Jay Leno has a clear view of who runs late night now, and it is not anyone sitting behind a desk on television.
"Podcasts really are the new talk show. Joe Rogan is the new Johnny Carson," the 76-year-old comic told Deadline in a wide-ranging interview. Leno hosted The Tonight Show from 1992 to 2014 and acknowledged that the appointment television era he dominated is long gone.
Leno made the comment coming off a week in which former President Joe Biden appeared as a guest on his YouTube show, Jay Leno's Garage. The show moved from CNBC to YouTube in 2023. Leno said the transition felt natural.
"It seems like the same thing to me, really," he said. "I mean, I enjoy it. It's different, but I enjoy it."
Leno did 200 live stand-up dates last year and pushed back on any suggestion that he has retired. He said his comedy career never actually paused when The Tonight Show ended. "The day The Tonight Show ended, I was back on the road the next night in Florida for five nights," he told Deadline, "and that's what I do now."
He also looked back on how he left the show the first time, when NBC wanted to replace him with Conan O'Brien. Leno said an NBC executive told him the network wanted something above No. 1 in the ratings. "I mean, I just started to laugh, and they realized how stupid the statement was," he said. "I said, 'You want me out? I'm out. Fine.'"
Leno also reflected on a financial decision that worked out significantly in his favor. He said his agent dropped him just before he landed The Tonight Show in 1992. "I later worked it out — I saved $30 million in commissions," he said.
He did not hold back on the current state of traditional late night, pointing to YouTube as the platform that effectively took over the cultural space that network shows once occupied. Leno said he does not worry much about critics regardless of where they sit politically or professionally.
The interview came as late-night television continues to lose viewers and cultural relevance, with several long-running shows either canceled or scaled back in recent years.
