John William “Johnny” Carson (October 23, 1925 – January 23, 2005) was an American television host and comedian, known as host of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson for 30 years (1962-92). Carson received six Emmy Awards including the Governor Award and a 1975 Peabody Award; he was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1987. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1992, and received Kennedy Center Honors in 1993.

After graduating from high school and college in Nebraska, Carson served in the U.S. Navy. Carson started his show business career in 1950 at WOW radio and television in Omaha. He appeared on radio with Ken Case, an Omaha native who was later a news anchor and sportscaster in Monroe, Louisiana.

Carson soon hosted a morning television program called The Squirrel's Nest. One of his routines involved interviewing pigeons on the roof of the local Court House that would allegedly relate the political corruption they had seen. The show was a hit and led to Carson supplementing his income by acting as emcee at local church basement dinners where some of the same politicians and civic leaders that he had lampooned on the radio would come to ply their trade.

They were understandably eager to see Carson get out of town. The wife of one of these political figures owned stock in a LA radio station and referred Carson to her brother who was influential in the emerging television market in Southern California. Carson then took a job at CBS-owned Los Angeles television station KNXT, which was his entry to the big time.

Carson would later joke that he owed his success to the pigeons of Omaha. In 1953, comic Red Skelton – a fan of Carson's sketch comedy show, Carson's Cellar, which ran from 1951 to 1953 on KNXT – asked Carson to join his show as a writer. During one episode, Skelton knocked himself unconscious an hour before his show went on the air; as a result, Carson filled in for him.

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