Jay Leno's reign as host of The Tonight Show ended on an appropriately high note, as the NBC talker delivered its best-ever Friday ratings in Leno's 17-year run.
The exact overnights — an 8.8/20 in metered-market households — represent more than double (a 126 percent increase) The Tonight Show's second-quarter average.
Leno's Tonight Show sign-off also served up the program's best ratings since President Obama's March 19 visit. Excluding that milestone, it was the show's biggest draw in more than four years, since a January 2005 tribute to Johnny Carson.
Leno's final Tonight Show was veritably celebrity-free, save for a performance by James Taylor. Instead, the venerable host reflected on the highlights of his tenure and cued up "best of" montages of such segments as "Jay-walking."
In his monologue, Leno thanked three people who made his 17-year run such a success ...
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Why doesn't anyone seem too worked up about Jay Leno leaving The Tonight Show? Maybe because he's only kind of leaving. Come fall, fans will still get to see him five nights a week, 90 minutes earlier. As we look ahead to the start of a new Tonight Show era Monday, with Conan O'Brien behind the desk, let's also look back on the most memorable moments of Leno's 17 years with the show.
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It's been a big week for family feuds. Rescue Me's Tommy had to deal with his demons, Breaking Bad's Walt had a crisis on the homefront, and even the Republican Party had to decide... Okay, look. We're just bringing up family because we want to talk Jon & Kate. The whole situation freaks us out. Just like a certain number seems to freak parents out. You'll see what we mean at the end of our Top Moments, crazy eights edition.
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Don't Forget the Lyrics!
8 pm/ET FOX
The Wayne Brady-hosted music gamer welcomes Howard Stern's producer (and frequent target of abuse), Gary Dell'Abate, aka Baba Booey, who faces the music in a lyrical test for charity. Baba won't go bye-bye without a fight. Singer Mark McGrath of the rock band Sugar Ray, no stranger to remembering lyrics, is on hand to offer help. There's a profound element to tonight's game as Dell'Abate tries to raise money for LIFEbeat, a music-industry charity in the fight against AIDS. Dell'Abate's brother, Steven, died of AIDS in 1991.
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Show minus stars equals different show: It's one of the mantras of Jump the Shark, and it's true — unless, maybe, the show is The Tonight Show.
The Tonight Show is an institution that has had only four full-time hosts in more than half a century. Jack Paar, Steve Allen, Johnny Carson and Jay Leno all made their own imprints on the show, but in the way a minister does a church. Whether or not congregants like his or her personality or jokes, the basic religion stays the same.
Leno is...
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