"What's Above Number One?": Jay Leno Rips the Idiocy of NBC Executives! | BT & Sal
WFAN Daily
Audacy
3.8 • 794 Ratings
🗓️ 12 November 2025
⏱️ 20 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Legendary comedian Jay Leno joins BT & Sal for a fiery, in-depth conversation on his career and the changing landscape of late-night television. Leno critiques the current state of late night—too many commercials, too much political fighting—and reveals the never-before-heard truth about the Conan O'Brien/NBC debacle, stating the network's incompetence and infighting drove the wedge.
Leno shares priceless stories from his career, including his years-long prank war with David Letterman involving a meatball sandwich, and the unforgettable difference between President Obama arriving to the show in a rental car versus a satellite-proof tent. Finally, he discusses the need for humility and why working on his massive car collection helps him avoid the "Beverly Hills Bubble."
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | What's good y'all? It's Von Miller, Super Bowl MVP, Sagmaster, and now your host of Free Range. |
| 0:06.8 | This is where NFL meets Real Talk. Every week, I'm bringing you inside the game from locker |
| 0:12.2 | room stories to league-wide headlines. You want football IQ locker room insight and real |
| 0:17.3 | conversations with the people shaping the league. Welcome to Free Range with Von Miller, where nothing is off limits and every down counts. |
| 0:24.0 | New episodes every Wednesday. |
| 0:25.8 | Listen and follow Free Range with me, Von Miller, wherever you get your podcast. |
| 0:30.4 | Now, Jay is going to be performing Friday night, November 14th. |
| 0:34.5 | He will be at Bergen-Pack Center here for a one-night-only stand-up show. |
| 0:40.1 | That's a great spot, by the way. I've been there a few times. It's awesome. And evening with Jay Leno, one-night-only stand-up comedy show featuring Jay, of course. And, I mean, Jay, it's an honor to have you, BT and Sally, you're on the fan. How are things, Jay? good tell a few jokes trying to make a living that's the gig you know gentlemen that's how it works |
| 0:55.6 | god man i hearing your voice it brings me back i used to love watching i was a letterman guy but i loved your show as well i just went back this weekend and watched that late night show that i couldn't get enough of the drama would you take it over for cars and a lot of stuff what do you think jay of the current state of late night? Well, it's fine. It's fine. I'm out of that game now. Thank you very much. Well, look, |
| 1:15.9 | you know, the whole scenario has changed. In the old days, they used to call it must see TV. If you |
| 1:22.1 | want to see something, you have to turn it on at this particular time. Well, that doesn't exist |
| 1:26.3 | anymore. You can watch the entire Godfather trilogy on streaming with no commercials. |
| 1:32.1 | I mean, the thing that really hurts late tonight, I think, is just the number of ads, |
| 1:36.5 | because as TV gets smaller, they put more ads in to cover the costs. |
| 1:41.7 | And consequently, on an hour's show, you have maybe 44 minutes of show after 1130 at night |
| 1:47.7 | it's all you know if i see jake from state farm again i'm going to shoot myself in the head it's enough |
| 1:52.2 | i mean i enjoy i enjoy i like kimmel i like colbert i like felon i like you know i like jokes so to me |
| 2:00.5 | the monologue is always the the part i enjoy most So I try to catch those when I can. Yep, that's what obviously pulls in the audience for sure. And then the ability to just just have wide-ranging interviews and be relatable and all that stuff, which you were phenomenal at. And, and let's face it, Jay, one of the things that's really changed about the late night game here is that Johnny Carson knew this and he knew it better than anybody, what not to touch. And that to me... Well, it's funny that you say that because I get beat up for not for doing the same thing. You know, it's like, oh, you know, in the real world, when you go out and you do, when you're on TV, you're playing to a specific audience and they like you and they're your fans and they show up. When you go on the real world, you're going to have X number of Democrats, X number, probably got some Trump people going to have some of stuff. So you've got to kind of try at least be egalitarian about it, make fun of both sides equally or whatever, because as soon as you go, you cross that line, boo, and people get crazy. |
| 2:52.8 | It's just unbelievable. |
| 2:55.4 | So I've kind of taken politics out of it. |
| 2:58.0 | I'll do it a little tiny bit, but not to the point where, you know, people want to get in a fight with you. |
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