For the third consecutive night, Tonight Show host Jay Leno took a swipe at his NBC bosses amidst reports that he will be replaced by Jimmy Fallon sometime before 2014. 
 
 Various reports over the last several weeks have indicated that network executives are displeased with Leno’s repeated jokes about the network’s “poor” ratings. The standoffish relationship between Leno and his bosses came to a hilt yesterday when the New York Times reported that the late-night show would move to New York and have a new host within the next year. 
 
 “According to several reports — this is kind of scary — scientists say they’re getting closer and closer to being able to do Jurassic Park-style cloning of extinct species,” the monologue joke began. “Imagine that? Things once thought to be extinct can now be brought back from the dead.” 
 
 And the punchline: “So there’s hope for NBC. It could turn around.” 
 
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 >> Follow Andrew Kirell (@AndrewKirell) on Twitter ||||| As Jay Leno lobs potshots at ratings-challenged NBC in his "Tonight" monologues, speculation is swirling the network is taking steps to replace the host with Jimmy Fallon next year and move the show from Burbank to New York. 
 
 This Sept. 21, 2012 photo released by NBC shows Jay Leno, host of "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," on the set in Burbank, Calif. As Jay Leno lobs potshots at ratings-challenged NBC in his "Tonight Show"... (Associated Press) 
 
 This Nov. 5, 2012 photo released by NBC shows Jay Leno, host of "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," on the set in Burbank, Calif. As Jay Leno lobs potshots at ratings-challenged NBC in his "Tonight Show"... (Associated Press) 
 
 This Feb. 21, 2013 photo released by NBC shows Jimmy Fallon, host of "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon," on the set in New York. As Jay Leno lobs potshots at ratings-challenged NBC in his "Tonight Show" monologues,... (Associated Press) 
 
 This Feb. 18, 2013 photo released by NBC shows Jimmy Fallon, host of "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon," on the set in New York. As Jay Leno lobs potshots at ratings-challenged NBC in his "Tonight Show" monologues,... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - This Jan. 13, 2013 file photo shows Jay Leno, host of "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," left, and Jimmy Fallon, host of "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" backstage at the 70th Annual Golden Globe... (Associated Press) 
 
 NBC confirmed Wednesday it's creating a new studio for Fallon in New York, where he hosts "Late Night." But the network did not comment on a report that the digs at its Rockefeller Plaza headquarters may become home to a transplanted, Fallon-hosted "Tonight." 
 
 The New York Times reported the plan in a Wednesday story, citing unidentified network executives. The Hollywood Reporter had a March 1 report about a Fallon-Leno switch, which was denied by the network. 
 
 Looming over NBC is its messy, failed effort to replace Leno with Conan O'Brien, which ended in 2010 with Leno regaining "Tonight" and NBC losing O'Brien _ who got a $45 million exit deal _ to TBS. Leno's current "Tonight" contract expires in September 2014. 
 
 That occurred under a different regime, before NBCUniversal was taken over by Philadelphia-based Comcast Corp., which has a reputation for discipline. While NBC dithered and backtracked on its "Tonight" succession plan involving O'Brien, Comcast is likely to be more decisive. 
 
 "I don't know if it's possible to have a less orderly transition than Leno-O'Brien," said analyst Brad Adgate of media-buying firm Horizon Media. 
 
 Fallon contacted Leno in an effort to help smooth the potential switch, according to a Hollywood Reporter story Wednesday. 
 
 The latest roiling of the late-night waters began in January when ABC moved "Jimmy Kimmel Live" back to 11:35 p.m. Eastern to offer direct competition to Leno and CBS' David Letterman. 
 
 With the potential for Kimmel, 45, to draw advertiser-favored young viewers away from Leno (62) and Letterman (65), it's unsurprising that their networks might step up their succession planning. 
 
 At 38, Fallon is the youngest of the pack. 
 
 Leno, who took over "Tonight" from Johnny Carson in 1992, did not respond Wednesday to a request for comment. But he might be taking advantage of other ways to communicate _ the "Tonight" stage and its audience of millions. 
 
 Although late-night hosts are known for needling their network bosses on-air, the timing of Leno's latest jabs at NBC seemed to make the network particularly uncomfortable. They reportedly asked him to stop; he hasn't. 
 
 "You know the whole legend of St. Patrick, right? St. Patrick drove all the snakes out of Ireland _ and then they came to the United States and became NBC executives," Leno joked on Monday's show. 
 
 On Tuesday, he played off a news report about a Serbian woman with a rare brain condition that causes her to see the world upside down: "Isn't that crazy? It's unbelievable. She sees everything upside down. In fact, she thinks NBC is at the top of the ratings." 
 
 He kept up the pace Wednesday, according to a NBC transcript released after the show's taping and with gibe included. Leno quipped that scientists may be able to clone extinct species and bring them back from the dead, "so there's hope for NBC." 
 
 Leno, who briefly moved to prime-time to make room for O'Brien, has proved himself a wily survivor. Despite the challenge from Kimmel, he and "Tonight" have remained top-rated so far. 
 
 But if a change is destined, NBC could be eying next year's Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, as a premium launch pad for a revamped "Tonight," analyst Adgate said. 
 
 "If they're going to do it, it makes sense to do it when NBC is dominating television for 17 days," he said, and can heavily promote the "Tonight" switch. "They could have Fallon in Sochi, talking it up." 
 
 In the April issue of GQ magazine, "Late Night" producer Lorne Michaels ("Saturday Night Live") said a transition to Fallon had "an inevitability to it," adding that he was the closest to Carson that I've seen of this generation." 
 
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 http://www.nbc.com ||||| At Frankies Spuntino restaurant in Brooklyn, Jimmy Fallon orders the peppers with anchovies to share. "So great. Phenomenal. You will not believe." it's a homey place, tight and worn, unmistakably Brooklyn cool, and not far from the new Barclays Center arena, where we're headed next to watch a Nets-Lakers game. "You haven't been there yet?" Fallon says. "No? No. It's so great!" He claps. Clap clap clap. "I get to introduce you." He looks back at the menu. "So, some meatballs? Eggplant parm? We'll just do some aps, get to the game by halftime? Whatever you want. Easy. Easy-peasy." It is impossible to disagree with him. 
 
 Fallon says he's kind of ADD: "Not, like, diagnosed. Just my personality. Like, I read one chapter of a book and put it down. Thank God for Kindle." At 38 he still has a chiseled face, no bags, no fatigue, and he holds his shoulders high, like he's in a state of constant inhale, cocked and loaded and ready to deliver you a gift. He is joyful, easy, breezy, and if there is a buzz about him now, it is in the context of the Leno-Letterman game of chicken—both of their contracts are up in 2014. Anyone paying attention can see that the famously improbable Fallon is getting groomed for the Tonight Show throne. Even Late Night executive producer Lorne Michaels concedes as much: "I'm not allowed to say it—yet. But I think there's an inevitability to it. He's the closest to Carson that I've seen of this generation." 
 
 Fallon and I are just coming from a Late Night taping, where the audience was small, maybe 200 people, and the feel was intimate. "The biggest star on the planet!" Fallon said, and the blue curtain parted and out came Justin Bieber, doe-eyed, with a pompadour, skeleton arms jangling out of a camo jacket. "I missed you, man," Fallon said to him and told him how awesome he was, and then it was time to go on over and shoot random items at a basketball hoop—an iced cappuccino, a big bowl of ramen noodles. Noodles? Bieber missed every shot, but Fallon went girlie-underhand with his noodles, heaved, and the great blast of yellow flew through the air, free, gross, slimy—the whole thing was so stupid, so inane—and yet the Fallon gospel was clear: It's okay, America. It's okay to lie there in your bed hoping with all your heart that some friggin' noodles plop through a basketball hoop. The noodles swished through the net, became entangled, a kind of satisfying vomit, and all the people cheered. 
 
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 "I'm so happy right now. So happy," Fallon says. The peppers have arrived. A plate of four lying like limp soldiers in olive oil. "It's good, right?" Then the clap—clap clap clap. 
 
 Fallon tells me about first starting Late Night, how he knew audiences were dubious. "They were like, 'Jimmy Fallon?' " He had killed during his six-season run on SNL, from 1998 to 2004, alongside Will Ferrell, Tracy Morgan, Amy Poehler, and "Weekend Update" co-anchor Tina Fey. Then he left to go do movies (Fever Pitch, Taxi) that tanked, and which made Lorne Michaels's selecting him for Late Night all the weirder. NBC hated the idea at first, but Michaels was bullheaded; he would only do the show with Fallon. 
 
 "NBC was like, 'This is going to flop,' " Fallon recalls. " 'This is going to be like Chevy Chase's show.' " That legendary catastrophe was pulled from the air after just one month. "They were comparing me to that." 
 
 The point is, Fallon knew he was an odd choice—he got it. He had his writers use it almost immediately. "You loved him on SNL!" show announcer Steve Higgins declared in an early skit. "You hated him in the movies! Now you're ambivalent." 
 
 Fallon wasn't edgy. Fallon wasn't dark or complicated. Fallon was perhaps too cute for late-night audiences used to hanging out with the snarky, cool crowd. "Yeah, the cool crowd was always beyond my grasp," he says. He means this literally. "Like, my parents had a fence, a chain-link fence, and my sister and I were not allowed outside it." This was in upstate New York—Saugerties, Irish Catholic, strict. "I was only allowed to ride my bike in my backyard," he says. He rode in a circle, round and round, carving a dirt track. "Like Gus the polar bear at the zoo? That was me. Kids would say, 'What are you doing, man? Come out.' I was like, 'I can't.' We got a rope swing. On a tree. We had to wear football helmets to ride the swing. Kids could see us. They would pull up on their bikes so they could watch the Fallon kids, so weird. You know, 'Why are you wearing football helmets?' We're like, 'So we don't hit our heads!' " 
 
 His parents had parties; that was the entertainment. "Parties where everyone drinks and performs. I did a Rodney Dangerfield act." He studied Dangerfield's No Respect album—minus the curse words. His dad, as family lore goes, had located all the bad words on the vinyl recording and painstakingly scratched them out with a car key. "I would listen over and over. I didn't know what the word was. I didn't care. I wanted the jokes." 
 
 A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer in your pants, said the quote under his high school yearbook picture. He dropped out of college his senior year to pursue comedy in L.A., where Michaels found him, laughed at his Adam Sandler impersonation, even though Michaels famously never laughed during auditions. Seeing Michaels bury his face in his hands, crack up like that, it answered everything. "Every birthday cake I cut," he says. "Every shooting star, every coin in the fountain, I wished: SNL." 
 
 On the show, he was the guy who couldn't keep it together, who laughed during sketches. "Definitely a comedy foul. Lorne didn't like it. I didn't like it. But the sketches I laughed in became popular. At the end, it was like the audience was waiting. The studio started to shake. Like an earthquake. I couldn't hold it in anymore. Torture." 
 
 People criticized him for it, but audiences didn't care. Fallon's brand of comedy included the audience in the experience, and that, it would turn out, was prescient. "On Late Night, it's like we're all in on the joke," he says "That's what I wanted it to be. I'm not doing something sneaky. Inside jokes, I don't like those. We can all ride together, and everyone's on the same thing going, 'Aha, I know where you're going here.' And if we get weird, everyone knows, 'Okay, we'll go for that little ride of being weird.' Or if I go, okay, I'm going to try to be Neil Young and sing 'Pants on the Ground.' We're all just going to ride it out, laugh, and we're going to be like, 'This is so silly,' but it's happening. ||||| Jimmy Fallon played it cool Wednesday night despite the international spotlight suddenly on his future. 
 
 As The Hollywood Reporter first reported, the young face of Late Night is in position to assume the mantle of the Tonight Show host, with NBC debating internally about promoting him as soon as next winter. While Jay Leno has been taking shots at the network -- which has led to some acrimony between the suits and denim -- and continued to do so Wednesday, Fallon smiled and played it safe with some non-offensive snark. 
 
 ANALYSIS: Why NBC Should Be Planning Jay Leno's Exit 
 
 "Before we get started, I have to talk about the rumors that came out today that I'll be moving up to 11:30 -- or as my parents call it, eh, too late," he started with a tease. "Actually the rumors are true; NBC is turning the Tonight Show into a diving competition." 
 
 From there, he transitioned into a crack about ABC's new diving competition, Splash, and then a joke about the new pope and Super Mario. 
 
 The light touch on stage mirrors his behind-the-scenes approach, which included calling Leno to smooth over any angry feelings about all the rumors and reports.
– Hmm, can anyone think of a reason Jay Leno might be unhappy with NBC? Amid rumors that he's being replaced as Tonight Show host by Jimmy Fallon, Leno has mocked his network for the past three nights, the AP reports. Late night hosts often take potshots at the hand that feeds them, but this time around the network has asked Leno to stop. He hasn't: Last night: "Scientists say they’re getting closer and closer to being able to do Jurassic Park-style cloning of extinct species. Imagine that? Things once thought to be extinct can now be brought back from the dead. So there’s hope for NBC. It could turn around." (Hat tip to Mediaite for the video.) Tuesday: Referring to a Serbian woman with a rare brain condition that causes her to see the world upside down, he quipped, "Isn't that crazy? It's unbelievable. She sees everything upside down. In fact, she thinks NBC is at the top of the ratings." Monday: "You know the whole legend of St. Patrick, right? St. Patrick drove all the snakes out of Ireland—and then they came to the United States and became NBC executives." Fallon, who has called Leno to try and smooth things over, also addressed the rumors last night, according to the Hollywood Reporter: "Before we get started, I have to talk about the rumors that came out today that I'll be moving up to 11:30—or as my parents call it, eh, too late. Actually the rumors are true; NBC is turning the Tonight Show into a diving competition," he said, a reference to new ABC reality show Splash. And in an interview for the April issue of GQ, Fallon said hosting the iconic show "would be great, sure, I guess. I'd love it, but it's not on my mind. I'm in no rush to do anything. I'm kind of a boring character in that book. I'm not in a fight with Jay or Conan, or any of them." (In the same article, Lorne Michaels says a Fallon takeover is inevitable, calling the comedian "the closest to Carson that I've seen of this generation.") Still no official word on the all-but-certain rumors, but NBC did confirm yesterday that it is creating a new New York studio for Fallon, who already hosts Late Night in the city. Leno hosts Tonight in Burbank. One analyst notes that the transition could take place during next year's Winter Olympics. "If they're going to do it, it makes sense to do it when NBC is dominating television for 17 days," and can heavily promote the switch, he says. "They could have Fallon in Sochi, talking it up."