‘Tonight’--Familiar Growing Pains : Television: While adjusting to the hot seat, Jay Leno is attracting viewers--and is amused by barbs like those tossed at Paar, Carson.

Just out of curiosity, Jay Leno, who has been the subject of national attention and some criticism since succeeding Johnny Carson as host of “The Tonight Show” on NBC last week, asked a researcher to pull some old press clippings from when Carson took over the late-night franchise from Jack Paar in 1962.

“The criticisms were: ‘Too many soft-ball questions’; ‘He’s being too nice to his guests’; ‘He’s not as acerbic as Jack Paar.’ Sound familiar?” Leno asked Wednesday during an interview with The Times.

Two of the chief knocks against Leno during his early stand is that he’s using tired monologue material and fawning over his slate of big-name guests, who have included Billy Crystal, Tom Cruise and Sigourney Weaver. But in a note sent to Leno, Steve Allen, whom Paar succeeded as host of “The Tonight Show” before Carson, told Leno not to worry: Both Paar and Carson went through the same tough critical initiation.

“When you start a new show, and celebrities are nice enough to come on with you before you’re a known quantity, yeah, perhaps you’re going to be a little over-polite until things get rolling,” Leno said.

There have been some revisions, but none of them prompted by criticism from the press, said Helen Gorman Kushnick, the show’s executive producer and Leno’s manager for the last 17 years. In their desire to book an impressive array of talent, the producers had overbooked the show and Leno hasn’t had enough time to spend with each guest, she said, so the staff has been thinning the ranks of upcoming shows by rescheduling some guests.

“When we started booking the show before we were on the air, there was that pressure to pack the show with celebrities the first couple weeks,” Leno said. “I find that’s not as necessary as we thought it would be. I find myself comfortable talking with them. After the first couple shows it really began to settle in that we could be loose.”

Kushnick also held an impromptu meeting last week to call for the young staff of talent coordinators and segment producers who pre-interview guests to better prepare Leno. One night, actress Kathy Najimy from “Sister Act” caught Leno off guard by producing a Pez dispenser with a plastic likeness of Leno’s head, and another night Leno told Joe Pesci that he heard Pesci used to be a stand-up comedian. He was wrong.

“I’d like some of the interviews, the questions, to be better, but that’s not the function of the host only,” Kushnick said. “Everybody acts like the host just goes out and does interviews. It’s more than that.”

Despite the fine-tuning, the show’s ratings have been outstanding thus far. Last week, “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno,” which aired live on the East Coast, improved its ratings in the top 25 TV markets by 71% from the same week a year ago when Leno was guest host, while the audience for its nearest competitor, “The Arsenio Hall Show,” declined by 8%. Leno’s “Tonight Show” show, with its jazzy new band and flashy new set, is off to a strong start this week, too.

Although a large part of the early ratings success can be attributed to curiosity, “The Tonight Show” is pulling down an impressive audience considering that the show will have been delayed in various parts of the country seven out of its first 10 nights because of NBA playoffs and election coverage.

“The truth of the matter is, I don’t think any of us expected what would happen with the conclusion of ‘The Tonight Show (Starring Johnny Carson),’ with all the attention suddenly turning on us,” Kushnick said. “This really is working in a fish bowl. Given that, I feel really good about the way we’re coming through it.”

With each episode, Kushnick said, she is working toward a more flowing, stylized format for Leno, using more of the house band led by Branford Marsalis, interspersing interviews with musical numbers by guests and coming right out of the monologue into the show instead of going to commercial.

“We used to have the substance but not the style,” explained Kushnick, referring to Leno’s guest-hosting days under Carson’s established “Tonight Show” format. “We now have the style to go with the substance.”

There was early debate about which way Leno would lean in terms of his audience--toward the older Carson following or the younger Hall crowd. Leno said his show has a younger feeling.

“You need to look at the lineup,” said Leno, 42. “One night you have the Black Crowes, a heavy rock ‘n’ roll group, and then the next night you have Kathleen Battle singing a gospel song. The show can only skew younger because I am younger and that’s what I know. If my references are of my generation, I can’t help that. So yeah, I guess we’re trying to reach a younger audience.”

Kushnick has told her staff to seek out guests who are rich with stories to tell. One reason Carson came off so smoothly, critics have noted, is that he surrounded himself with familiar guests. Now Kushnick is trying to find some regulars for Leno to fool around with.

“We want to find guests who will come on several times a year and do funny stories,” she said. “It is a talk show. (Comic) Paula Poundstone, who worked great with Jay last week, will call us when she’s ready to come back again. We want to make her one of those people. She’s got an open invitation here.”

Overall, Kushnick is positive and upbeat about the new “Tonight Show.” She dismissed most of the criticism the show has received in the press as “nit-picking” over the curtains that open the show or the new theme song by Marsalis.

Several critics pointed out that Leno did not pay tribute to Carson on his first show. To that, Kushnick responded: “Did Johnny mention Jay on (his last show)? Was there even a clip of Jay? Jay did 330 appearances as guest host; there was not one clip of Jay on Johnny’s last show.”

Leno, a nightclub veteran, appeared determinately unruffled by the negative remarks he read. “One critic said I was leaning forward into the mike too much,” Leno said. “I mean, we were live. We had sound problems. We weren’t sure if I was being heard when I leaned back. Those kind of problems are being solved.

“And it makes me laugh when the critics review the monologue with a critical agenda. One reviewer said I’m picking on Quayle too much, it’s not fair. Another said, terrific barbs at Quayle. So I guess we’re doing what we’re supposed to be doing.”

“This is a marathon,” Kushnick said. “This is not a sprint. We have to find our own voice after a long period of time. That’s what Johnny Carson did, and Jack Paar before him, and Steve Allen before him. I’d like the show to evolve. We’re specifically holding some of our best stuff back, so we can expose more on a nightly basis. It’s like taking your clothes off on a first date--where do you go from there?”