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Johnny Carson's 'Tonight Show' Archives Hit the Web

by Caleb Johnson on August 12, 2010 at 10:00 AM

Johnny Carson archives
The undisputed 'King of Late Night' is making a comeback -- this time, on the Internet. According to The New York Times, more than 3,500 hours of footage from Johnny Carson's tenure as host of 'The Tonight Show' has been preserved digitally and archived on the Web for fans to enjoy. It took about 2,000 people to complete this two-phase project, which mostly spans the years between 1973 and 1992 (as much of the pre-1973 footage was destroyed long ago). Phase one was the launch of johnnycarson.com, which features between 40 and 60 clips of Carson yukking it up with different celebrity guests. Phase two was launching the password-protected site licensing.johnnycarson.com, which is a more extensive archive of Carson's years on 'The Tonight Show,' largely intended for companies who are interested in licensing Carson's material. However, Carson Entertainment president Jeff Sotzing told the Times that he hopes to make more of this site's footage available to the public soon, so we'll keep our fingers crossed. Unfortunately, videos from the main site aren't embeddable, which will severely limit the ability of any of these clips to go viral.

Let's just hope nobody ever archives Jay Leno's years on 'The Tonight Show' on the web. It's bad enough hearing him recycle the same jokes every night without knowing he's immortalized on the Internet, too. [From: The New York Times]

Tags: archive, carson, JohnnyCarson, the tonight show, thetonightshow, top, tv, video, web

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