The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson is an American television talk show broadcast by NBC. The show was the third installment of The Tonight Show. Hosted by Johnny Carson, it aired from October 1, 1962 to May 22, 1992, replacing Tonight Starring Jack Paar and was replaced by The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Ed McMahon served as Carson's sidekick and the show's announcer.

For its first decade, Johnny Carson's The Tonight Show was based at the RCA Building at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York City, with some episodes recorded at NBC Studios in Burbank, California; on May 1, 1972, the show moved to Burbank as its main venue with extended returns to New York for several weeks over the next 12 months. After May 1973, however, the show remained in Burbank exclusively until Carson's retirement. The show's house band, the NBC Orchestra, was led by Skitch Henderson, until 1966 when Milton Delugg took over, who was succeeded by Doc Severinsen less than a year later.

The series was ranked as one of the greatest TV shows of all time in polls from 2002 and 2013.

Johnny Carson's Tonight Show established the modern format of the late-night talk show: a monologue sprinkled with a rapid-fire series of 16 to 22 one-liners (Carson had a rule of no more than three on the same subject) was sometimes followed by sketch comedy, then moving on to guest interviews and performances by musicians and stand-up comedians, in no fixed order. Occasionally, Carson interviewed prominent politicians such as Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Robert F. Kennedy, and Hubert Humphrey, however Carson refused to discuss his personal political views on the show out of concern it might alienate his audience and resisted efforts from his writing staff, particularly head writer and admitted liberal Marshall Brickman, to include more political material in the show. Other regulars were selected for their entertainment or information value, in contrast to those who offered more cerebral conversation. Musical guests were chosen under the premise that viewers watching a show in the middle of the night would not appreciate raucous rock and roll or funk performances at a time most people were trying to sleep, and tended to favor musicians with a lighter or more traditional sound.

His preference for access to Hollywood stars caused the show's move to the West Coast on May 1, 1972. However, the show would continue to have episodes taped in New York until 1973 when production moved to Hollywood permanently. The Tonight Show would not return to New York until 2014 when Jimmy Fallon took the hosting reins. When asked about intellectual conversation on The Tonight Show, Carson and his staff invariably cited "Carl Sagan, Paul Ehrlich, Margaret Mead, Gore Vidal, Shana Alexander, Madalyn Murray O'Hair" as guests; one television critic stated, however, "he always presented them as if they were spinach for your diet when he did [feature such names]." Family therapist Carlfred Broderick appeared on the show ten times, and psychologist Joyce Brothers was one of Carson's most frequent guests. Carson, in general, did not feature prop comedy acts (Carson was not averse to using prop comedy himself); such acts, with Gallagher being a prominent example, more commonly appeared when guest hosts helmed the program.

Carson almost never socialized with guests before or after the show; frequent interviewee Orson Welles recalled that Tonight Show employees were astonished when Carson visited Welles's dressing room to say hello before a show. In contrast to the avuncular mien (Merv Griffin, Mike Douglas) and loquacious erudition (Dick Cavett) evinced by his contemporaries, Carson was a comparatively "cool" host who only laughed when genuinely amused; additionally, it was not uncommon for him to abruptly cut short monotonous or embarrassingly inept interviewees. Mort Sahl recalled, "The producer crouches just off camera and holds up a card that says, 'Go to commercial.' So Carson goes to a commercial and the whole team rushes up to his desk to discuss what had gone wrong, like a pit stop at Le Mans." Actor Robert Blake once compared being interviewed by Carson to "facing the death squad" or "Broadway on opening night." Guests who told jokes that offended Carson or disrupted the show risked being blackballed and never being invited back unless a guest was hosting; Kevin Nealon and Howie Mandel both recalled jokes that went awry and had led to them never appearing on Carson-hosted episodes again. The publicity value of appearing on The Tonight Show was so great, however, that most guests were willing to subject themselves to the risk.

The series' announcer and Carson's sidekick was Ed McMahon, who from the first show would introduce Carson with a drawn-out "Here's Johnny!" (something McMahon was inspired to do by the overemphasized way he had introduced reporter Robert Pierpoint on the NBC Radio Network program Monitor).^{[citation needed]} The catchphrase was heard nightly for 30 years, and ranked top of the TV Land poll of American TV catchphrases and quotes in 2006; it has been referenced in lots of media going from The Shining to Johnny Bravo to a "Weird Al" Yankovic album cut; it was even used for the character Johnny Cage in the video game series Mortal Kombat.

McMahon, who held the same role in Carson's ABC game show Who Do You Trust? for five years previously, would remain standing to the side as Carson did his monologue, laughing (sometimes obsequiously) at his jokes, then join him at the guest chair when Carson moved to his desk. The two would usually interact in a comic spot for a short while before the first guest was introduced.