Maximum Fun Forum

We've got a great show for you this week... Really. First, Bill Carter and his account of the war over The Tonight Show. Discuss!

jesse. holy shit. this is a great interview. good work on this. wow.

Jesse, I really enjoyed this one. Great job with the editing, Nick. Loved the clips.

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I've listened to Bill Carter in both this interview and in the interview he did for The Treatment, and I wonder what the future of the Tonight Show will be. I mean, I love Conan, but if I pretty much listen to the shows on Maximumfun, Jimmy Pardo's Never Not Funny, You Look Nice Today, and Comedy and Everything Else and I have the same information from the Tonight Show. On top of that, I can listen to these shows asynchronous and I can also choose what I want to listen to (i.e. I don't have to listen to people I don't like or I can listen to people that aren't plugging their book everywhere else).

For my entertainment value, my podcast rotation that is asychronous and portable, is more interesting to me than a Tonight Show.

Furthermore, it seems like the future seems to be the live shows that are podcasted online. Stuff like what JJGo's live podcasts or the Maxfuncon seem more viable and more intimate than going to watch the Tonight Show or even Letterman. Sure, it isn't daily and immediate, but it seems to do a lot more for what I actually purchase (i.e. movies I will see, music I will listen to) than the shows where actors and musicians have 10 minutes with the host.

But getting back tot he Tonight Show, what seems to be interesting is the format of the show. Can that be duplicated in a podcast format? The closest I've seen is something like the Dinner Party Download that relishes in a strict format that is somewhat similar to the Tonight Show, condensed into something like 20 minutes.

Is media going back to a "vaudville traveling show" format? Or will the Tonight Show format come back once they knock out Letterman and Leno from timeslots?

Jesse, I think you have officially leveled up.

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Fantastic interview, just really well done.

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"Style is the answer to everything. A fresh way to approach a dull or dangerous thing."

An interesting question. On the other hand, I wonder if the format is worth saving. In our diverse online mediascape (which, we should remember, relatively few people still know exist, let alone care about), you can separate out all the Tonight Show functions - there are interview shows, and current events comedy shows and sketch shows and what have you. I for one would have watched the Tonight Show with Conan a lot more if it wasn't for those damn monologues and celebrity interviews - but those are reasons I'll never cozy up to late night as a format.

At both Late Night and the Tonight Show, Conan subjected the format to as much ridicule as anything else - think here about the "we spent tons of money on this" bits over the last few Tonight Shows, or my favorite episode of Late Night from 1994 where the audience was entirely 8 year old children. We're used to that kind of material in alt stand up, but the country still isn't, and many people (oldsters especially) find it kind of off putting. Craig Ferguson subjects the format to some scrutiny too, but he also replaces its hokey elements (sometimes) with super-serious interviews with the likes of Desmond Tutu or Cornell West.

The short version - obviously, there are people who are good at interviewing and good at comedy (Jesse, say, or the aforementioned Craig Ferguson) - but now you can split those functions into two or more projects, let both be as long or as short as they want to be, and convince people to listen to / watch both.

Jeff Garlin's analogy that Leno is Kenny G and Conan is John Coltrane is brilliant and perfect.

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