No Public for Carson Farewell

There apparently won’t be any tickets distributed to the public for Johnny Carson’s final appearance as host of “The Tonight Show” on May 22.

“There are no plans for any guests,” executive producer Fred de Cordova said in a statement. “The show will be a diary of what’s happened over the years. It is very likely that a great portion, if not all, of the audience will be ‘The Tonight Show’ family.”

That means that the 500 seats in NBC’s Studio 1 in Burbank are to be filled mainly with program staff and their families, explained Jonathan Hogan, an NBC spokesman. The show will be broadcast locally at 11:35 p.m.

Until then, tickets for members of the public to see Carson are available for free at NBC studios in Burbank. The network hands out 150 a day, beginning at 7 a.m., on a first-come, first-served basis for that day’s taping. Seating begins about 3:30 p.m. Standby tickets are also issued to cover the possibility of no-shows among the other 350 tickets allocated to VIPs and mail-order requests.