Ken Tucker, writing for Grantland, overviews the current state of late-night television and offers a look at what the future may hold for the genre:
Recent fur balls coughed up from the crevices of Couch Land include Jimmy Fallon taking over The Tonight Show as early as February 2014 and Jay Leno calling NBC a pit of “snakes” on the air shortly after it was reported that NBC Entertainment president Robert Greenblatt complained about the Tonight Show host joking about the network’s loser ratings. There’s Jon Stewart’s recent announcement that he’s taking summer leave of The Daily Show to direct a movie (why does this make me think of an idea Garry Shandling would have rejected for The Larry Sanders Show?). And don’t forget the rumors that Howard Stern or Seth Meyers might replace Fallon. Wait around another week and we’ll probably hear that David Letterman, forsaking a prolonged Johnny Carson–style on-camera farewell tour, has resigned by burning his double-breasted suits in his Westchester backyard so that Jimmy Kimmel will finally achieve his life’s dream of following in his idol’s shoes for a future of endless editions of “This Week in Unnecessary Censorship.”