As I’m sure most of you remember, a couple years back NBC made the wise decision to make Conan O’Brien the host of NBC’s The Tonight Show. Unfortunately, after a colossal clusterf**k, Conan ended up getting ousted and Jay Leno reclaimed his spot because sometimes bad things happen to good people and vice versa. Well, according to a new report from HuffPo, NBC is currently planning on booting Jay Leno and replacing him with Jimmy Fallon, because HAHA!
Bill Carter of The New York Times reports that NBC has “quietly” been building Late Night host Jimmy Fallon a new studio in 30 Rockefeller Center in Manhattan for his expected move to The Tonight Show at 11:35. The news comes as Tonight Show host Jay Leno made headlines over the last week for making jokes in his monologue at the expense of the ratings-challenged NBC, reportedly upsetting NBC chairman Robert Greenblatt. The report is the clearest signal yet that NBC plans to oust current Tonight host Leno in favor of the younger-skewing Fallon in the near future. Although the network has summarily dismissed all rumors citing as such, unnamed executives told Carter that the transition will occur “by the fall of 2014 at the latest.” They also confirmed that they are indeed building a new studio for Fallon, who currently occupies the studio in 30 Rock where Johnny Carson once hosted The Tonight Show before moving the show to Los Angeles, where it has called home since 1974.
So basically, NBC gave The Tonight Show to one of the single funniest hosts out there, then gave it back to the hacky one, and then finally realized that they messed up something good, so now they’re trying to rectify it by giving it to someone else. On the plus side, Jimmy Fallon is actually a really good host and has blossomed pretty spectacularly on his own. Meanwhile, Jay Leno still sounds like he pulls his monologue material off of a joke-a-day calender. Needless to say, I’m Team Fallon on this one.