The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, currently in reruns due to the Writers Guild of America strike, will dig deep to air five vintage episodes. That's rarely done with the late night talk shows as the monologue and many of the movies promoted by guests are dated. Included in the vintage rerun plans are a 1992 Tom Hanks appearance, Julia Roberts from 1993, 1995 appearances with Johnny Depp and Jennifer Aniston, and a Matt Damon 2000 appearance. As the strike continues, the late night talk shows are running out of more current reruns according to an article in The Hollywood Reporter. I would think they're also a bit concerned with losing the audience and older shows at this time would almost be "new."
I haven't seen any plans for The Late Show with David Letterman to follow suit, but that would be interesting. Last night's Late Show went holiday with last year's Thanksgiving show, so it went quasi-vintage. Of course, to me, the real vintage Letterman isn't a possibility because of the network change. Real vintage Letterman would be NBC shows from the 80s.
I personally welcome the move to older shows as it seems like we've just seen the ones they've been airing the past few weeks.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
11-23-2007 @ 9:02PM
Paul said...
I'd LOVE to see old Andy-era Conans airing on NBC. I don't like watching episodes I've seen recently, so I've sadly been without late night TV (my favourite TV!) the last few weeks. But I'd gladly watch episodes of Late Night from the 90s or The Daily Show from the Colbert/Carrell/Mo Rocca era.
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11-23-2007 @ 11:19PM
Oreo said...
Hell they can just rerun any episodes from 1992 to the present, Leno uses the same shity Clinton jokes, no one will even notice.
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11-24-2007 @ 12:48AM
Vito said...
YES! Classic Conan! I miss that so much. And Andy. I don't know how many times I've seen the 5th anniversary special. I just miss when Conan had somebody that he could bounce thoughts off of that was as funny as he is. Not that Max isn't funny, of course, just that he's no reliable source of witty repartee.
Paul, you should also be aware that thedailyshow.com has nearly every segment of every show from the last 7-10 years. Of course, watching them gives Comedy Central ad revenue that doesn't go to writers, so it is not ideal, but it is there.
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11-24-2007 @ 1:29AM
Whitecat said...
How about classic Tonight Show with Johnny Carson? Now that would be kick-butt.
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11-24-2007 @ 4:07AM
Morjana Coffman said...
When I read the news several weeks that NBC planned to air NEW Tonight Show episodes with "Guest Hosts" while Jay Leno is honoring the WGA strike, I talked with family and friends, and several of us wrote to NBC, and said that we would watch RERUNS of the Tonight Show with Jay Leno -- but if NBC ran new episodes with "guest hosts," we had a plethora of channels to change to instead.
Perhaps there were more letters from viewers with a like mind set, and NBC revised their plans.
Morjana
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11-24-2007 @ 11:30AM
Oreo said...
Or more likely is that NBC saw this as being cheaper to do, or they couldn't find anyone good to take the hosting job.
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11-24-2007 @ 3:19PM
glimpseofdave said...
on his worst days johnny was funnier than leno at his zenith, whatever that is. he hasn't been funny since he got the tonight show. and nbc dave would be an fantastic look-back. so really repeats of anybody but leno would be an entertaining improvement.
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11-25-2007 @ 5:40AM
Will said...
I was telling my sister at Thanksgiving that I bet NBC would do great ratings running old Carson shows, but I think that the rights belong to Carson's heirs. I may be wrong, but I think I remember reading this somewhere around the time he died. I'd definately watch some older Letterman shows; the show on Monday is one I've already seen twice. And that's within the last couple of months (I think it's the one with Slash as a guest).
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11-25-2007 @ 2:22PM
Brent McKee said...
The Carson rights belong to his estate becuase he had his own production company for most of his time on the show, which produced the show for NBC. This may also a reason why you're less likely to see vintage Letterman episodes from his CBS run - Worldwide Pants owns the rights to those (and the various incarnations of the "Late Late Show") beyond a certain number of repeats and they may want payment for ewxtra reruns.
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