[dfwgator]

The golden age ended with the retirement of Jay Leno Johnny Carson.

[Fungi]

Bingo! End of discussion.

[Tallguy]

I remember pulling down the live feed Carson on my C-band satellite dish and seeing all the stuff that went on during the commercial-breaks. Nothing like live comedy.

[SamAdams76]

Before the internet and cable TV, Johnny Carson was about the only game in town if you were still up at 11:30pm. Usually this was after the local 11:00 news complete with sports and weather reports.

The 11:00 local news was the only way to find out who won a ballgame that night (without actually watching the game) and to find out what the weather would be the next day (well, 50/50 chance of them being right about that).

At 11:30, most people would switch over to Johnny if just to catch the monologue, as I did. The monologues were usually razor sharp. His guests were mostly boring if I recall. Tony Randall seemed to be a guest every other week. Then you had people doing magic tricks, dogs running through hula hoops, the general late-night mayhem.

Young David Letterman had a late-late night show for the real insomniacs. He was actually cutting edge back in the day, before he turned into a totally nasty person both on and off stage. Johnny Carson however was classy to the end.

[Jyotishi]

We had actual writers then.