And the Winner Is...

Thanks to all the people who entered our Johnny Carson contest sponsored by Respond2 Entertainment. We received over one hundred responses and even in this age of Google, two of you still got the wrong answers. Perhaps you were taking the noble route of using your own knowledge rather than the easier way. Good on you - but you still lost. The answers are:

1) Who Do You Trust (note the lack of a question mark, however, no points were subtracted from those entries that included one).

2) Johnny was replaced by my old friend (emphasis on old) Woody Woodbury.

3) The announcers on the two incarnations of the program were Ed McMahon and Bill "Friday Night Fights" Nimmo.

A big congrats to Classic Television Showbiz reader Jason from Montreal, Quebec, who was the fourteenth person to answer all questions correctly.

The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson - Heeere's Johnny: The Definitive DVD Collection

We're running a contest today here at Classic Television Showbiz in conjunction with Respond2 Entertainment, the company that has released an eclectic line of DVDs including This Is Your Life (1952), The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour (1971), Tony Orlando and Dawn (1974) and The Captain and Tennille (1976). The massive Johnny Carson box set came out this week and features a whopping twelve discs. Hopefully, when they say definitive they don't mean final. I'd like to see future volumes featuring full, unedited episodes from the vaults. Answer the following questions correctly and you can win a copy of the big fat set! You'll have to e-mail me with the correct answers to the following series of questions. Fourteenth person to respond correctly will win the set.

1) Name the television program Carson was host of when he was named as the new host of The Tonight Show.

2) Name his replacement on that show.

3) Name the announcers on both incarnations of that show.

Please don't leave your answers in the comments section!

Contest ends at:
midnite Pacific Time - the night of Friday, Nov. 9th/Morning of Sat. Nov. 10th, 2007.

If you lose you can always order the set here.

The Sonny and Cher Show with Steve Martin and Burt Reynolds (1974)

Corporate Roast featuring Art Linkletter and Jim Backus (1970)

Blondie (1968)

Talent Scouts with guest George Carlin (1962) - Footage Offline 2/01/08

You need to cue this video clip to the 2:45 mark to watch the footage in question. It's a recently 'gone-solo' George Carlin, fresh from his split with comedy partner Jack Burns, on an episode of Talent Scouts, the television spin-off of the long-running radio program. Arthur Godfrey was actually gone by this point, replaced by a different flash-in-the-pan celebrity guest host each week for this short lived incarnation of Godfrey's concept. In this clip we see Carlin do an impression of the pre-Rickles insult comic Jack E. Leonard followed by the only Mort Sahl impression I have ever seen... and a very good one at that. He finishes with a JFK take and an added comment on the dynastical aspect of his presidency. Some good, but less fascinatng, footage follows.