The Least Funny Man in America

Neon Memes • Nowadays I view so little television that the entire medium has dwindled, for me, to irrelevance. Still, one recent TV turn of events drew my attention enough to demand comment: NBC's signing of Jay Leno to a nightly prime-time program. Mind-boggling, truly. On assuming the helm of The Tonight Show from the late Johnny Carson almost two decades ago, Leno (a previously affable if second-rate comic) almost immediately transformed it into a comedic black hole from whose event horizon nothing humorous could escape. Although overrated, Carson personified the urbane; Leno, the inane. Carson seemed unspeakably witty; Leno, unspeakably―well, think of a tidy rhyme. Under Leno for 17 dreadful years, The Tonight Show has become all but unwatchable, 60 minutes of schlock, the acme of lame. In a small way―although I consider The Tonight Show a TV institution, that phrase nonetheless sounds oxymoronic―I celebrated the man's announced departure this May. To have NBC (locally KSDK, Channel 5) re-inflict him on potential viewers come September merely reinforces the notion that network TV has at last degenerated into the irredeemable intellectual wasteland its detractors have always claimed it to be. ―Bryan A. Hollerbach, Managing Editor