I've always been a night owl and when Letterman was on NBC following Carson I probably watched every night. Jay Leno use to be a frequent guest and he was so funny I would keep a VCR tape on top devoted to Leno's appearance on Letterman. The funniest stuff was right off the cuff, he would pick up a TV Guide and flip through the listings and come up with some brilliant comments.
Later when Leno took over for Carson I couldn't stand his show. The network had totally corrupted him into a corporate type comedian. His unstructured suits were gone and his comedy was almost high school. I stuck with Letterman and I only watched Leno when he did the Monday newspaper headlines. That was really funny, but the rest of the time he is the worse interviewer on any talk show. That's where Letterman would really shine, he would disregard the notes and actually listen to the guest and ask follow-up questions that related to what they were saying. You could watch a celebrity in the morning on say, the Today Show, and watch them later on Letterman and it would be an entirely different take.
I thought the last five or so years of Carson got kind of stale. From around 1985 on I started watching other shows waiting for Letterman to come on at 12:30. I think Johnny knew it was time for him to go, 30 years is long enough. Now that Letterman is gone, I do catch Conan sometimes. He was much better on NBC from New York when following Leno. Now his show in Hollywood is not as good, I don't know why. I also like Jimmy Kimmel, especially his monologue is really funny, he has some great writers. Jimmy Fallon I didn't care for on SNL, he was on when they had some really good people, so it was hard to stand out when they had Will Ferrel and a few others. I guess it has carried over to is talk show, I really don't care for him.
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