October 1, 1962-May 22, 1992.
Substitute host is McLean Stevenson.
Last 12 minutes of the broadcast with complete guest appearance by Cleveland Amory who discuses television's second season. He states that the only good show mid season is The Sony and Cher Show.
Cleveland Amory praises the PBS series Adam's Chronicles. He mentions that he is beginning a new column "Status Que" to be written in the New York Times. Amory is fervent on the subject of cruelty to animals in motion pictures. Discusses new California law protecting animals in films.
Mclean Stevenson signs off thanking all of his guests especially Mickey Rooney and goes on and on about Rooney's many plugs he elicited during his interview segment.
Johnny Carson, host of NBC's network late-night "Tonight Show" reigned for 30 unprecedented years...five times the combined tenure of Steve Allen, and Jack Paar. Carson was impervious to competition, including efforts to dethrone him by Les Crane, Joey Bishop, Merv Griffin, Dick Cavett, Jack Paar, Pat Sajak, Joan Rivers, and Arsenio Hall. Sadly, very few complete "Tonight Show" broadcasts survive during Johnny Carson's first ten years of broadcasting. Around 1965, through the early 1970's, oldest tapes were first erased systematically by orders from myopic NBC executives, to be recycled for purposes of saving money. Ironically, in many cases, these older master tapes were too brittle, and portended probable drop-outs for re-use after being erased. Subsequently blank after being erased, these older questionable master 2" Quad tapes were either sparingly used or never used again for recording new programming and eventually were discarded. Saving thousands of dollars at the time (wiping master tapes for potential re-use) resulted in losing millions of dollars by NBC in today's marketplace, and more importantly wiping thousands of historic TONIGHT SHOW broadcasts, which contain precious personal anecdotes from political, show business, and sports icons of the past.