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With Conan O’Brien still set to take over Jay Leno’s

seat at The Tonight Show, Variety is reporting that SNL’s Jimmy Fallon will officially be taking over the

Late Night

desk likely starting February 2009. The move will come before O’Brien takes a six month hiatus before he takes the reigns of NBC’s The Tonight Show.

around the world in 80 days free download As for Leno, he has standing offers from ABC and FOX to jump over to their networks if he’s not yet ready to say goodbye to his nightly TV spot. It looks like this move to SNL’s Weekend Update anchor might finally signal the end of the talk about Jon Stewart somehow figuring into the Peacock’s late night plans.

Conan has been loyal to NBC for years and it’d be a surprise to see anyone else take over the desk other than the gangly Irish one, but I think that I now have to see it to believe it with all the speculation.

But for now, we should just get used to hearing, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon because it’s happening.

Fox Business and the Wall Street Journal are reporting that Katie Couric may leave her nightly news anchor gig at the CBS Evening News after the Presidential inauguration early next year.

If you say “Fox News sucks and now that News Corp owns the Wall Street Journal, I don’t believe that either.” Then, how about TMZ is reporting the same thing, saying that Couric may leave the Eye even earlier, perhaps shortly after this year’s election. Reports are saying that Couric is saying the network did not fulfill its promises to improve the nightly news program, along with the show’s website.

Since Couric signed the richest deal in television news history at $15 million per year, does she have an opt out clause like an athlete? When CBS signed Couric, it was as if the network had snagged the biggest free agent on the market from its greatest rival (at the time, NBC). Since signing Couric, the CBS Evening News has fallen behind ABC and NBC in ratings and unfortunately for Couric, the huge splash that was her debut on the network doesn’t seem to have translated to anything more than a drop in the bucket.

I’m really bummed about this because I was excited to see Katie Couric on the CBS Evening News. I am a big fan of hers and was very proud to see her as a pioneer in the evening news environment, as the first female network anchor in nightly news history. I thought that she was more than ready to do the job and I still think that she could do the job.

Whether it’s the lighting that makes it look like she’s lost that famous “spunk,” or how the program seems to teeter between letting Katie be the warm person that we knew her to be or having her report straight news with a stoic look on her face, the CBS Evening News poorly handled the most publicized news signing in history. Assignment America is one of the biggest wastes of time on television every week (Fridays) and a poor attempt to force news watchers to interact with the television program, when we’d prefer to interact with the real Couric instead of seeing some random feel-good stories before the weekend.

Where will Couric land? The New York Times says she won’t be at MSNBC, where she was previously offered a position as virtually anything she wanted, as CBS wouldn’t want her to go to an obvious competitor. Most are pointing at CNN and a position as Larry King’s successor, but King needs to let his program out of his cold, dead hands before he would let Couric take his spot as CNN’s superstar anchor.

A transition back to morning news would feel like a step back and a talk show would be a joke. Couric needs to take a job that still feels like a progression at a place where she is guaranteed to “win” this time. She’s still one of the most respected and recognized names in news and it would be a shame to have her be seen as anything but one of the better newscasters that we have today.

Unfortunately, the ratings have not reflected her skills, but it will be fascinating to see if Couric’s next move causes the same athlete-sized splash that her move to CBS did in the first place. It’s unfair and disappointing that people might look at Couric’s time on the CBS Evening News as a failure, as Couric may have come into a situation that she wasn’t being completely realistic about.

Was it worth it to leave the Today Show to become anything but the best in the timeslot where she landed?

Within the next year, she’ll have another chance to prove that it was.

It sucks to see Couric leave, but it sucks even worse that we’ll have to listen to inevitable speculation about Jon Stewart taking over the CBS Evening News.

Instead of giving himself the nod, as most would, Late Late Show host Craig Ferguson said that Jon Stewart has “earned”

the prime spot in CBS’ late night line up. With Conan O’Brien allegedly taking over for Jay Leno in just a year, though some are reporting that Leno is reluctant to give up the spot, would Stewart be CBS’ answer to NBC’s relative changing of the late night guard?

I hope not, though I think he’d do a fine job and would fit the chair better than… let’s say… my favorite host Ryan Seacrest. However, all the hype surrounding The Daily Show by super-liberals makes me want to barf. Thus, the idea of Jon Stewart hosting the late night program makes me want to do the same.

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