Jay Leno Says Joe Rogan Is the New Johnny Carson, Calls Modern Late Night ‘Boring’

Jay Leno has a theory about what happened to late-night television. Several theories, actually.

In a new Deadline interview with Dominic Patten, the former Tonight Show host argues that podcasts have effectively replaced the old broadcast talk show—and names an unexpected successor to the King of Late Night.

“I mean, podcasts really are the new talk show,” Leno explained. “Joe Rogan is the new Johnny Carson.”

Leno’s comparison isn’t just about audience size or cultural reach. It’s about the kind of conversation he believes late night used to provide, before tighter formats chipped away at the form.

“Johnny used to have real conversations. I tried to have real conversations. That’s seems to be gone, and the audience knows it,” Leno continued. “Joe talks to everybody about everything.”

“It’s boring,” he said of current late-night. “But here’s the thing that I think hurt late-night the most: too many commercials.”

By the end of his Tonight Show run, Leno said, the hour had been cut down from roughly 48 minutes of show to about 42. He put his frustration as a viewer bluntly: “If I see Jake from State Farm again, I’m gonna shoot myself in the f*cking head.”

Why sit through that, Leno argued, when YouTube can offer an extended conversation with someone like Harrison Ford “talking off the top of his head”?

The Deadline interview also gave Leno a chance to respond to John Oliver, who memorably blasted him last year over comments attributed to him about late-night comedy becoming too partisan. Leno said Oliver’s rebuke was based on a misunderstanding.

“I never said that,” Leno said of the idea that current hosts were doing it wrong. “I never mentioned another guy being better or worse or anything. I think they all do a good job. Funny is funny. All the rest, it’s just the times we live in, that’s all.”