NBC made an honest latenight host out of Jimmy Fallon on Monday, confirming him as the successor to the "Tonight Show"-bound Conan O'Brien on what will soon be known as "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon."

The noontime news conference didn't tell us much that we didn't already know, but the smiles were plentiful, as evidenced by this three-shot of "Late Night" exec producer Lorne Michaels, Fallon and NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker. Variety's hard-working man at the upfronts, Michael Schneider, delivered this report from the newser via Blackberry this ayem.

"You can never really be sure of these things," said Michaels, who took a risk in 1993 recruiting the then-unknown comedy writer O'Brien for the job of succeeding David Letterman. "But he's funny and smart and has a really good work ethic. You have to want this more than anything, and I think he does."

Looks like Fallon is going to get his formal intro to America as O'Brien's successor on tonight's edition of "Late Night with Conan O'Brien. As seen in this pic, clearly O'Brien's going to take him under wing and show him the ropes.

"Ok, now, the guest sits here, you sit behind the desk..."

CBS needed some happy news last week, and it got some courtesy of its resident Scotsman-turned-American in late night.

"The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson" notched a milestone in its three-year-plus competish in the wee hours against NBC's long-dominant "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" by winning the week ended April 4 -- Ferguson averaged 1.88 million viewers for the frame to O'Brien's 1.77 million.

Not that latenight always has to be measured strictly a death-match, zero-sum game -- both Conan and Craig are very funny fellows indeed and viewers are well-served by their diverse styles -- but it is a competitive business and ratings are the yardstick by which ad sales and pop culture traction are measured.

NBC number crunchers noted that Ferguson got a big boost that week from the post-strike return of CBS' big scripted guns, the three "CSIs," "Without a Trace," "Criminal Minds" plus the circulation lift from the NCAA finals coverage, while NBC was still mostly in reruns.

Looking back over the past few weeks, however, the trend is interesting. "Late Late Show" has been making it a real horse race with "Late Night" of late, in spite of the latter's lead-in benefit from "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno." Indeed, Ferguson is more competitive with O'Brien than his 11:35 a.m. companion, "The Late Show with David Letterman" is with "Tonight Show" -- the berth O'Brien is to move up to in the fall of '09.

Stephen Colbert comes across as so comfortable in the skin of his "Colbert Report" arch-conservative pundit persona that it's easy to forget he's playing a character that has been developed by him and the writer-producers on his Comedy Central skein.

Chief among those "Colbert Report" truthiness-deciders is Allison Silverman, who was upped last month to exec producer of the show along with Colbert and Jon Stewart. Silverman, whose resume includes stints as a writer-producer on "The Daily Show" and "Late Night with Conan O'Brien," has worked closely with Colbert during the past two years to fine-tune the character that walks a fine line between arrogant jerk and arrogant-but-lovable-jerk. (And arrogant-but-lovable presidential candidate as of Oct. 17, so long as those pesky Federal Election Commission rules don't drum him out of the race.)

"In the beginning we were conscious that he could turn out to be a real jerk of a character, and we still think about it a lot. We've always wanted him to be arrogant and willfully ignorant, but not someone you'd just hate," says Silverman, who joined "Colbert" shortly after it was picked up to series in 2005. "A lot of times it's all about the tone. Sometimes he'll do something that comes off as too repugnant. He'll say the exact same things but change the tone just a little bit and it makes all the difference."