A Timeline: The Next Year of Late-Night Television

NBC speeds up late-night transition: Jimmy Fallon immediately replaces Jay Leno as host of; Seth Meyers replaces Fallon; Leno replaces Barbara Walters on; Walters joins the cast of.
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This Feb. 1, 2013 photo released by NBC shows Jimmy Fallon, host of "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon," on the set in New York. (AP Photo/NBC, Lloyd Bishop)
This Feb. 1, 2013 photo released by NBC shows Jimmy Fallon, host of "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon," on the set in New York. (AP Photo/NBC, Lloyd Bishop)

April 2013: NBC speeds up late-night transition: Jimmy Fallon immediately replaces Jay Leno as host of The Tonight Show; Seth Meyers replaces Fallon; Leno replaces Barbara Walters on The View; Walters joins the cast of Duck Dynasty.

May 2013: A traumatized Conan O'Brien, assuming Leno will find a way to take his job, leaves TBS, becomes beloved dean of students at undisclosed liberal arts college; O'Brien is replaced by George Lopez; George Lopez is replaced by Chelsea Handler; Chelsea Handler is replaced by Betty White.

June 2013: Lorne Michaels becomes head of programming at NBC, replaces all shows with Saturday Night Live running characters, makes Stefon co-anchor of The NBC Nightly News with Whitney Cummings; Fox establishes late-night presence with hour of Harris Faulkner and Megyn Kelly breathing heavily

July 2013: To counterprogram Stefon and Whitney Cummings, Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart are convinced to host, respectively, the actual CBS Evening News and ABC World News, and are given huge bags with "$" signs on them; Daniel Tosh comes out of "retirement," replaces Stewart and Colbert, runs hilarious video of guy burning his penis in endless loop

August 2013: Jay Leno is fired from The View, replaces Matt Lauer on The Today Show, does four-hour morning monologue punctuated by "Denim News" updates; Barbara Walters is accidentally shot in foot during hunting excursion with Si Robertson, quips: "It's still less painful than listening to Joy Behar"

September 2013: David Letterman snaps on-air and strangles Kim Kardashian, scores highest ratings in years; CBS encourages him to kill a guest once a week, twice during sweeps; as a result, Jimmy Fallon's ratings plummet, The Tonight Show is repeatedly beaten by reruns of Jimmy Kimmel eating breakfast

October 2013: Seth Meyers again replaces Jimmy Fallon; Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin replace Meyers; Arsenio Hall replaces Cooper and Griffin; a can of green snap beans replaces Hall; Jay Leno is fired from The Today Show, joins Soledad O'Brien in co-hosting CNN series Unemployed in America **

November 2013: Matt Lauer joins Keith Olbermann in pirate broadcast from Hugh Downs' basement in which Olbermann reads random words from a thesaurus; Tavis Smiley and Charlie Rose combine shows, interview each other; Jimmy Kimmel cuts Jimmy Kimmel Live! down from an hour to five minutes, explaining, "We're saving you time by showing the bits you'll just watch on YouTube anyway"

December 2013: David Letterman runs out of guests to kill, sets fire to Ed Sullivan Theater, is moved to Late Night Convalescent Home, shares room with Craig Kilborn; Jay Leno is booked on Carnival Cruise Lines to make imminent catastrophes seem not so bad to passengers

January 2014: NBC declares bankruptcy, replaces all original programming and news with reruns of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit; Al Gore buys NBC for $150, sells it to the Koch Brothers for almost twice that amount

February 2014: Craig Ferguson hosts the Academy Awards, leaves The Late Late Show, scores huge hit with series of films in which he ad-libs for two hours; robot skeleton Geoff Peterson takes over for Ferguson, eventually leaves to star with Jimmy Fallon in sequel to Taxi

March 2014: Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart quietly leave the CBS Evening News and ABC World News, spend years in seclusion and shame

April: 2014: All networks and cable channels shut down, pour money into Internet webisodes; Jay Leno finds steady work at Pep Boys in Burbank, is quoted as saying, "I've never been happier"; Carson Daly is alerted that the cameras in his Last Call studio have not actually been working for the past eight years

** This never airs

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