows like 10 once every week missing out on so much of the only redeemable thing on that show. It boggles the mind.

apchrist

Headlines is the only five minutes of that show I'll ever actually watch. Though I will admit I did watch the show on monday for the tribute to Carson. I hope tomorrow that Letterman does something to tribute him on his show.

Lara Means

Why is headlines funny when its obvious that the entire thing is as fake as Jay Walking?

Darkfriend

Guests Monday from the website:

"Former Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson Exec. Prod. Peter Lassally, Doc Severinsen."

Mole177

does he still have those short comedy periods when his face is in a special lens camera?

like iron jay? i havent seen those for a long time.

Giantrobo

Letterman Rules!!!

It's funny, I've always liked Leno in general but this last week, and I'm not sure if it has anything to do with Carson's death, Leno has been using the worst material I've ever heard him do. I mean the jokes are just silly. You can even tell what stupid thing he's gonna do after the joke is told.

Jay, very few comics can make lame jokes and make them funnier by using "saves" and you're not one of them. You have to tell jokes that work the 1st time or you're FUCKED! Your writers MUST give you better material or your late night reign is over....

kvrdave

Never been a big fan of Letterman. Some of the skits, etc. are good but when he has a guest on it is awful.

The thing Johnny Carson had that neither Leno or Letterman can get down is the fact that the host doesn't need to be the focus of the show. Johnny set up his guests, made them funny, let himself be the butt of jokes if it was funny, etc. He made his guests better because of how good he was. He could take a mediocre guest and make a great show.

Letterman has to keep the focus on him. He would rather make a joke about the guest than let them actually be good. The only time he can be the butt of the joke is when it is his joke.

Leno is actually slightly better with guests than Letterman, but that isn't tough to do. Leno is a long way from Carson. I don't watch latenight anymore because it is about the hosts, and not the guests. Even when Johnny was at his prime, it was his guests (with his help) that made the show fantastic.

Phil L.

I *still* can't figure out what the hell John Melendez is supposed to be, or why he is even part of the show.

ElementZ

I dont think they are fake. There was one headline from our paper that made it in there.

I like Leno a lot better than letterman

dolphinboy

Letterman is far superior in interviewing guests. Leno's interviewing skills are easily the worst of any of the hosts on late night television.

kenny79

One headline I "fixed" was on there ... yeah, I didn't exactly fix it correctly.

Brent_MN

Is anyone forgetting Kilborn? I always thought he was really good at interviewing. He talked about the non-obvious thing a lot of times. I really enjoyed that so much more than the canned questions. R.I.P. Craiggers.

SuperJim88

The same kind of thread debating Leno vs. Letterman seems to be pop up once every month. So for the sake of completeness, let me just say:

Conan beats them all.

Spanky BananaPants

Amen to that. As far as network late-night guys go, he's the best. Consistently makes me laugh. I'm warming up a bit to Kilborn's replacement, but it's taking some time to get used to.

OTOH, if you include non-network late-night guys, Jon Stewart gets my vote for funniest. I don't think I've missed an episode since he took The Daily Show over from Kilborn.

Y2J850

I second Jon Stewart. I'd rather watch Lewis Black's back in black segment or any special report with steve Carell over Letterman anyday. And now that Houston plays conan at 12'30 am instead of like 2 i watch it regualarly and find him quite entertaining. He is the only person i will watch interviews with.But he does seem to play jokes to death. His 'hair' jokes need to end. and back when he would sing 'ima go to hell when i die' it stoped being funny the 2nd time he did it. To bad i was not old enough to have seen anything of carson i could remember but the stuff Leno showed on his tribute makes me wanna check out his dvds even more.

QuikSilver

Well I for one really like Jay. In my opinion he is so much better than David Letterman. Dave's jokes and especially his skits are really bad.

maingon

I also like Jay Leno far better then David Letterman

HAS ANYONE EVER LAUGHED AT LETTERMANS TOP TEN LIST? those are not even alittle funny. Then they always have the aisian man that runs the party store. not very funny. then Letterman acts like he never seen any of his guest movies and always ask dumb questions. At least leno for the most part seen there movies and overall Leno is far more entertaining.

kind of a reason Leno has been doing better in ratings for the past few years or as far back as i can remember

nightwing82

I'm not a "undemanding, dumb 'Middle America' viewer" and I think Leno is way better than Letterman. Letterman sucks and Paul the bald sucks a tad bit more, which adds to my hate of the show. I wasn't a fan of Kilborn either.

Oh, and I agree that Jon Stewart is better than Letterman.

Overall Conan is tops, but Leno comes in #2. I did not like Johnny Carson, but I was watching it very young (I've seen some now, don't like him still). I would watch Arsenio instead.

kvrdave

He does. He is a much better interviewer. He makes his guests funny. He saves them quite frequently.

leepyswetr

"Listen, here's the thing. If you can't spot the sucker in the first half hour at the table, then you are the sucker."

Letterman is Mozart to Leno's Ashlee Simpson.

DonnachaOne

"Headlines", I know for a fact, is not fake. Two of my local papers got into "Headlines" and I've seen other people online who comment on "Headlines" using something from their town.

As for "Jay Walking", there's a problem. Jay will ask a person a ton of questions until they get something embarassingly wrong, or worse, the person will try to be funny for Jay. Those "All-Stars" though... man, people like that exist. I work with them. On boring nights, me and another coworker will make up questions to ask some of our odder coworkers.
I have, and rather consistently

Rogue588

How dare you insult Ashlee like that..

dolphinboy

Choosing Arsenio (woof! woof!) over Carson and having Leno as #2 doesn't do much to help support your disdain for Letterman.

By the way, Stewart doesn't host a late night talk show. I think he'd be great, but he has a comedy/fake news/satire show that lasts a half hour, four nights a week, and his average interview is about 5 minutes long. It's hard to compare him to the others, he has a ton of advantages built into the show, although his interview style does seem very solid.

Samantha Bee would be better than Leno and she's like 3rd string on the Daily Show.

Letterman is still number 1. Carson knew it and Arsenio knows it. Conan is #2.

Jon Stewart is awesome but he's really in a category all by himself.