POSTED BY STUART LEVINE

Jay Leno remembers the "Tonight Show" transition well.

As Johnny Carson was stepping down as the king of latenight in 1992, both Leno and David Letterman were in line for the job. Letterman was at the time a 12:30 a.m. cult fave and Leno was a steady stand-up comedian who would often act as a fill-in host for Carson.

After much behind-the-scenes wrangling, Leno got the job and the ratings have been steady, so NBC can feel like it made the right choice. Letterman, of course, moved on to CBS where the network was finally able to create a latenight beachfront.

But now Leno will be on the other end of a "Tonight Show" transition, though this should be much smoother. Maybe not so much for Jay, though.

POSTED BY STUART LEVINE

Following the frantic exec session with Ben Silverman and Marc Graboff, NBC's next panel focused on the network's Sunday Night Football package. And, despite Silverman's success on "The Office" and "Ugly Betty," this was a group with just a few more accomplishments between them.

Sitting in the front row of the stage were NBC Sports topper Dick Ebersol, John Madden (pictured right), Al Michaels, Bob Costas, Cris Collinsworth and Keith Olbermann. Behind them were producer Fred Gaudelli, reporter Andrea Kramer, future Hall of Famers Jerome Bettis and Tiki Barber, and production exec Michael Weisman.

Michaels, forever known for his 1980 Winter Olympics call "Do you believe in miracles" on the U.S. upset of the USSR in hockey, is an announcing institution. He's appeared in more live primetime network broadcasts than any person in history.

Madden coached the Oakland Raiders to a Super Bowl win but that almost seems an afterthought at this point. His gravelly signature voice has become ingrained into the minds of football fans that the week's big game only matters if he's doing the color. That's not true, of course, with Fox and CBS also doing a steller job covering the league, but Madden's presence always raises the game up a notch.

Costas has won 19 Emmys and feels old school ... in a good way. There's no doubt about his first sports love, which is baseball, but his football acumen remains strong.

The lightning rod of the NBC football shows this year will be Olbermann, who has become a champion for liberals over the past few years. On his increasingly popular MSNBC "Countdown" show, Olbermann pokes and prods the Bush Administration. Whether he does the same thing to Peyton Manning and Terrell Owens remains to seen.

"If I say something negative about Reggie Bush, then I have to say something negative about Clinton Portis," Olbermann joked.

He'll get that chance early on. The network's first game is Thursday, Sept. 6 when Bush and his New Orleans Saints travel to Indianapolis to face the world champion Colts.

But, certainly, his appearance will bring in viewers who might not be as much fans of the game as fans of him.

"With Keith, there comes an interesting heat," said Ebersol. Referring back to Olbermann's days on "SportsCenter," "With Dan (Patrick), he changed the way generation of fans looks at highlights."

-- Stuart Levine

I wanted to like the Mort Sahl 80th birthday tribute event Thursday night at the Wadsworth Theater much more than I did.

The biggest problem was that most of the comics who moved through the turnstile Thursday night didn't offer anything close to political humor in the spirit of Mort. And that really shouldn't have been a surprise -- it's not as if Drew Carey, Jay Leno, Kevin Nealon, Richard Lewis and Paula Poundstone are known for their incisive social commentary. Neither are Jonathan Winters, Norm Crosby or Shelley Berman, but at least they were funny, particularly Winters, who trotted out his Leland Buckhorn dumb-baseball-player persona.

Lewis' time on stage in particular felt like a small eternity of jokes all about himself -- parts of himself that I'm guessing no one in the room wanted to hear that much about. George Carlin was funny with his now-familiar buzzword-rap routine, and he brought along a great clip of himself doing a Mort Sahl imitation from a CBS variety show in 1962.

Bill Maher at least felt like he belonged at a Mort Sahl tribute, with a few good Bush-bashing lines and the observation that among the GOP presidential heat, the only contender who isn't on his second or third marriage is Mitt Romney, the Mormon. But Leno and his not-funny jokes about Africa and obesity, Mel Gibson and Michael Jackson just fell flat, as did Carey and his "Paris Travel Lodge" schtick. (Maybe that was the point, to highlight how vapid most of standup comedy has become since the days when Sahl was riffing on Nikita and Ike, the arms race, civil rights, voting rights, etc.)

For me, Albert Brooks delivered the all-around funniest performance with his "I was told Mort Sahl had died" routine, complete with a eulogy that he delivered anyway. Emcee Jack Riley (aka "The Bob Newhart Show's" Mr. Carlin), who subbed for Larry King, had a good line about needing to do the event "to get a credit from this century."

By the time, Sahl came up on stage for the obligatory "this has meant so much to me," even he was underwhelming, red sweater and all. His best bit was noting the causal connection between subpoenas being delivered to key Bush administration figures and Dick Cheney's visits to the D.C. area hospitals.

"They're reconstructing Cheney, a Halliburton corporation," Sahl quipped, "and they're overcharging!"

In closing, audience members -- a crowd that included Hugh Hefner, Tommy Chong, Rob Reiner, Larry Gelbart, George Schlatter, George Shapiro, Fred Willard and Dick Van Patten -- serenaded Mort with "Happy Birthday" (never mind that Sahl's 80th was seven weeks ago). Event raised more than $100,000 for the Heartland Comedy Foundation, which aids older comics who have hit hard times financially.

Pictured above, back row from left: Richard Lewis, Jay Leno, Norm Crosby, Kevin Nealon, Hugh Hefner, event organizer Ross Shafer, Drew Carey and Albert Brooks. Front row from left: Shelley Berman, Jonathan Winters, George Carlin, Mort Sahl and Harry Shearer.

Photo credit: Derek Goes/GOES PHOTOGRAPHY

Now this outta be good, clean, liberal fun.

A strong lineup of good-hearted comics are set to deliver an 80th birthday tribute to Mort Sahl on Thursday at the Wadsworth Theater in Brentwood. Sahl turned 80 on May 11, and sadly, word in comedy circles is that he's hit some hard times financially. It's understood that Woody Allen, George Carlin, Dick Cavett, Robin Williams and others have opened their wallets to help out, and the Wadsworth Theater tribute is part of the fund-raising effort for Sahl, who resides in the Valley these days and at http://www.mortsahl.com/. There's no pension plan for pioneering, politically charged humorists who only did sporadic film and TV work, especially during the past few decades.

Comic Ross Shafer helped instigate Thursday's tribute at the Wadsworth, with everybody donating their time and services (including the venue). There was talk of trying to turn it into a TV special but as of now there were too many contractual conflicts among the roster of performers (a high-class problem indeed). Larry King is set to emcee, and performers lined up include Shelley Berman, Albert Brooks, Drew Carey, Jay Leno, Richard Lewis, Bill Maher, Keavin Nealon, David Steinberg and Jonathan Winters. Allen and Don Rickles have also contributed kudos on tape, plus there will be special guests, according to helmer Howard Storm, who gave publicist Warren Cowan a hand in getting the word out on the event Friday. Tickets are on sale to the public and can be bought half price at the Wadsworth box office by using the code "Mort 80."

Wow, summer's here in primetime for sure, just look at the Nielsen numbers, as Variety's ratings guru Rick Kissell dutifully does every morning so that you don't have to.

Wednesday's premiere of ABC's celeb impersonator hokum "The Next Best Thing" (featuring folks like this Borat wannabe doing their darndest to get work on cruise lines) wasn't half-bad, in a YouTube-silly kind of way. "Best Thing" opened to respectable summer-level ratings at 8 p.m., drawing about 7.7 million people with nothing better to do and about a 7 share of the adults 18-49 audience with nothing better to do. Fox had the lion's share of the traction last night with the two-hour opener of "So You Think You Can Dance," which drew 9.2 million viewers and 4.0 rating/12 share in adults 18-49, per Nielsen prelims.

Not much good to say about CW's post-season burnoff preem of "Hidden Palms." Every 18-34-year-old in the country had something better to do last night, or were turned off by all the carping about it being a pale rendition of "The O.C." in the desert. "Palms" (pictured right) didn't crack the 2 million-viewer threshold, and even in its target aud of teens and adults 18-34, "Palms" got creamed by CBS' "The King of Queens" repeat. Sympathies to "Palms" creator Kevin Williamson, who waited all season for this?!