COLUMN ONE : New Day Dawns for ‘Tonight’ : The show’s grip on late-night entertainment loosens as Johnny Carson fades and channel choices increase.

Greg Bowden has been waiting in line under an April drizzle outside the NBC sound stages in Burbank for three hours, about to experience firsthand a ritual that has been part of his life since he was 14, when Bowden began watching “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.”

A shelf of books has been written about Carson. Scholars have critiqued his style. But the San Bernardino auto mechanic’s explanation for Carson’s appeal is as good as any: “He’s just an all-around guy. Unlike those others, he doesn’t put anybody down.”

In a medium that chews up and spits out stars like a combine, Carson has been a 30-year hit, a household name for three generations of viewers. No one has presided over more hours of television.

Now the Carson era is about to end. On May 22, the native Nebraskan will host his last show. But more than simply Carson’s departure, the final bellowing “Hi-Ho!”--the final mock swing of a golf club--will be another signal of the end of the era of network television’s preeminence.

Carson’s career and “The Tonight Show” have closely followed the trajectory of network TV, peaking in the 1970s and early 1980s when the medium was at its most powerful, profitable and glamorous. With the networks in long-term decline, it is unlikely that the phenomenon of Carson’s “Tonight Show” will be repeated.

The late-night TV audience, which once had little to watch but reruns and old movies as Carson carved out his loyal following in the 1960s, has been splintered irretrievably--like the rest of TV viewership--by the proliferation of channels available at the flick of a remote control.

More broadly, the culture-defining power of the networks--their ability to put forward personalities whose prism becomes America’s, from Walter Cronkite to Ed Sullivan, Jack Benny to Carson--has ebbed as well. The Middle America to whom such icons have spoken--and whose ethos Carson has represented--has fragmented into a thousand bits of cultural mosaic.

“Carson is probably the last of the straight-arrow white guys who seems to speak from the middle to the middle,” said Todd Gitlin, professor of sociology and director of the mass communications program at UC Berkeley. “The culture has gotten a lot more fragmented since he came along. The end of Carson is the passing of that line.”

Carson’s retirement is only the crumbling of the latest stone in the once unassailable bulwark of network television. Over the last few years the networks have seen formerly exclusive franchises such as the morning news shows, the evening news and Saturday morning cartoons slowly erode as new video pipelines into homes are forged by cable operators and syndicators.

But no one has ever dominated a time period like Johnny Carson.

For many Americans, he has been as much a part of their daily routine as cornflakes for breakfast or brushing their teeth before bed. Unlike his most successful late-night competitor, Arsenio Hall--who mostly appeals to younger viewers--Carson has a much broader audience. About 40% of Carson’s viewers are over 50; roughly half are between 25 and 49.

“The Tonight Show” attracts about 12 million viewers each night--or 16% of the available audience. Carson does better in his native Midwest, where he comes on an hour earlier than on the coasts. In St. Louis, Carson draws about 20% of the audience. Yet even with the calculated hoopla of his final months--the visits from such entertainment royalty as Elizabeth Taylor and Burt Reynolds--Carson’s national viewership is flat compared to last year.

With a total of about $525 million in late-night TV advertising up for grabs, a host of imitators are jockeying to fill the vacuum created by Carson’s departure.

Jay Leno, his “permanent guest host” since 1987, will take over three days after Carson exits. The show will be called “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno,” signaling that the successor is somehow not quite ready to assume the mantle of “King of Late Night.”

On other stations, loyal Carson viewers will be able to tune to Hall or former “Saturday Night Live” comic Dennis Miller. This fall, actress Whoopi Goldberg will enter the fray, and the Fox network plans a talk show starring comedian Chevy Chase.

Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh and psychologist David Viscott also are waiting in the wings. Cristina Saralegui, host of a popular Spanish-language, Oprah Winfrey-style talk show on the Univision network--will be tested in English-language syndication this summer. Not to mention “Nightline” anchor Ted Koppel, who appeals to many of the adult viewers whom Carson attracts.

But each of these shows, with their highly targeted formats--from caustic liberal comic Miller to right-wing provocateur Limbaugh--aims for only a portion of the audience, as opposed to Carson’s wider appeal.

Still, cheaply produced talk shows can be a gold mine--if they attract enough viewers. NBC captures 66% of the network advertising dollars spent in late night. In 1978, near the peak of its popularity, “The Tonight Show” accounted for 17% of the network’s profits and continued to earn $30 million a year through the mid-1980s.

But even with Carson removed as a competitor, the chances of success for any of his presumptive heirs appear slim. Late-night’s trash heap is littered with the likes of Joey Bishop, Merv Griffin, Alan Thicke and Pat Sajak. And today’s multicultural, multichannel environment makes it difficult for anyone to achieve the kind of broad audience once enjoyed by hit shows.

“With cable and the tremendous amount of choices viewers have today, loyalty doesn’t exist anymore,” said Marla Kell Brown, producer of “The Arsenio Hall Show.” “There was such a common ground that Carson had. It’s awesome the impact he could have on a viewing audience that we will never see again because the audience is just too fragmented now.”

Carson, an extremely private man said by friends to be uncomfortable reflecting on his success, has turned down more than 100 requests for interviews during his closing months on the air.

But one of his foils, 81-year-old executive producer Fred de Cordova, has a ready explanation for Carson’s longevity.

“Our viewers accepted ‘The Tonight Show’ as part of their lives,” said the chain-smoking producer, who has been with the show since 1970. “It will be almost impossible for anyone to achieve this level of success again. There are now too many opportunities to watch other things.”

Pundits have not always been so kind, describing Carson, 66, as everything from “the Valium and Nembutal of the nation” to “a professional explorer of other people’s egos.”

Yet Dave Tebit, the former head of talent at NBC who plucked Carson from the obscurity of a daytime game show on ABC 30 years ago, said Carson’s talent is singular. “The difference between Carson and the others,” Tebit said, “is that everybody else does Q & A. Carson does dialogue.”

“The Tonight Show,” which went on the air in 1954, was the brainchild of former NBC President Sylvester (Pat) Weaver, who also created the “Today” show. Weaver thought viewers would want an easy-going conversational program to help unwind at the end of the day.

Back in 1961 Tebit was casting about for a replacement for the temperamental Jack Parr. Parr had taken over as host of the program from Steve Allen four years earlier, but was tiring of the grind and frequently clashed with the network’s brass.

As a rule, Tebit avoided watching daytime TV. But when flipping the dial one day, the talent scout happened across Carson, who was hosting a game show ungrammatically titled “Who Do You Trust?”

“Who Do You Trust” was a kind of predecessor to “The Newlywed Game,” where married couples were quizzed to see how well they knew each other or could predict their spouse’s answers to questions. Tebit was struck by Carson’s ability to juggle interviewing, humor and ad libs. Ed McMahon, a former Atlantic City boardwalk barker, was the announcer.

At first, NBC management was uncertain about Carson. But Tebit brought him to Chicago to entertain the network’s affiliates. Carson did a stand-up act and “just killed them,” Tebit said. “We knew we were home free.”

When Carson took over “The Tonight Show” on Oct. 1, 1962, the average American home had one black-and-white TV that picked up a handful of channels--probably an NBC and CBS affiliate (ABC was not yet a full-fledged network) and maybe one powerful independent station. Fully 39% of all people watching TV late at night tuned to Carson--and he retained similar ratings through the ‘60s and ‘70s.

Today, the typical home receives more than 30 channels. And by the end of the decade--thanks to VCRs and high-tech developments in fiber optics and video compression--TV viewers will have access to hundreds of channels and be free to watch TV shows on demand, rather than when the networks schedule them.

Over the years, Carson’s success gained him unprecedented power in television.

At first he earned $100,000 a year. But each successive contract was more lucrative for Carson--and costly for NBC. Carson arguably was the first TV performer--as opposed to station or network or studio owner--to become truly rich off the medium.

That happened in the late 1970s, when his contract was renegotiated to make his company, Carson Productions, the owner of “The Tonight Show”--a step that paved the way for others, including Phil Donahue and Winfrey, to become principals in their programs.

NBC agreed to buy other shows from Carson Productions--”Late Night With David Letterman” was the first, followed by the hit sitcom “Amen” and a series of specials. The company also produced the 1982 movie “The Big Chill.”

But the economics of late-night TV are delicate. As Carson demanded--and won--a bigger share of the show’s earnings even as “The Tonight Show” ratings dwindled, NBC’s profits from the show evaporated to near zero, according to one insider. With Leno taking over, the network has reclaimed ownership of the program and should earn more, whether the ratings rise or fall.

Carson’s investments became grist for his self-effacing humor: He licensed his name for an apparel line, bought into a Las Vegas TV station, launched a fast-food chain, attempted to buy the Aladdin hotel and casino in Las Vegas, poured money into the ill-fated DeLorean Motor Co., and got taken in the Equity Funding scandal, one of the most notorious securities scams of the 1970s. Carson frequently joked about his three ex-wives’ demands for alimony. Yet, last year, he is estimated to have earned $25 million.

At Carson’s insistence, NBC affiliates had to carry his show at 11:30 p.m.--10:30 p.m. in the Midwest--or have the show yanked by the network, assuring Carson of nearly national reach and making “The Tonight Show” more attractive to advertisers.

The schedule has given Carson a valuable lead-in from the affiliates’ local news programs, boosting his ratings and providing a compatible setup to his topical 10-minute monologue. It is the show’s most popular segment; many viewers tune out in the second half-hour.

“It is very unlikely his successor will be able to wield that kind of clout, and we will probably begin to see selective delays in Leno’s show,” said David Poltrack, president of marketing at CBS. “That could significantly impair the ratings of ‘The Tonight Show’ and its long-term viability.”

Fissures already have opened. Last year, NBC--under pressure from affiliates to give them back more ad time to sell--allowed some affiliates to delay “The Tonight Show” start by five minutes to let stations expand their local news programs.

With Carson gone, NBC executives were so nervous that local broadcasters would delay the show further--and schedule more profitable syndicated shows after the late news--that they brought in Leno, like Carson 30 years earlier, to entertain at a March affiliate convention in Burbank.

But the polite, seemingly obligatory ovation given by the broadcasters did not mask their growing differences with the network.

“Carson’s departure is the beginning of a new late-night era,” said Neil Derrough, president of NBC affiliate KNSD Channel 39 in San Diego. “If Jay Leno doesn’t have a terrific beginning, my guess is it’s going to get pretty complicated for NBC.” Even dumping “The Tonight Show” for one of its syndicated competitors would, Derrough said, no longer be considered “a sacrilege.”

What the stations would be giving up is a program whose basic format purposefully has remained unchanged over the past 30 years.

More than 22,000 guests have hyped their books, promoted their movies, delivered their stand-up acts and otherwise schmoozed through 8,564 broadcasts over the last three decades. Carson has hosted 6,512 of the shows.

Structurally, there have been only two major shifts. The first came in 1972 when Carson moved his base to Burbank from New York. The second was in 1980, when--as part of a new contract with the network--he cut the show to one hour from 90 minutes.

Other than that, the program’s format has remained steadfastly unchanged over the years: a 10-minute monologue typically followed by three guests.

Carson is not, most critics agree, a TV personality like news anchors Peter Jennings or Dan Rather to whom the country turns for wisdom and handholding in a national crisis.

Instead, viewers have engraved in their memories less weighty “Tonight Show” events. There was the 1969 marriage of Tiny Tim and Miss Vicki, which earned Carson his highest rating, attracting 21.4 million households. And there was the offhand 1973 quip about a toilet paper shortage that caused a run on the product the next day in supermarkets around the country.

Although critics have taken “The Tonight Show” to task for not provoking enough controversy or letting go unchallenged the all-too-frequent prattle from the latest Hollywood bimbo or hunk, Carson nonetheless has always felt that conflict was not part of the show’s mission.

“His philosophy of the show always has been to make it as amusing and reliable as possible--a late-night, breezy show that doesn’t disturb anybody,” said Dick Cavett, a onetime writer for Parr and Carson whose own cerebral late-night talk show lasted six years on ABC. “He mastered that, and it worked.”

The guests are selected by a staff of producers, bookers and talent coordinators, each with their areas of expertise: recording artists, nightclub acts or movie stars.

There have been the regulars--dubbed “most valuable players”--who seem to have made a second career out of appearing on “The Tonight Show”: Joey Bishop (206 times), Bob Hope (121 times) and Tony Randall (101 times).

Joan Rivers did the show 199 times, including her stint as Carson’s stand-in, but found the door slammed in her face when she announced plans to host her own short-lived late-night talk show. The rift has never healed.

The show’s producers subscribe to 70 newspapers, combing them for monologue material and the potential oddball guest--the “civilians” such as Frederic Cassidy, a collector of colloquialisms, or Clarence (Catfish) Gray, a herbal medicine man.

But in recent years, younger, hipper performers increasingly have opted to appear on “The Arsenio Hall Show.” Despite recent slippage in Hall’s ratings, he attracts more viewers than Carson in the 18-49 age group--considered the key young adult demographic that advertisers seek.

Even if many of Hall’s viewers do not strike at the core of Carson’s loyal audience, the fleeting nature of popular culture means that it will be difficult for Leno--or any of his competitors--to sustain what is the closest thing to an institution in the most transitory of mediums.

“Structurally, it can’t work anymore,” said David Brenner, a frequent “Tonight Show” guest and substitute host who in 1986 had his own syndicated late-night talk show. “Even if there’s someone out there talented enough to dominate network television, there’s just too much choice.”

But in answer to those who charge that Carson’s “Tonight Show” has delivered nothing more than banter among celebrities, Brenner credits it with nothing less than serving as a magnifying glass on the circus of American culture over the past 30 years.

“To the intellectual who comes on the show, the farmer with a prize sheep or the woman who is 101 years old and still dating--even a pedantic Hollywood starlet--comedy is reflective of our society’s ills, and where we see ourselves,” Brenner said. “A lot of people had something to say, and ‘The Tonight Show’ gave them that opportunity to say it and us to hear it.”