![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/357557027c9b2ea8a4451b242512f87dec-johnnycarson-buffering.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
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\n This story ran in\u00a0Buffering, Vulture\u2019s newsletter about the streaming industry. Head to\u00a0vulture.com\/buffering<\/a>\u00a0and subscribe today!\n <\/p>\n \n And they\u2019ll include a bunch of the original musical numbers from The Tonight Show. Hi-yoooo!<\/a> Big news for Johnny Carson fans \u2014 and anyone interested in late-20th-century pop-culture time capsules: A hefty batch of 50 not-seen-in-decades Johnny Carson\u2013hosted episodes of The Tonight Show is headed to streaming next month, Vulture has learned. The new collection will live on Johnny Carson TV, the free, ad-supported streaming (FAST) channel launched five years ago by Shout! Studios. In addition to interviews with a slew of famous celebrities, from Lucille Ball and Gilda Radner to Mel Brooks and Muhammad Ali, several of the episodes being added will also include their original musical performances \u2014 a rarity with classic talk and variety shows on streaming or even linear TV.<\/p>\n The addition of 50 \u201cnew\u201d installments represents the biggest update to Shout! TV\u2019s Carson library since 2021 and will bring the total number of streaming episodes to 471. Housed under the banner of \u201cThe Very Best of Johnny and Guests,\u201d these episodes will premiere on the Johnny Carson TV FAST channel Saturday, July 5, with a marathon of exclusively \u201cnew\u201d episodes running through Sunday, and then again every weekend in July. For Johnny-heads who want to curate their own experience, all 50 episodes will also be available to watch on-demand a bit earlier \u2014 next Tuesday, July 1 \u2014 via the Shout! TV website<\/a> and stand-alone app, or on any<\/a> of the many platforms<\/a> that currently house<\/a> on-demand<\/a> episodes<\/a> of The Johnny Carson Show, as Carson-era episodes of Tonight\u00a0are labeled (so as to avoid even the tiniest bit of confusion with NBC\u2019s current incarnation of The Tonight Show).<\/p>\n Finding a way to refresh the Carson streaming offering has been a priority for Shout! Studios exec Matt Arsulich since he joined the indie media company a few years ago as senior director of brand management. While having 400-plus episodes streaming is nothing to sneeze at, it\u2019s also not that big a number for regular viewers of the Shout! offering. \u201cIt\u2019s really not going to take long for somebody who has this channel as part of their usual rotation to see, for lack of a better term, a rerun,\u201d he says. What\u2019s more, Carson hosted about 5,000 episodes of Tonight during his Burbank era (1972\u20131992), leaving lots of that two-decade run literally in a vault waiting to be seen again. \u201cAnd luckily, through Carson Entertainment Group, there is an underground vault in Kansas that has every episode preserved in its original analog form,\u201d Arsulich says. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of digital data that\u2019s available as well that has the guest appearances, so it\u2019s pretty simple to look up what talent has appeared on an episode.\u201d<\/p>\n Once CEG agreed to license more of the Carson library to Shout! Studios for streaming, Arsulich and his team began the process of figuring out which episodes they most wanted to add to their collection. They asked Carson\u2019s team and some other outside experts for suggestions, but like any streamer, they also tapped into data, looking back on five years\u2019 worth of viewership stats to understand \u201cwhat our audience was liking,\u201d as Arsulich puts it. So for example, because the Carson FAST channel puts up good numbers with its weekly Sunday showcase of episodes featuring stand-up comedy, the new batch will include Freddie Prinze\u2019s first appearance after the premiere of Chico and the Man and Jerry Seinfeld\u2019s 1981 debut, as well as multiple episodes with stand-up titans and future late-night icons Garry Shandling, David Letterman, Jay Leno, and Joan Rivers. Other episodes were chosen because they were timely. With the new Superman movie coming out in July, Arsulich wanted to be able to show Christopher Reeve\u2019s first appearance on Tonight from January 1979, just weeks after Richard Donner\u2019s version of the franchise was released and turned Reeves into an instant cultural icon.<\/p>\n While the decades\u2019 worth of curatorial effort by CEG makes figuring out which episodes to go after relatively simple and straightforward, there\u2019s still plenty of work \u2014 and expense \u2014 involved in adding new episodes to streaming. For one thing, episodes have to be converted from their analog form (videotape) to digital, and then later ingested into the Shout! TV streaming ecosystem. Episodes also have to be edited if there are film clips that can\u2019t be licensed or music that can\u2019t be cleared. \u201cThere\u2019s no AI or anything involved that\u2019s doing all this; it is a manual process,\u201d Arsulich explains. And while obviously fans would be thrilled with 100 or 200 additional hours, \u201c50 episodes ended up being the magic number that just made sense based on the workload involved to do the editing.\u201d<\/p>\n As noted earlier, one big difference between this new assortment of Carson episodes and what has been added to streaming before is that the new collection includes about a half-dozen episodes with musical performances, something Arsulich rightly labels \u201ca big, big deal.\u201d Historically, streamers have generally found securing music rights too complicated and\/or cost prohibitive<\/a> when it comes to talk and variety shows produced in the pre-digital era. (There\u2019s a reason that Peacock\u2019s SNL episodes from the last century don\u2019t include musical performances, save for the show\u2019s first five seasons.) But Arsulich says there have \u201cbeen some changes recently\u201d that made it possible to license music on a few episodes this time. \u201cThere\u2019s just more of an understanding about what streaming is vs. broadcast or DVD, so that these days, it\u2019s just a little bit easier for us to make those clearances for musical guests,\u201d he says. As a result, audiences will be able to watch Jim Henson performing \u201cIt\u2019s Not Easy Bein\u2019 Green\u201d with Kermit the Frog; Johnny Mathis doing his 1973 hit \u201cI\u2019m Coming Home\u201d; and Steve Martin delivering a banjo performance that Arsulich describes as \u201cjust gorgeous.\u201d The Jackson 5 (promoting Dancing Machine) and Paul Williams perform on a pair of episodes that first aired in the fall of 1974.<\/p>\n Some other highlights from \u201cThe Very Best of Johnny and His Guests\u201d:<\/p>\n \u27bc Zoologists Joan Embery and Jim Fowler \u2014 who appeared with Carson dozens of times, along with all sorts of animals and other creatures \u2014 pop up in several episodes.<\/p>\n \u27bc A slew of episodes feature SNL superstars, including Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd\u2019s June 1984 visit to plug the about-to-open Ghostbusters; Gilda Radner\u2019s one and only appearance on Tonight; and visits from Billy Crystal and Steve Martin.<\/p>\n \u27bc Besides multiple appearances from iconic Carson characters Carnac the Magnificent<\/a> and Art Fern<\/a>, \u201cThere\u2019s one episode that opens with Johnny dressed in a huge gaudy cowboy outfit, and he sings \u2018Rhinestone Cowboy,\u2019\u201d Arsulich says.<\/p>\n \u27bc The collection also includes interviews with a bevy of classic movie and TV stars, including Jimmy Stewart, Bette Davis, Lauren Bacall, Sammy Davis Jr., Lucille Ball, Betty White, Jack Lemmon, Clint Eastwood, Suzanne Pleshette, Albert Brooks, Martin Mull, Burt Reynolds, Tom Hanks, and Robin Williams.<\/p>\n In addition to its streaming home on Shout! TV, linear broadcast network Antenna TV<\/a> continues to air Carson episodes every night at 11 p.m. ET, while Carson Entertainment Group maintains a YouTube page<\/a> that posts occasional clips from the show\u2019s three-decade run on NBC.<\/p>\n
\n Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photo: Alice S. Hall\/NBCU Photo Bank\/NBCUniversal via Getty Images\n <\/p>\n