According to a new report by Bill Carter at The NY Times, Alec Baldwin may be getting involved in NBC’s upcoming late night shuffle. With Jimmy Fallon set to take over The Tonight Show from Jay Leno in February 2014 and SNL’s Seth Meyers the frontrunner to pick up Fallon’s Late Night baton, the network is looking to make a change to the 1:35am post-Late Night timeslot too and Alec Baldwin is the top choice to take over for Carson Daly, who’s been hosting NBC’s Last Call at that time since 2002.
An anonymous network exec tells The Times that there’s interest between both NBC and Baldwin, who just wrapped up 30 Rock, in opening up a new late night slot for him. The format of Alec Baldwin’s hypothetical 1:35am show is expected to be similar to his podcast Here’s the Thing, in which he has conducted longform interviews with subjects like David Letterman, Lena Dunham, Lorne Michaels, Chris Rock, Kristen Wiig, and Judd Apatow. Carson Daly will probably be bummed that he and his three-person, on-the-run camera crew are apparently being pushed out the door, but at least he’s still the host of NBC’s #1 show, The Voice. And he and Jay Leno can always commiserate together about how NBC let the #1 hosts in the 11:35pm and 1:35am timeslots slip through their fingers.