McMahon Joins Carson in ‘Tonight’ Exit : Television: Longtime sidekick is stunned by host’s surprise announcement to leave show in May after nearly 30 years.

“The other shoe,” Ed McMahon said Friday, “has dropped. Finally.”

And following Johnny Carson’s surprise announcement on Thursday that he would leave “The Tonight Show” on May 22, 1992, his sidekick for the past 29 years declared that he too will depart at the same time.

“It’s going to be strange,” McMahon said. “It’s going to be wrenching. It’s a kind of thing that you have done for so long, you don’t think that you could have a day with not doing it.”

Carson stunned NBC affiliates, members of his own production staff and even McMahon with his announcement at a network conference in New York of a date for his last night as host of “The Tonight Show.”

NBC officials said that they knew the comedian was going to announce his departure date, but McMahon and others said that they thought Carson would continue at least until September, 1992, to mark his 30th anniversary on the job.

“It came to me as a surprise, as it did to everybody else,” McMahon said. “But he’s a master of timing. I’ve always said that he knows the right time.”

In his speech to network affiliates, Carson exhorted programmers to keep live programs like “The Tonight Show” on the schedule, saying that the program had given a national spotlight to many successful performers, including Bill Cosby and Roseanne Barr.

“I hope there’s always a show like ‘The Tonight Show’ on NBC,” Carson told the group.

He warned the networks against becoming “a giant tape-recorder” for reruns, saying, “TV has to discover its own new people, or else cable is going to do it.”

Carson’s lawyer, Ed Hookstratten, said Friday that the 65-year-old comedian’s departure from “The Tonight Show” does not signal his retirement.

“He’s just saying that after 30 years on ‘The Tonight Show,’ I’m going to start doing some other things,” Hookstratten said. “He’s writing ideas for specials--he’s got all kinds of things he’s thinking about.”

Carson was not available for comment, but Hookstratten said that the entertainer has always enjoyed working with live audiences and making personal appearances, and that he would likely do more of those.

“He had 30 years (on ‘Tonight),” Hookstratten said. “Nobody’s ever had a run like that. It’s enough.”

This isn’t the first time Carson has said he would leave the program, which he took over as host from Jack Parr in 1962. But this time, nobody doubts that he means it.

“He doesn’t seem to be bluffing,” said a source close to the show at NBC. “It’s the first time that I can recall that he’s actually named a specific date.”

The network issued a brief press release Friday, saying that executives would “spend the immediate future reflecting on the statement that Johnny made yesterday,” and insisting that “The Tonight Show” will continue.

Carson’s intention to depart raises a number of questions, not the least of which is whom NBC will pick to succeed him. Jay Leno, who is currently serving as the show’s exclusive guest host, is expected to inherit the post, but NBC would not say Friday what it’s plans are.

There has been some speculation that if Leno takes over, bandleader Doc Severinsen would stay on to continue the combination sidekick/musican role he has developed with the comedian.

The production of the show, which since 1980 has been handled by Carson’s company, Carson Productions, will revert to NBC when the veteran host leaves, according to Hookstratten.

Carson will continue to be involved in other productions, Hookstratten said, including “Late Night With David Letterman,” in which he holds a partnership stake, and the syndicated programs “Carson Comedy Classics” and “Bloopers and Practical Jokes.”

Hoping, apparently, to achieve at least some sense of continuity, NBC had originally asked McMahon to stay on for six months after Carson left, McMahon said, but the 68-year-old announcer wouldn’t hear of it. “I don’t want to water down what we’ve done for 30 years,” he said.

Instead, McMahon will continue to host the syndicated program, “Star Search”.