EXCLUSIVE: A lot’s changed in late night, in the media and in America in the 12 years since Jay Leno stopped being the host of The Tonight Show.

For one thing, there is a new king of late night, but he isn’t on TV.

“I mean, podcasts really are the new talk shows,” the Jay Leno’s Garage frontman says. “Joe Rogan is the new Johnny Carson,” the 76-year-old comic adds, likely knowing he’ll get blowback.

Coming off a week where Leno had former president Joe Biden as the guest on Garage on his YouTube channel, the 1999-2014 Tonight host, the compliment to the UFC commentator will just pile on to political outrage in polarized country on our 250th birthday. Truth be told, in a wide ranging sit-down, Leno admits he’s pretty used to it, and he know perectly well that the Appointment TV days of his late night domination are long long gone.

To that, Leno has some ideas why late night has faded away, why YouTube took over and why he doesn’t worry about the critics, regardless of what side of the aisle or the desk they come from.

DEADLINE: With all that’s going on in late night now, your exit in 2014 looks like a prophetic move now, no?

JAY LENO: (LAUGHS) That’s pretty funny.

You know. I make my living as a stand-up comic. TV is a job that either lasts 13 weeks or less. Okay, I was lucky, mine lasted 22 years. But the day the Tonight Show ended, I was back on the road the next night in Florida for five nights, and that’s what I do now. So, for me, nothing really has changed. People always think, how’s retirement? Well, I’m not retired. I do 200 dates a year, and I do think I do a good show. I’ve got a few other things going on, like the Garage show, that I enjoy. I have a good life after late night

DEADLINE: Well, you are a YouTube star now with Garage since it left CNBC back in 2023 …

LENO: You know, it seems like the same thing to me, really. I mean, I enjoy it. It’s different, but I enjoy it.

DEADLINE: Inadvertently you were ahead of the game, and you get to be your own boss, which can’t be bad?

LENO: It’s funny, because I was so fortunate that my agent dropped me right before I got The Tonight Show in 1992. I later worked it out, I saved $30 million in commissions.

DEADLINE: Jesus…

LENO: I know, I said, all right, fine with me, you know? I mean, I’m one of those people, when everyone wants to break up with me. I don’t plead, I go, “fine, okay, you’re cool. “And that was the same thing, you know, with the agent.

I mean, I remember the same thing happened when I was in The Tonight Show, and they’re gonna replace me with Conan, and they called me, and said, “You know, I did number one for like 17 years. One of the executives says “we want what’s above number one, “and I go, “okay, what is above number one?” I mean, I just started to laugh, and they realized how stupid the statement was. I said, can you want me out? I’m out. Fine. And then I was out.

DEADLINE: It wasn’t pretty, I remember.

LENO: Yeah, but then what happened was Craig Ferguson came along, and he started beating Conan. Then I got a call from Jeff Zucker saying, “I think I made a mistake.” I said: “Yeah, I told you.” Zucker said “we’d like to have you back.” Okay, “Fine, I’ll come back, whatever you want, you know. I don’t have manager; I don’t have a full-time agent. I negotiate everything myself.

DEADLINE: Jay, dude, why bother at this point? Who needs the stress?

LENO: Yeah, I know, it’s really stupid. Then again, I have a house in Beverly Hills, so it’s working out. The nice thing about doing your own negotiations, you find out exactly how people feel. The client might say, “Leno sucks, I can’t stand that guy.” If you have an agent doing your negotiations, what you hear is “Oh, he likes you, he just doesn’t have anything for you right now.” Yeah, sure.

DEADLINE: Don’t have anything for you now, sounds like an epitaph for late night in 2026. There’s almost never one reason for anything, but with Colbert gone, Kimmel thriving but under threat and everyone looking over their corporate shoulder for attacks from Donald Trump, their own bosses or Greg Gutfeld, why do you think late night lost its swagger?

LENO: It’s boring, but here’s the thing that I think hurt late night the most: too many commercials.

They passed some new rules before my tenure at The Tonight Show, that after 11:30 at night you could add another like five or six minutes to the hour. It came in in waves, but by the end of my time (at the Tonight Show) instead of doing like 48 minutes of show, it was only like 42 and broken up more.

DEADLINE: That’s from 1984, when the FCC pulled off limits on the amount of ad time. By 2014, when you left Tonight, it was way up there, like you said 18, or 16 minutes for the hour.

LENO: Yeah, so when I turn on late night now, regardless of how I’m watching, you know, if I see Jake from State Farm again, I’m gonna shoot myself in the f*cking head.

It’s like, geez, it’s you watch the host comes out, does the monologue, then it’s right away over to six minutes of commercials. You come back, the host talks about who’s coming up and everything out, we’ll be right back, and so on. All cut up.

Enough already.  

Why watch that when I can switch over to streaming or YouTube and I can watch an hour with Harrison Ford talking off the top of his head, as opposed to just having few minutes with the guest or with the host, you know? Johnny used to have real conversations. I tried to have real conversations. That’s seems to be gone, and the audience know it.

DEADLINE: Can it come back?

LENO: It’s not that people are better or worse, it’s the fact that the whole medium has changed. The idea that you have to turn the TV on 11:30 pm to hear what was being said, like appointment television, that sounds ridiculous now.

DEADLINE: Devil’s advocate, why?

LENO: Because you can watch TV whenever you want now, you can watch whatever show whatever you want, you know, so that’s what’s really ruined it. There’s no immediacy. People used to say, “Oh, let’s see what David Letterman or whoever had to say about the president’s thing today,” and you and the whole world simultaneously at 11:30 what they thought. Now you can look it up anytime, and whenever you watch it, if you miss it, that’s okay, you know. So, yeah, that’s what’s really changed.

I mean, podcasts really are the new talk shows. Joe Rogan is the new Johnny Carson.

Yeah, Joe talks to everybody about everything. There’s no FCC to step in and say what you say and can’t say, so you really do get an unfiltered idea of what everybody thinks. So, yeah, I mean, to me, that’s what’s also changed late night.

I talk to young people, they don’t know CBS, NBC, or ABC, Channel Four, they know Channel 682 or whatever. They just go to YouTube. Which is amazing. If you had predicted YouTube would be the most popular channel in the world 10 years ago, I think people would have said “what are you talking about?” But it is now.

DEADLINE: You’re take on late night has gotten you spanked more than a few times. As well as calling you a hypocrite almost a decade ago over your Monica Lewinsky jokes in the late 1990s and your calls for civility, John Oliver in particular has taken you to the woodshed over your criticism of late night getting too partisan It’s ironic, because, let’s be honest, you’re a pal of ex-presidents, but you’ve been pretty political over the years with your zingers too.

LENO: Well, with John Oliver, I did interview last year with the head of the Reagan Library about the humor of Ronald Reagan. Talked about having dinner with him a couple times, and blah blah blah at the White House and stuff, and you know, just telling funny stories.

One of the questions the interviewer, David Trulio, asked me was something like “how do you think you and Johnny handled politics?” Well, we tried to make fun of both sides equally. You know, you humiliate degrade everybody equally, that’s it. I mentioned the pressures of life and people cozying to one side more than the other. I said, “I don’t think anyone wants to hear a lecture, why go for just half an audience?” He wanted me to say that Republicans laugh at each other more than Democrats, I’m not sure I agreed.

Anyway, this was all while Colbert still had a job at CBS

Two weeks later, Colbert gets fired. Interview comes out.

Soon after, I picked up the paper and they have a picture of me making an angry face and saying late night hosts are doing it wrong. I didn’t say that, I didn’t, but John Oliver goes, “hey, Jay Leno, f*ck you, f*ck you for saying that about Colbert. But I never said that, I never said it.

That’s why I tend not to take any of it too seriously. 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.

DEADLINE: On the flip of that, you had Joe Biden on Jay Leno’s Garage this week. You seem to like Biden, what kind of reaction do you expect from the GOP and MAGA on you guys cruising around in Biden’s Corvette?

LENO: (LAUGHS) They’ll write and say “I will never watch your program again.”

 Yeah, I got it.

But here’s the thing, first of all, it’s free on YouTube. I don’t really care if you watch it or not, you know. But there’ll be all these people that you know will go on that Biden’s a crook, blah blah, That I just had his point of view on Trump, it wasn’t the whole gamut. Whatever, it’s just us driving around. I don’t really worry about it.

DEADLINE: Really?

LENO: Yeah, like I said, we used to brag about the fact that Johnny and I would try to make fun of both sides equally. Looks like that doesn’t work anymore. The audience is all over the place. I just think the most important thing is to remember funny is funny.