Leno: Keeper of the Flame in Hot Seat

Probably no new host in the storied history of “The Tonight Show” has faced as much pressure as Jay Leno in taking over the series.

This is NBC’s most valuable franchise--the show with which Johnny Carson helped keep the network alive in tough times, sometimes bringing in as much as 20% of the broadcasting company’s income.

And now NBC is handing Leno the key to the vault at a time when, more than ever, it will be struggling for survival as network audiences dwindle.

But there’s more.

For an entire year, until he takes over as permanent host next May, Leno will have to compete on “The Tonight Show” with the emotion surrounding the farewell of Carson after three decades on the job. Comparisons are sure to be intensified.

And with NBC’s David Letterman unhappy at not being offered the “Tonight” job, comparisons between his performance and Leno’s inevitably will be intensified as well. ABC’s interest in swiping Letterman has been no secret, no matter how the network downplayed it.

The smell of blood by NBC’s competition was made clear this week when ABC, sensing an opening with Carson’s impending departure, said that it was looking for a new late-night show, and that Rick Dees would leave in July as host of its current, unsuccessful entry.

It’s not fair, of course, for Leno, a superb comedian and likable fellow, to have to worry about anything except being funny and a good interviewer. But life’s not fair.

Leno’s predecessors on “The Tonight Show” also had to face comparisons. When Jack Paar took over, many felt he couldn’t be as good as the man he succeeded, Steve Allen, the first host of “Tonight.” But Paar did splendidly with his own style.

And when Carson took over after the mercurial, controversial Paar stepped down, there were those who felt he also wouldn’t measure up. Yet he triumphed being his own man.

Paar and Carson, however, had a bit of an advantage on taking over. Both began their reigns half a year after their predecessors had left, as other formats and personalities were tried out during those two interims.

In Carson’s case, NBC had to wait for his arrival because ABC refused to release him from his contract as host of the game show “Who Do You Trust?”

Leno’s advantage, of course, is that, as permanent guest host of “Tonight,” he has shown his worth alternating with Carson. But that is still not the same as doing the show every night--the same challenge that faced new hosts Carson, Allen and Paar.

The job is “an assignment to tax the durability of any personality,” Jack Gould, then TV critic of the New York Times, wrote perceptively and prophetically in November of 1954, about five weeks after Allen launched the nightly series in Manhattan.

But if show business concerns dominated at that time and in the years since, financial matters are now grim for NBC as Leno takes over. Allen, Paar and Carson operated under the aegis of a network and a parent company, RCA, committed to broadcasting. It was a special kind of security, and all things, risky or not, were possible economically.

NBC now is owned by General Electric, which has been cracking down hard on NBC as the economic crunch has increased--and there is little room for, or patience with, failure.

Furthermore, a significant recent happening at NBC--the insistence of its affiliates that “Tonight” begin at 11:35 p.m., instead of 11:30--indicated clearly the decreasing power of the networks and their increasing susceptibility to pressure from their member stations.

NBC gave in to the demand, which will allow stations to lengthen their late news broadcasts, add commercials and thus increase their profits. The starting time of 11:35 p.m. goes into effect Sept. 2 and will push back the beginning of other late-night NBC shows as well.

The move also means that Carson, who is leaving anyway, and Leno, who needs all the help he can get to give him a solid launch as permanent host, will have to start their “Tonight” broadcasts five minutes later than the competition--ABC’s “Nightline,” CBS’ action series and the programs on independent stations.

And if NBC’s stations can push the network around this way, who is to say they won’t bring pressure to bear in other programming areas as well--say, for instance, if Leno gets off to a less-than-spectacular ratings start as head honcho of “Tonight”?

There are no more true statesmen left at the networks who could step confidently into such a breach and personally turn back such greedy station intrusions, in the tradition of David Sarnoff of NBC, Frank Stanton of CBS and, more recently, NBC’s Grant Tinker and Brandon Tartikoff, who is leaving to become chairman of Paramount Pictures.

It is an unmistakable chipping away at the sovereignty of “Tonight,” and of NBC, and it does not bode well--especially at a time when such hot series as Arsenio Hall’s syndicated show are looking for every little opportunity to diminish and destroy the series that has dominated late-night TV for 37 years.

In the end, the future of “The Tonight Show” will come down to Leno’s skills and the willingness of NBC--and General Electric--to stand by him as he matures in the role of host, especially if competitors make significant inroads in what figures to be a fierce new ratings battle.

As a stand-up comedian, Leno has few peers. As an interviewer, he can be brilliant but also erratic, as he showed this week. His interviews with director Spike Lee and actor Jack Palance were awkward and uncomfortable as he pushed too hard, his most negative tendency.

Perhaps he was still sky-high over getting the “Tonight” job, but he will wear better over time if he lays back a little and isn’t so obviously pressing for openings for gags. At times, the show also seemed a bit similar to Hall’s in its musical atmosphere, and “Tonight” will get whipped badly if it takes that route. Arsenio knows what he’s doing, like his show or not.

Leno’s jokes were, however, as good as ever. Noting a report that 46% of high school seniors had a problem with eighth-grade math, he observed, “That’s almost a third.”

But personal style is the key to hosting “The Tonight Show,” an island of grown-up comedy and conversation in a sea of TV trash. And Leno will be best off if he simply forgets the pressures of his job and just lets “The Tonight Show” envelop him in its very special aura.

It is the most treasured franchise on television. And Leno is the keeper of the flame.