East Meets West

I'm nervous about the future of the Tonight Show.

I've watched most of the first week of the Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien, and it's been great. Conan is still funny, his guests have been good, and Andy Richter is a lot of fun as an announcer slash sidekick. The production value has been kicked up a notch from Late Night, and the show looks and feels a little different, but Conan has preserved most of his screwball humor.

But I see a problem. Actually I don't see it. I only hear it: the audience. Many of the jokes that would have worked well on Late Night are bombing with the Tonight Show audiences. The goofy ones. The funny ones. Friday night, when Conan himself was laughing at Andy's plan to make a movie based on the board game Backgammon, the audience was not amused. However, any time he makes a joke about the Clippers – who I had to look up on Wikipedia, because I am only tangentially aware of the NBA's existence – the audience explodes with laughter. Essentially, whenever I would laugh out loud, the audience would offer a polite chuckle, and whenever they would erupt into applause, I was bored.

This does not bode well. If there's one thing that late night talk show producers crave, it's big laughs from the audience. While they will try to preserve the overall feel of the show, they will also try to tune the jokes to the audience. Unfortunately I don't think there's a way to tune the audience to the jokes, apart from moving the show back to New York.

I always liked Letterman and Conan, and hated Leno and Daly. But now I wonder: Do L.A. based talk show hosts become victims of their environment? Would I have liked Leno better if he broadcasted from 30 Rock instead of Burbank? Would his jokes have been funnier? I don't know, but I desperately hope Conan and his staff figure out how to keep Los Angeles laughing without dumbing the humor down to the lowest common denominator.