Fallon to replace O'Brien

It's official. NBC announced today that former "Saturday Night Live" funnyman Jimmy Fallon will take Conan O'Brien's place in June of 2009.

O'Brien heads to Jay Leno's famed Tonight Show spot after the salt-and-pepper haired comic retires next year.

While it has the potential to be a good replacement, it's also a bit worrisome. Fallon, best known for laughing at his own jokes or breaking during an SNL skit, has the charisma and good looks to bring viewers in, but his interviewing skills may be questionable at best.

As for his abilities to provide some kind of stand-up to open the show, I can't help but feel an over scripted Carson Daly-esque catastrophe on its way. Sure, anyone - or thing - could be more funny than Carson Daly, but I'm not sure Fallon's goofball persona can handle a night-to-night monologue of the day's news. He's done Weekend Update on SNL, but that's still a different world from a solo 15-min. opening act. He may be the only one laughing at his jokes, and that ain't pretty.

The question does pop up, with Fallon's announcement, of who will take the role of his musical sidekick. Leno had pot-smoking Kevin Eubanks; Letterman has annoying, baldy Paul Shaffer and of course, Conan has pervy homicidal Max Weinberg. Since Kevin plays the guitar, Paul has his keyboard and Max bangs on the drums all day, I'm thinking whoever joins Fallon's team should either play the piccolo or the underused triangle. Any ideas for who you want to see lead up a wise-cracking band?

Whatever happens, I'm hoping for the best. With Conan moving to an earlier time slot, I'm guessing characters like the bear that, er, loves himself, vomiting Kermit or the racist 1950s Doo-Wop singer might be getting shelved for more family-like appeal. We'll need someone to step in and keep that post-11 p.m. humor inappropriate. Let's just hope it's not reminiscent of Fallon's work in "Taxi." Yikes.

-- Sara Boyd, sboyd2@greenbaypressgazette.com