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Jay Leno takes on The Tonight Show’s hosting duties again on March 1st. NBC is pushing top name stars and atheletes to kick-start the show with Leno to combat bad publicity. The cancellation of Leno’s primetime show, The Jay Leno Show, and subsequent disaster moving The Tonight Show’s timeslot in order to keep both Leno and Conan O’Brien on the roster, only to lose O’Brien in the process, had long time viewers complaining and fans of O’Brien protesting NBC’s actions.

Leno’s guests for the premiere week of The Tonight Show include former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, gold medal Olympians Apolo Anton Ohno, Shaun White and Lindsey Vonn, American Idol singer Adam Lambert, the cast of MTV’s Jersey Shore, country singer Brad Paisley and American Idol judge Simon Cowell. Leno’s upcoming guests in the following weeks include Morgan Freeman, Kim Kardashian, Jamie Foxx and Dakota Fanning.

The controversy surrounding the cast of MTV’s Jersey Shore and recent comments by American Idol judge Simon Cowell should intrigue viewers and provide some colorful moments during the first week of the show. The combination of Sarah Palin and Adam Lambert booked on the same night, along with the fact that Palin’s first interview on a late-night talk show is the rival to David Letterman’s show, with whom Palin has feuded with in the past, might pique viewer interest. This could be good programming or clever fanning of the flames to gain viewership from bad PR that might result in lower ratings than competitor Letterman’s show.

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NBC appears to be in damage control after the Leno/O’Brien Tonight Show controversy. Leno provided an hour long interview Thursday on his side of the story regarding the changes at The Tonight Show and cancellation of his primetime one hour show on NBC. Winfrey had a long list of pointed questions to ask Leno, some apparently not easy for him to answer. Leno made it clear NBC screwed up and that he must take some time to improve his image since signing on to replace Conan O’Brien as host of The Tonight Show. Much of the interview centered around Leno’s side of the story, making him appear at times to be an uninvolved party in the NBC decision. At other times Leno’s focus seemed to be on the business and ratings side of television, giving the impression, emotions aside, it’s just business and this happens all the time in the television industry. Winfrey mentioned polls on the Tonight Show controversy on the Oprah Winfrey website skewed in favor of O’Brien approximately 80% to 20%.

At the end of the Leno interview Winfrey made it clear O’Brien was also invited for a interview to reveal his side of things. O’Brien’s people stated now was not the right time for an interview. Winfrey left the invitation for O’Brien open whenever the time was right for an interview on her show. From the Leno interview and conversations online it looks like Leno and NBC have some work to do to smooth over the past few weeks controversy and get back on the road to high ratings on The Tonight Show when it begins to air with Leno as host starting March 1.

Later in the evening on ABC, Jimmy Kimmel’s monologue revealed an irked Kimmel commenting on Leno’s statement Kimmel “sucker-punched” him on Leno’s 10 at 10 segment during the Oprah interview. Kimmel seemed none too pleased over being shown as a bad guy by Leno in the Oprah interview since most comics would joke about the situation, being news of the day. Kimmel then proceeded to show an edited clip of Leno’s interview complete with R.E.M.’s “Everybody Hurts”, meant to skewer Leno.

Read portions of the Oprah/Leno interview transcript:

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