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Who's the king of late night talk shows?"Heeeere's Johnny!"

Johnny Carson

Nearly 25 years after bidding adieu to the airwaves, the late Johnny Carson has managed to beat his contemporary confreres like David Letterman and Jay Leno to be crowned America's favorite talk show host.

In a national poll conducted by Quinnipiac University that surveyed 2,105 Americans, Carson emerged the king of late night TV, taking 25 percent of the vote.

Open-ended questions invited respondents to name their favorite host.

Retired funnyman David Letterman came in second with 13 percent of the total vote, followed by Jay Leno (7 percent), and Jimmy Fallon (6 percent).

A demographic breakdown, however, reveals different results, as Carson takes nearly half of the vote (45 percent) among older respondents (between 50 to 64).

That falls to one percent for people 18 to 29.

Letterman is most popular for viewers in the 30 to 49 bracket with 18 percent of respondents in that age group evoking his name during the poll.

But with a retired Letterman out of the picture, Fallon has become America's current favorite late show personality with 20 percent of the vote, followed by Jimmy Kimmel (11 percent) and Conan O'Brien (6 percent).