Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight show, which debuts next month with actor Will Smith and U2 as guests, will look familiar to people who appreciate his current work in the time slot after Jay Leno. Fallon said he doesn’t expect to change his brand of comedy to tailor himself to an earlier time slot. Fallon and his successor at Late Night, Seth Meyers, met with reporters in Pasadena, Calif., on Sunday as NBC begins the process of a late-night transition. “This show has completely changed from when I first started,” Fallon said of Late Night, which he has hosted for five years. “I feel like we’ve blossomed into what will become the new Tonight show.” He rejected the idea of changes to make himself more appealing to an older audience that likes Leno. It’s a delicate subject at NBC, where executives believe Conan O’Brien’s limited appeal doomed their first effort to replace Leno. The executives anticipate Fallon’s light-hearted comedy will translate better. Leno closes his two-decade run on Tonight on Feb. 6 with Billy Crystal and Garth Brooks as guests. On Feb. 17, Fallon debuts at 11 p.m. Central time after NBC’s coverage of the Winter Olympics. He moves into his regular time slot a week later, followed by Meyers, who has Saturday Night Live chum Amy Poehler booked as his first guest.

In possible bad news for Oregon loggers, Michael C. Hall won’t rule out a return to playing Dexter. But he’d want to see the finish line. Hall, promoting his movie Coldin July at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, said in an interview over the weekend that he agreed with Showtime executives who recently declared that any potential spin-off series would have to include Hall. “‘Masuka!’ I would watch that,” he joked, referring to the show’s humorous forensics specialist Vince Masuka, played by C.S. Lee. More seriously, Hall said of a possible spin-off series, “I can’t even wrap my mind around that. And it’s all just theoretical until there is some sort of script reflecting somebody’s idea of where it could possibly go. But it’s hard for me to imagine what that would be.” Hall, 42, also won’t rule out returning to TV more generally. “Yeah, as far as playing Dexter again for an undefined amount of time, that’s a little daunting to consider. But doing another television series - there’s a lot of amazing stuff on TV. I don’t want to do that right away. But I wouldn’t say never to that.”

Front Section, Pages 2 on 01/21/2014