Jay Leno on Tour

Long before the Tonight Show, Jay Leno was a victorious stand-up comedian performing up to 300 nightly gigs per year. He was employed to write jokes for the popular 1970 television sitcom “Good Times” while appearing briefly in one episode. He starting hiting the big time in 1977 when he made several appearance on the Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show. During the summer of the same year he completed several comedy routines on Billy Davis Jr. and Marilyn McCoo Show. Up to the 80’s Jay Leno often perform bits of comedy and told jokes usually with a bit of an edge to them as he appeared as a guest star on NBC's nighttime talk show, “Late Night with David Letterman”. Jay was a continual guest as well as a guest host for Johnny Carson where his comedy was well received even though it tended to lack the necessary bit that it previously had. It appeared that Leno was attempting to appeal to Carson’s middle age audience.

The idea seemed to work for Leno as in 1987 he was named as Johnny’s "permanent guest host" and in 1991 when Carson decided to announce, his retirement from entertaining NBC selected Leno as his late night show replacement. David Letterman was astounded as he had considered Carson to be his mentor for a good number of years and he had long aspired to become the host of the Tonight Show. Even Johnny Carson felt that the better of the choices would have been Lettermen and with Carson’s advise and encouragement Lettermen left the television network. CBS made Leno an offer and he quickly accepted it. During Johnny’s last episode on the Tonight Show Jay Leno was not mentioned at all.

It took several rough months for Leno to eventually, adjust into the Tonight Show format.

Although his monologues appeared longer then those of Carson's and proved to be not as impressive he managed to project an easy going style with a nice guy personality that the American public began to love. Leno in 2004 indicated that he was going to employ Stuttering John Melendez who previously had worked with Howard Stern on his radio show, however a press release made from the Tonight Show stated that Melendez in order to conquer his stuttering would be working with a professional speech coach.

This is typical of Jays predicament as the Tonight Show wished to appeal to a more youthful demographic group of people but wanted to do so without losing the show's vast number of older viewers.

This complete balance is indicative that Leno week after week manages to remain the number one show while that of Lettermen and his late show might be unfailingly funnier.

Leno decided to head towards his retirement in the year 2009 and revealed that NBC would replace him with Conan O’Brien as host of the “Tonight Show"

As that time frame draws near it is becoming more and more obvious that Leno has made it clear that he does not enjoy the thought of entering into retirement.