Celebrities

Bill Carter writes:

Hollywood

NBC has scheduled a news conference for Monday to make an announcement about its late-night lineup that has been in the works for 18 months and has been all but formalized since February: Jimmy Fallon, the former cast member of “Saturday Night Live,” is to be named the third host — after David Letterman and Conan O’Brien — of NBC’s “Late Night” talk show.
Mr. O’Brien was 30 when he was installed at “Late Night.” Mr. Fallon will be 34 when he takes over.

TV Actors

A comedy writer for “Saturday Night Live” and “The Simpsons,” he had virtually no performing experience. The move to Mr. Fallon will fulfill a plan set in motion in February 2007, when NBC signed Mr. Fallon to a deal that secured his television work exclusively for that network. This February Mr. Michaels made it clear internally at NBC that he would be selecting Mr. Fallon for the “Late Night” position.

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One reason Mr. Michaels gets to choose the host is that his last draft pick defied early naysayers and turned into a champ: Mr. O’Brien has become such a star in late night that in order to keep him from leaving for ABC, NBC made the wrenching decision in 2004 to promise to replace the leading host of late night, Jay Leno, in 2009, giving the “Tonight” show to Mr. O’Brien.
A new studio for Mr. O’Brien and the “Tonight” show is under construction on the NBC Universal lot in Los Angeles.
NBC’s late-night moves are much more complicated now than in the early 1990s. Several producers of late-night shows have noted recently that profits for the time period — once close to $100 million but well short of that in recent years — are in decline, especially for shows starting after midnight.
Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are now significant late-night players on Comedy Central, and ABC has a show and host, Jimmy Kimmel, that the network believes in. (In what is now a five-year-old tradition Mr. Kimmel will deliver a monologue at ABC’s annual presentation to advertisers in New York on Tuesday.)
NBC expects that Mr. Fallon will at least maintain Mr. O’Brien’s superiority among the younger male viewers who have traditionally made up the core audience for the post-midnight shows. The longtime late night producer said: “In today’s day and age, big well-known brands — Dave and Jay and Conan — are very, very hard to duplicate.