Late night hosts fight a losing battle

Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien and Jimmy Fallon on NBC, even David Letterman and Craig Ferguson on CBS and Jimmy Kimmel on ABC, face a losing battle.

So says Russell Peterson of Swisher, author of the book, “Strange Bedfellows: How Late-Night Comedy Turns Democracy into a Joke.”

“The battle is more desperate than ever,” Russ chuckles, “but it's a battle over the scraps.”

Nobody did late night better than Johnny Carson. And nobody since Johnny has had a monopoly on late-night TV.

“You've got Leno and Conan fighting over the ‘Crown of Carson',” Russ adds, “but it doesn't exist any more.”

Russ, 48, became a student of late-night comedy shows even before his stint as a stand-up comic from 1988 to 1992 in Minneapolis. His dream was always to become a cartoonist or a comic.

Born in Sioux Falls, S.D., Russ produced editorial cartoons for the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader and his college paper while earning a degree at South Dakota State in Brookings. He was a commercial artist in Minneapolis until 1997 when he began pursuit of his master's and doctorate degrees in American studies at the University of Iowa.

Today, Russ teaches English composition at Kirkwood Community College and a political humor course online through the UI. He also works half-time at ACT.

His book, published in 2008 by Rutgers University Press, emerged from his thesis. He had learned he was better at observing life in terms of jokes, rather than telling observational jokes on stage.

“I thought of it as being a teacher,” Russ says, “getting people to look at familiar things in a way that makes sense, but that hadn't occurred to them.”

Adult comedy, he says, is a language unto itself. But the infiltration of formerly late-night-only humor into prime-time and cable programs has sliced the pie into dozens of smaller pieces.

Carson's 30-year crown began crumbling in 1992 when Leno took over, Russ says. Remember Arsenio Hall?

Another nail pierced the coffin when Leno went to prime time last fall. And the latest battle, with Leno returning to “The Tonight Show” after his prime-time show ends Feb. 12, thus pushing Conan aside, could be the final nail in that coffin.

“I think if what Leno hosts after Feb. 12 is called ‘The Tonight Show,' he will be the last host of ‘The Tonight Show,'” Russ says.

“I think it's going to peter out. I think it'll be around for another decade, but the audience will get smaller and smaller and the shows will be more alike.”