Who Was The Last Good Talk Show Host?

[TMC]

Before I proceeded, you can't say Johnny Carson, because I have an inkling that somebody is going to first and foremost reference him. With that being said, at least in terms of the traditional talk show format (monologue, sketches, guest talk), is there anyone currently that would actually make you want to say "I don't want to see them leave" or did we pass that era already?

[Duster76]

Let me start by mentioning George Burns observation on the Tonight Show, once it went from 90 minutes to 60 minutes it really wasn't the Tonight Show anymore. That began the evolution of the late night talk show away from the talk format. My point, none of the contemporary shows have the talk show feel to them.

With all that as the set up, I thought The Larry King Show on CNN was very good. Now I need to qualify this a bit, as he aged he lost a lot of his interview skills so I would draw a line somewhere around the 20 year mark, the last five or so years of that show were painful to watch. Coming to contemporary times, I think what Greg Gutfeld and FOX News have created at 11pm is good and only seems to be getting better. It is a new style but in many ways has the feel of the old talk shows.

[Yong Fang]

Sorry, but not allowing Johnny Carson as the greatest talk show host is like saying choose the greatest NBA player that isnt Michael Jordan.

Dick Cavett was pretty good. Cavett was more intellectual than Carson and was very intelligent. Because of this Cavett usually asked very interesting questions of his guests and had a wide variety of people on his show from rock stars, actors, famous authors, lots of different folks. Cavett was funny and could be funny and was, but with him it was like sitting around with two people talking and you are just listening because it was usually interesting to fascinating.

Larry King was annoying. He would always interupt his guests. King would also ask inane and dumb questions. King probably had, but imagine him interviewing Paul McCartney. His inane questions....

King: "So, you are from England?"

King: "What was England like?"

King: "So, you in the early 1960's formed a rock band, right?"

King: "So you became popular...what was that like?"

King: "How many people were in your first band?"

King: "Are you still friends with those in your band, what happened to them?"

KIng: "Do you like American food?"

Sort of exaggerating, but King would ask these, again, inane questions we all know the answers. King actually sort of knew this and explained that maybe not all the viewers knew everything about the guest, then King would always interrupt the guest at every turn.

I will watch Fox News for Tucker Carlson only. My elderly father watches Fox LITERALLY all day long so I became familiar with everyone on Fox. The only one my father usually skipped if he could find anything else is Sean Hannity and I cant blame him. I havent seen FOX outside of YouTube videos for several years but Gutfeld then (in the late 10's) was the weekend/Sunday afternoon guy and his Sunday afternoon show (after Chris Wallace who I liked) was a roundtable with Gutfeld the "star", and find the guy absolutely annoying. He tries to be funny, I dont think he is, not because of anything he says, he just isnt comedic and jerky. Pass. Now I think he is on at the same time slot as the late night talk show people and gets higher ratings than them which FOX gloats.

Johnny Carson in his contract only wanted to do an hour and not an hour and a half and the network agreed so they wouldnt lose him. Fair enough, I think a lot of people watched the monologe and maybe an hour of the show if a guest interested them and fell asleep. Carson also cut his days from five to four days a week. It is difficult to put on a fresh show an hour and a half a day five days week. How much I loved George Burns (and he was great), he was sound asleep by the time the show ended.