Author Weighs In On Late Night Wars

The NBC fiasco over moving Jay Leno from prime time back to his "Tonight Show" spot won't really matter in the long run, says Russell Peterson of Swisher, Iowa, author of the book, "Strange Bedfellows: How Late-Night Comedy Turns Democracy into a Joke" published in 2008 by Rutgers University Press. (For more about the book, click here.)

“The battle is more desperate than ever,” Russ said in my Ramblin' column in today's Gazette, “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 (O'Brien) fighting over the ‘Crown of Carson',” Russ adds, “but it doesn't exist any more.”

Since Carson retired in 1992, the proliferation of additional late night talk shows, the infusion of what had been late-night adult humor into prime time programing and the fragmentation of TVaudiences have all led to smaller and smaller audiences, Russ says. The result, he predicts, is the end of the genre in about a decade.

Russ, 48, now a college instructor at Kirkwood Community College and through the University of Iowa, had his own stint as a comedian from 1988 to 1992 in Minneapolis. He knows it's a tough gig.

But, it was his interest in comedy that prompted him to study the late night hosts and their shows. He wrote his American Studies doctorate thesis about it, a thesis that grew into the book after a serious re-write to make it not so academic. He credits his ex-wife, Becky, for pushing him to complete it.

Since his book came out in early 2008, Russ received favorable reviews in Slate and Salon magazines and the National Review Literary Journal. He's been interviewed by  the Dallas Morning News, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post and the Chicago Tribute.

"I'm an expert," he laughs, "because I have a book."

Russ says "Comedy is a language we all talk now. We can all access that way of thinking."

He says laughter really can be good medicine.

"We need to laugh, both to liberate ourselves from living in society and, at the same time, we need to laugh to reassure ourselves of the rules."

A current example, he says, presents itself every week on the sitcom, "The Office," where Dunder-Mifflin boss, Michael Scott (played by Steve Carell), can always be expected to say the unexpected.

"We laugh at Michael," Russ says, "because what he says is wrong. You're not supposed to say that."

We also laugh, as Freud said, as a way of suppression in humanity, Russ says. "The urge to punch somebody in the face is not the way to do that. Telling a joke is."

Hence, late night comedians often tell jokes about people or their actions that they don't like. And it has reached a fever pitch of late, with the targets the head honchos at NBC who are behind the reshuffling of late night hosts.

At the center is Leno, who tried a prime-time show with the late-night format that bombed. The last show is Feb. 12, with Leno reportedly returning to "The Tonight Show" slot after the news, replacing Conan O'Brien who had  taken over for him. O'Brien, reportedly, will leave NBC.

While Russ doesn't remember any overt reaction to Leno opening in prime time, he says "I saw it as another value in the erosion of the late night slot.

"It doesn't surprise me that he failed in prime time," Russ adds about Leno. "It surprises me that it happened this fast."

But, yes, this is an indication of how everything these days seems to change faster than ever before. Which is why Russ sees this as a sign that late night comedy-variety shows have run their course.