The Tonight Show

Besides the main hosts, a number of regular "guest hosts" have been used, notably Ernie Kovacs, who hosted his own version of Tonight two nights per week during 1956–1957, and a number of guest hosts used by Carson, who curtailed his own hosting duties back to three nights per week by the 1980s. Among Carson's regular guest hosts were Joey Bishop, McLean Stevenson, David Letterman, David Brenner, Garry Shandling and Joan Rivers, with his final regular guest host being his eventual successor Jay Leno. The practice of hiring guest hosts has been mostly discontinued by Leno and his successors, who prefer airing reruns to showcasing potential rivals.

The Tonight Show is the world's longest-running talk show and the longest-running regularly scheduled entertainment program in the United States. It is the third-longest-running show on NBC, after the news-and-talk shows Today and Meet the Press. The current incarnation is taped from Studio 6B at NBC Studios in Rockefeller Center in New York, the same studio used during the later Jack Paar era and the first 10 years of Carson. During its initial run under Steve Allen, it originated from the Hudson Theatre on Broadway. From 1973 to 2009, and from 2010 to 2014 the show was taped at one of three different studios at NBC's Burbank, California Studios. During Conan O'Brien's brief tenure, the show was taped at an opulently reworked studio on Stage 1 of Universal Studios Hollywood.

Over the course of almost 70 years, The Tonight Show has undergone only minor title changes. It aired under the name Tonight for several of its early years, as well as Tonight Starring Jack Paar and The Jack Paar Show due to the runaway popularity of its host, eventually settling permanently on The Tonight Show after Carson began his tenure in 1962, albeit with the host's name always included in the title. Beginning with Carson's debut episode, network programmers, advertisers, and the show's announcers would refer to the show by including the name of the host: The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien and currently, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. In the 1950s and 1960s, TV listings publications such as TV Guide often listed the show as simply Jack Parr or Johnny Carson.

In 1957, the show briefly tried a more news-style format (during which time its title was adjusted to Tonight! America After Dark). It has otherwise adhered to the talk show format introduced by Allen and honed further by Paar.

Carson is the longest-serving host to date, although he is not the host with the most episodes. The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson aired for 30 seasons between October 1962 and May 1992. Leno has the record of having hosted the greatest number of total televised episodes. Leno's record is due to the fact that, unlike Carson (who only produced new shows three days a week, these being typically Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, starting in the 1980s), Leno also never used guest hosts on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (except Katie Couric once) and produced new shows five days a week; Leno himself was also Carson's primary guest host for the last five years of Carson's tenure, adding even more episodes to his credit. Leaving out Leno's five years as permanent guest host, Leno hosted 119 more episodes as full-time host than Carson.

During Carson's first four years, the show ran for 105 minutes and then was reduced to ninety minutes in early 1967 when Carson stopped appearing for the first 15 minutes because most affiliates were carrying their local news during that time slot as they expanded to half an hour. During Carson's 1980 contract negotiations, the show was shortened to sixty minutes beginning that September, where it has remained since. NBC also broadcast The Best of Carson which were repeats of some of Carson's popular older albeit usually recent shows. Prior to the debut of Saturday Night Live in October 1975, NBC aired The Best of Carson on Saturday nights at 11:30 pm. During Leno's tenure as permanent guest host, The Best of Carson usually aired on Mondays with Leno hosting on Tuesdays.

Also featuring prominently on Carson's show was his sidekick Ed McMahon, who introduced Carson and typically appeared alongside him for the entire episode. By the end of Carson's tenure, McMahon usually only appeared in episodes hosted by Carson, and the use of a sidekick in such a manner has not been continued under Leno and his successors.

Apart from the show's brief run as a news show in 1957, its shortest-serving host was Conan O'Brien, who went on to continue hosting a late-night program following his controversial departure. O'Brien hosted 146 episodes over the course of fewer than eight months before Leno was brought back as host, where he served for almost four additional years. Host Fallon debuted on February 17, 2014. Fallon had previously hosted Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, and before Late Night he was a popular member of the cast of Saturday Night Live, co-hosting the "Weekend Update" segment with Tina Fey as well as performing sketches.

Hosting history

From 1950 to 1951, NBC aired Broadway Open House, a nightly variety show hosted primarily by comic Jerry Lester. It was unsuccessful because hosting five nights a week burned through all of Lester's material faster than he could create it, so he was given rotating hosting duties for a weekly prime time variety show in 1951. The network scaled back late-night programming to shorter weekly shows. A spin-off, Dagmar's Canteen, aired the following season on Saturday nights; at some other point in the week, Mary Kay's Nightcap (which mostly consisted of previews of the next day's programming) also aired that season.

The format of The Tonight Show can be traced to a nightly 40-minute local program in New York, hosted by Allen and originally titled The Knickerbocker Beer Show (after the sponsor). It was quickly retitled The Steve Allen Show. This premiered in 1953 on WNBT-TV (now broadcasting as WNBC-TV), the local network affiliate station in New York City. Beginning in September 1954, it was renamed Tonight! and began its historic run on the full NBC network.

Notes for hosting history

Steve Allen (1954–1957) and Ernie Kovacs (1956–1957)

The first Tonight announcer was Gene Rayburn. Allen's version of the show originated talk show staples such as an opening monologue, celebrity interviews, audience participation, and comedy bits in which cameras were taken outside the studio, as well as music including guest performers, a house vocal group (duo Steve and Eydie, who would marry each other in 1957) and a house band under Lyle "Skitch" Henderson.

When the show became a success, Allen got a primetime Sunday comedy/variety show in June 1956, leading him to share Tonight hosting duties with Ernie Kovacs during the 1956–57 season. To give Allen time to work on his Sunday evening show, Kovacs hosted Ernie Kovacs Tonight on Monday and Tuesday nights with his own announcer (Bill Wendell) and bandleader (LeRoy Holmes).

During the later Steve Allen years, regular audience member Lillian Miller (usually referred to as "Miss Miller") became such an integral part that she was forced to join American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, the television/radio performers union. She would continue to perform the same service for most of the major talk shows for decades, including those hosted by Paar, Carson, Merv Griffin (until 1986), and Mike Douglas, among others.

Allen and Kovacs departed Tonight in January 1957 after NBC ordered Allen to concentrate all his efforts on his Sunday-night variety program, hoping to combat the dominance of the Sunday night ratings first by CBS's The Ed Sullivan Show then by ABC's Maverick.

Unlike the first installment of Johnny Carson's tenure, which is lost except for audio recordings, a kinescope recording of most of the first Tonight Show under Allen survives. In this recording, Allen states during his opening monologue that "this show is going to go on forever"; although in context (and as part of a series of jokes) Allen refers to the fact the program is scheduled to run late into the night, his statement has come to refer to the longevity of the franchise.

Tonight! America After Dark (1957)

Rather than continuing with the same format after Allen and Kovacs's departure from Tonight, NBC changed the show's format to a news and features show, similar to that of the network's popular morning program Today. The new show, renamed Tonight! America After Dark, was broadcast by NBC from January 28 to July 26, 1957.

The program departed from the comedy and variety format used by Steve Allen. Instead, it used a late-night magazine format, with interviews, news features, entertainment reports and remote segments from around the United States. Jack Lescoulie was the original host, and was later replaced by radio personality Al "Jazzbo" Collins. Contributors included newspaper columnists and commentators Hy Gardner, Bob Considine, Earl Wilson, Irv Kupcinet and Paul Coates. Music was provided by the Lou Stein Trio (later replaced by the Mort Lindsey Quartet, then the Johnny Guarnieri Quartet).

The show was poorly received and struggled with ratings, sponsorship and affiliate clearance. A later Time profile of Jack Paar quoted NBC chairman Robert Sarnoff as saying that the America After Dark version of Tonight had become "a shambles", with sponsors avoiding the program and some stations leaving NBC's late-night lineup for old movies.

NBC ended the format on July 26, 1957, and three days later relaunched the late-night program as Tonight Starring Jack Paar. Under Paar, the program returned to a comedy, interview and variety format closer to Allen's original Tonight.

Jack Paar (1957–1962)

In July 1957, NBC returned the program to a talk/variety show format once again, with Jack Paar (who left his role as morning show host on CBS to join NBC) becoming the new solo host of the show. Under Paar, most of the NBC affiliates that had dropped the show during the ill-fated run of Tonight! America After Dark began airing the show once again. Paar's era began the practice of branding the series after the host, and as such the program, though officially still called Tonight, was also marketed as The Jack Paar Show. A combo band conducted by Paar's Army buddy pianist Jose Melis filled commercial breaks and backed musical entertainers. Paar also introduced the idea of having guest hosts; one of these early hosts was Johnny Carson. It was also one of the first regularly scheduled network shows to be telecast in color beginning sporadically in September 1957, with regular color broadcasts beginning in September 1960.

On February 11, 1960, Jack Paar unexpectedly walked off the show in the midst of the program – an absence that lasted almost a month – after NBC censors edited out a segment taped the night before about a joke involving a "WC" ("water closet", a polite term for a flush toilet) being confused for a "wayside chapel". As he left his desk, he said, "I am leaving The Tonight Show. There must be a better way of making a living than this". Paar's abrupt departure left his startled announcer, Hugh Downs, to finish the late-night broadcast himself.

Paar returned to the show on March 7, 1960, strolled on stage after the opening credits, struck a pose, and said, "As I was saying before I was interrupted..." After the audience erupted in applause, Paar continued: "when I walked off, I said there must be a better way of making a living. Well, I've looked—and there isn't!" However, citing that he would prefer to do one prime-time show per week rather than five late-night installments, Paar eventually left the show two years later in March 1962, at the pinnacle of his success as host. The guests on the last show were Jack E. Leonard, Alexander King, Robert Merrill and Buddy Hackett. Among those appearing in taped farewell messages were Richard Nixon, Robert F. Kennedy, Billy Graham, Bob Hope and Jack Benny. Downs was the announcer, and Melis led the band. The Jack Paar Show was moved to the evening's prime time (as The Jack Paar Program) and aired weekly on Friday nights through the 1965 season. In September 2025, Jimmy Kimmel used the same line to open his first monologue after the suspension of his show.

Transition from Paar to Carson (1962)

Johnny Carson was chosen as Paar's successor when Paar chose to leave The Tonight Show for a prime time show. Carson was host at the time of the weekday afternoon quiz show Who Do You Trust? on the newest and then lowest-rated radio and television network, the American Broadcasting Company (ABC, as the Blue Network, had been separated from NBC in 1943 owing to government pressure). Because Carson was under contract through September to ABC and producer Don Fedderson (who held him to his contract until the day it expired), he could not take over as host until October 1, 1962. The months between Paar and Carson were filled by a series of guest hosts including Art Linkletter (4 weeks), Joey Bishop (2 weeks), Bob Cummings, Merv Griffin (4 weeks), Jack Carter, Jan Murray, Peter Lind Hayes and Mary Healy, Soupy Sales, Mort Sahl, Steve Lawrence, Jerry Lewis (2 weeks), Jimmy Dean, Arlene Francis, Jack E. Leonard, Hugh Downs, Groucho Marx, Hal March and Donald O'Connor, many of whom later noted they were being led to believe they were auditioning for the job; Francis was among the first women to ever host a late-night talk show. Griffin was so well received as a guest host that NBC gave him his own daytime talk show, the first of three he would host in his broadcasting career, which debuted the same day Carson took over the late-night show, and Lewis's two-week stint was so successful that NBC seriously considered retracting their offer to Carson. Lewis subsequently wound up hosting a lavish 2-hour prime time talk show for ABC entitled The Jerry Lewis Show, which was famously unsuccessful, and continued his more successful movie career. ABC also picked up Dean as a variety show host, airing The Jimmy Dean Show for three years from 1963 to 1966.

The show was broadcast under the title The Tonight Show during this interregnum, with Skitch Henderson returning as bandleader. Hugh Downs remained as announcer/sidekick until taking over hosting duties on Today in September, at which point he was replaced by Ed Herlihy.

Johnny Carson (1962–1992)

Groucho Marx introduced Carson as the new host on October 1, 1962. Ed McMahon was Carson's announcer and on-screen sidekick, the same role he'd filled on Who Do You Trust? McMahon also introduced Carson with the drawn out catchphrase "Heeeeeeeeeeeeeere's Johnny!" The Tonight Show orchestra was, for Carson's first four years, still led by Skitch Henderson. After a brief stint by Milton Delugg, beginning in 1967 the "NBC Orchestra" was then headed by trumpeter Doc Severinsen who had played in the band during the Henderson era. [See "Music and Announcers" below.] For all but a few months of its first decade on the air, Carson's Tonight Show was based in New York City. In 1972, the show moved to Burbank, California into Studio One of NBC Studios West Coast (although it was announced as coming from nearby Hollywood) for the remainder of his tenure.

Carson lacked the mercurial, electric personality of Paar, and his version of The Tonight Show never riveted the country's attention the way that Paar's had, but his more predictable approach eventually became part of the cultural landscape by virtue of the fact that the viewership, in a basically three-network paradigm, was infinitely more monolithic than it later became. Examples include when he played the game Twister with Eva Gabor in 1966, which increased the sales of the relatively unknown game. In December 1973, when Carson joked about an alleged shortage of toilet paper, panic buying and hoarding ensued across the United States as consumers emptied stores, causing a real shortage that lasted for weeks. Stores and toilet paper manufacturers had to ration supplies until the panic ended.

Carson's ratings usually substantially led his time slot, in spite of the fact that he intermittently faced many other late-night competitors including Les Crane, Bill Dana, David Frost, Regis Philbin, Alan Thicke, Jerry Lewis, Joan Rivers, David Brenner, Pat Sajak, Ron Reagan, Dennis Miller, and most notably Steve Allen, Arsenio Hall, Joey Bishop, Merv Griffin and Dick Cavett (Carson saw his friend Cavett as his real competition but Cavett was on ABC, a much smaller network at the time).

As prime time variety shows such as The Ed Sullivan Show faded in prominence over the course of the 1970s, Carson's Tonight Show emerged as a showcase for all kinds of talent, as well as continuing the tradition of a vaudeville-style variety show. Carson's show continued Paar's tradition of launching the careers of a number of comedians, in Carson's case including Jerry Seinfeld, David Letterman, Joan Rivers, Jeff Foxworthy, Ellen DeGeneres, Freddie Prinze, David Brenner, Tim Allen, Drew Carey and Roseanne Barr.

Carson also frequently used guest hosts, especially after 1981 when he negotiated a contract that gave him numerous weeks off every year, as well as Mondays. Frequent guest hosts (over 50 episodes each) included Joey Bishop (177 times, mostly in the 1960s), Joan Rivers (93, during the 1970s and 1980s), John Davidson (87), Bob Newhart (87), David Brenner (70), McLean Stevenson (58), Jerry Lewis (52, mostly in the 1960s), David Letterman (51, mostly between 1980 and 1981) and Jay Leno. By the late 1980s, Leno was designated the permanent and only guest host, and consequently hosted several dozen episodes each year, for a total of 333 "guest host" appearances during Carson's tenure.

Jay Leno (1992–2009)

On May 22, 1992, Johnny Carson retired after three decades behind the iconic late-night desk, and was replaced by Jay Leno amid national and media controversy. David Letterman wanted to move into that earlier time slot from his Late Night spot (which had been broadcast following Carson's program) after The Tonight Show, and was considered personally by Carson (whose opinion was not revealed until several years later) as his natural successor despite Leno having been Carson's permanent guest host for several years. Letterman, having had his heart set on the earlier time slot in spite of Leno's ratings success as recurring substitute host, left NBC (on Carson's advice) and joined rival network CBS. Their new program and entry into the late-night television universe, Late Show with David Letterman, aired in the same slot and competed head to head against The Tonight Show for the better part of two decades, although Leno consistently enjoyed higher ratings after the first two years.

On September 27, 2004, the 50th anniversary of the show's premiere, NBC announced that Leno would be succeeded by Conan O'Brien in 2009. The network shocked Leno, who had been consistently number one in the time period, when he was told that he would be fired in five years, with O'Brien taking over the slot at that time. Leno told his audience about this unique network decision at the beginning of his next show, mentioning that he had accepted it, noting that he wanted to avoid repeating the hard feelings that had somehow developed with Letterman, and called O'Brien "certainly the most deserving person for the job" in the wake of his (Leno's) eventual departure. Five years later, what was to have been the final episode of The Tonight Show with Leno as host aired on Friday, May 29, 2009.

Not wanting Leno, who remained number one in the ratings, to move to a competing network, NBC signed the host to a new contract to host a new prime-time talk show beginning in September 2009, entitled The Jay Leno Show, with a format similar to his Tonight Show except that he was contractually prohibited from using a desk on the show. In a departure from network programming conventions of the time, the new show aired every weeknight at 10 p.m. Eastern/Pacific, competing with expensively produced narrative series on other networks and leading into affiliates' local news broadcasts and O'Brien's Tonight Show.

Conan O'Brien (2009–2010)

Conan O'Brien replaced Leno as host on The Tonight Show on Monday, June 1, 2009 from a newly constructed studio inside Stage 1 of the Universal Studios Hollywood backlot, temporarily ending an era (since 1972) of recording the show in Burbank.

2010 timeslot conflict and Leno's return

After a strong debut week, O'Brien's total audience fell precipitously over the summer months, and the program began losing to Late Show with David Letterman in overall ratings. In contrast, O'Brien's performance in the crucial 18–49 demographic was favorable, and it was found that he had brought down the median age of The Tonight Show audience by a decade compared with his predecessor, indicating that a generational shift was taking effect as O'Brien established himself in an earlier timeslot. Taking this into account, columnist Tom Shales assessed in August 2009 that O'Brien was in a better position than Leno had been when he began his Tonight Show run in 1992; Leno consistently lost to Letterman in the ratings for eighteen months before eventually cementing his number one status.

The Jay Leno Show debuted in September 2009, three months into O'Brien's Tonight Show tenure, performing to significantly lower ratings than the primetime dramas it had replaced on NBC and trailing the competition. NBC had expected the drop, having calculated that lower ratings would be balanced by a talk show's correspondingly lower expense compared to more popular scripted programming. In the 11:35 period, The Late Show would largely maintain its lead over The Tonight Show in total viewers in early Fall, during which Letterman was receiving tabloid attention due to a blackmail scandal. In addition, The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien was in the unusual situation of being a talk show following a talk show hosted by its predecessor on the same network, and the booking war that resulted often left The Tonight Show getting second dibs on guests. One publicist reported that the aggression was such that The Jay Leno Show had signaled to potential guests that doing O'Brien's program before Leno's would be punished with secondary placement in the line-up.

Though NBC claimed that the performance of The Jay Leno Show offered no surprises and that O'Brien was meeting expectations as well, the network had failed to anticipate the impact that Leno's weaker 10 pm lead-in would have on the local 11 pm news, which suffered a drastic drop in ratings (between 25%–50% nationwide) as a demonstrable result. As the affiliates rely on the revenue generated during the news, this generated a furor from the local stations and placed pressure on NBC to quickly fix the 10 pm situation, which was contributing to a cascading effect on the ratings of The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, although the ratings of O'Brien's Tonight Show had already nosedived months before Leno's prime time show went on the air.

On January 7, 2010, multiple media outlets reported that beginning March 1, 2010, Leno would move from his 10 p.m. weeknight time slot back to the traditional Tonight Show slot at 11:35. Under this proposal, Leno's show would be shortened from an hour to 30 minutes, which would make the monologue, Leno's most popular segment, the essence of the program. This would move The Tonight Show to 12:05 a.m., a post-midnight start for the first time in its sixty-year history, while Late Night with Jimmy Fallon would be pushed to 1:05 am, and Last Call with Carson Daly would likely be cancelled. Under NBC's (later contested) interpretation of O'Brien's contract, the host was only guaranteed The Tonight Show in name rather than the 11:35 pm slot with which it was synonymous.

On January 10, NBC confirmed it would be moving Leno out of primetime as of February 12 and intended to move him back to late-night as soon as possible. TMZ reported that O'Brien was given no advance notice of this change, and that NBC offered him a choice: The Tonight Show in a 12:05 a.m. time slot, or the option to leave the network. On January 12, O'Brien issued a press release that stated he would not continue with Tonight if it was moved to a 12:05 a.m. time slot, saying, "I believe that delaying The Tonight Show into the next day to accommodate another comedy program will seriously damage what I consider to be the greatest franchise in the history of broadcasting. The Tonight Show at 12:05 simply isn't The Tonight Show."

When Oprah Winfrey later quoted this statement to Leno during an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show in the aftermath of the fallout, he responded: "Well, if you look at where [Conan's Tonight Show] ratings were, it was already destructive to the franchise". Leno was criticized for his remark, which contradicted his statement that "I think Conan is doing fine" mere months earlier, after which O'Brien's ratings were on an upward trend. Some observers considered the portrayal of O'Brien's ouster as being specifically about the host's ratings to be spin, as it ignored O'Brien's far less expensive contract (and thus far less expensive buyout), O'Brien's improving ratings before the controversy, and O'Brien's younger demographics, all of which suggested profitability.

After the decision was made to reinstate Leno, NBC executives and Leno maintained in the media that O'Brien's ratings were responsible for his removal from the traditional Tonight Show time slot, while O'Brien's supporters argued that the incumbent host had been denied the unambiguous transition, network support and time to grow that his predecessor had received. In addition, it was pointed out that Leno's 10 pm program, rather than O'Brien's performance, had forced the need for line-up changes, while Leno's penalty clause all but guaranteed his continued presence on NBC late night after the cancellation of his primetime show. O'Brien's rating surge during the controversy was also seen by some of his proponents as having the potential to be the host's "Hugh Grant moment" – an allusion to a 1995 interview on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno that aired shortly after the British actor had been caught publicly soliciting a prostitute. Leno's interview with Grant was widely watched due to the scandal, and Leno's fortunes in his rivalry with Letterman permanently turned around in its wake.

The New York Post advanced a theory that O'Brien being the cheaper host to lose was the cardinal factor in NBC's decision to negotiate his departure. The Post claimed that Leno had an "ironclad" guarantee for $150 million if he had been taken off the air, far higher than what it would cost for O'Brien to depart the network. Skip Brittenham, an entertainment attorney and partner at the law firm that had negotiated Leno's contract, was later asked about this claim in an interview. Though Brittenham refused to comment on the veracity of the publicly reported penalty figure, he allowed that "I think the facts speak for themselves."

On January 21, it was announced that NBC had struck a deal with O'Brien in which he would leave The Tonight Show and receive a $33 million payout – effectively a buyout of his three-year contract, which was reputed to be approximately $12 million a year. O'Brien's staff of almost 200 would receive $12 million divided in their departure, making the total of the settlement $45 million. O'Brien's final episode aired on Friday, January 22, ending his relationship with NBC after 22 years. Leno resumed hosting The Tonight Show on March 1, 2010, after NBC's coverage of the 2010 Winter Olympics concluded.

O'Brien returned to late-night television on November 8, 2010 (after his non-compete agreement expired), hosting the self-owned Conan on cable channel TBS. Conan remained partnered with TBS until 2021, although his show was truncated from an hour to thirty minutes in length in 2019 due to ratings issues. Conan's final episode on TBS aired on June 24, 2021.

Leno's second tenure (2010–2014)

On March 1, 2010, Jay Leno returned to The Tonight Show, with Wally Wingert as his announcer. On April 12, 2010, bandleader Kevin Eubanks announced his departure after 18 years (15 years as bandleader) on May 28. Rickey Minor replaced him as bandleader on June 7. On July 1, 2010, Variety reported that only six months into its second life, Leno's Tonight Show posted its lowest ratings since 1992. By September 2010, Leno's ratings had fallen below O'Brien's when he had hosted The Tonight Show, although O'Brien's ratings had spiked during the show's final days during the media publicity onslaught, and this tally pivots upon that anomalous spike in O'Brien's ratings. NBC ratings specialist Tom Bierbaum commented that due to the host being out of late-night television for a period of time and the subsequent 2010 Tonight Show conflict, Leno's ratings fall was "not a surprise at all." In October 2010, David Letterman beat Leno's program in the ratings, for the first time since Leno returned to hosting The Tonight Show. By May 2011, Leno regained the lead over Letterman and held it until leaving the show in February 2014. In August 2012, The Los Angeles Times reported that The Tonight Show was in trouble for a number of reasons, notably that NBC was losing money. The Times later elaborated, noting that advertising revenue from The Tonight Show had dropped more than 40% since 2007, from $255.9 million annually to $146.1 million. Still, despite these problems, during 2012–13, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno was consistently the highest-ranking late-night show, regularly achieving audiences of over 3.5 million, according to Nielsen ratings. Leno's audience became considerably smaller after its peak 2002–03 season, when it routinely attracted 5.8 million viewers a night. This was partly due to the continuing fragmentation of the TV audience, with an increasing number of cable shows, such as The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report and Conan O'Brien's new show on TBS, in addition to competition with Letterman on CBS and since January 8, 2013, Jimmy Kimmel Live! on ABC, although Leno continued to lead the time slot.

On April 3, 2013, after a dispute with the network over Leno's joking about the network's poor prime time performance in his monologues, NBC announced that Leno would retire in 2014, with Late Night host Jimmy Fallon taking over The Tonight Show after the conclusion of NBC's coverage of the 2014 Winter Olympics. It was Leno's suggestion to use NBC's coverage of the Olympics as a springboard for Fallon's tenure. The date was later moved up a week to February 17, midway through the Olympics.

Leno's last Tonight Show aired on February 6, 2014, featuring guests Billy Crystal (Leno's first guest in 1992) and Garth Brooks. Leno gave a tearful goodbye at the end of the program, calling himself "the luckiest guy in the world", and reflecting on his time as host as "the greatest 22 years of my life."

Jimmy Fallon (2014–present)

Jimmy Fallon (who had hosted The Tonight Show's follow-up show, Late Night, since 2009) assumed The Tonight Show hosting role on February 17, 2014, with his initial guests being Will Smith and the rock band U2, plus an assortment of celebrity cameos, including an appearance by one of Fallon's direct broadcast competitors, Stephen Colbert (who would later replace David Letterman on the competing The Late Show in 2015), and another by former permanent guest host Joan Rivers, making her first appearance on Tonight since cutting ties with Carson in 1986. The show's opening sequence was directed by filmmaker Spike Lee.

As part of the transition to Fallon, The Tonight Show would be brought back to New York City after 42 years in Southern California. Approximately $5 million was budgeted to renovate Studio 6B, where Fallon recorded Late Night. The move also enabled NBC to take advantage of a newly enacted New York state tax credit for talk shows that are "filmed before a studio audience of at least 200, as long as they carry a production budget of at least $30 million and have been shot outside New York for at least five seasons." Studio 6B is also where Jack Paar and Johnny Carson hosted The Tonight Show before the show moved to Burbank in 1972. Lorne Michaels (producer of Saturday Night Live, in which Fallon appeared prior to hosting Late Night) became executive producer of The Tonight Show.

Fallon's Tonight Show has gone on the road to produce episodes remotely in its first year, spending four days at Universal Orlando Resort in Florida in June 2014 to promote new attractions at NBCUniversal's theme parks there. In February 2015, Fallon presented a special Sunday night show from Phoenix, Arizona airing after NBC's coverage of Super Bowl XLIX, followed by four days of shows in Stage 1 at Universal Studios Hollywood in Los Angeles (where Conan O'Brien's version was produced).

Aside from the title change and a new set, Fallon's version of The Tonight Show is nearly identical to the format of Late Night he employed, as he imported many of his signature comedy bits and much of his Late Night staff, including house band The Roots and announcer Steve Higgins. Prior to the transition, Fallon said, "In our heads, we've been doing The Tonight Show for five years. We're just on at a later hour."