Bestler | Where’s Johnny? My late-night TV needs a host more Carson-esque

Late-night television used to be so easy.

Come 11:30 p.m., 10:30 Central, there was Johnny Carson. And...well, not much else. A few pretenders tried to compete for late-night laughs -- remember Arsenio Hall and Joan Rivers? -- but that world belonged to Johnny.

He got me through college, through three kids, through much of my journalism career.

When Carson retired, we knew late-night would never be the same.

Still, it wasn’t so bad. Now there were three choices, really: Jay Leno, Dave Letterman and Conan O’Brien.

Jay was good, but I went with Dave and stuck with him. He seemed more Carson-esque, except with a sharper edge. And his interviews were better, I thought. O’Brien? Didn’t get him then, don’t get him now.

The late-night quandary got tougher when Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert hit it big, but the ability to record made it workable. Skip them at night, watch the highlights in the morning. It became routine.

Then, suddenly, everyone began moving on -- retiring or, in Colbert’s case, trading his alter ego Republican blowhard for Letterman’s spot.

So here we are, in late 2015, and I’ve about thrown in the late-night towel.

Save for Seth Meyers, whose wit remains sharp, topical and political, there’s not a Carson among them. My late-night record button is squarely on him now.

The others have pretty much lost me.

Jimmy Fallon has taken over from Leno and gone after a younger, hipper audience instead of, you know, old guys like me.

Colbert has his moments, but he has not made the splash we all expected. I much preferred The Colbert Report.

There’s Jimmy Kimmel, who also has his moments; unfortunately, my TV tends to avoid ABC at that hour.

And then there’s the rest. Trevor Noah, James Corden, Carson Daly, Larry Wilmore, Andy Cohen, Chris Hardwick. Not a Carson among them, not a Letterman, not a Leno.

The only plus in all this is that I now fall asleep earlier -- and without fear of missing anything really, really electrifying on late-night TV.

This story was originally published December 18, 2015 at 2:37 PM with the headline "Bestler | Where’s Johnny? My late-night TV needs a host more Carson-esque."