I thought having celebrities sing theme songs and then having the home audience was both interesting but a flawed concept. It was OK (very gimmicky) but I really didn't care for the various celebs singing the themes. I also thought it was unfair to West Coast viewers because the show was aired live in the East Coast but taped for the West Coast. That meant that viewers out here were unable to see the performances and then vote on them because the balloting was closed.
I thought the tribute to the late Johnny Carson by David Letterman was teary eyed. Obviously Carson liked Letterman more than Jay Leno and that's probably why he was selected. I would have preferred to have seen Ed McMahon and Doc Severinsen give the tribute to Carson. The clips for the tribute were basically the same ones that have been shown since Carson retired. I wish they could have made a new reel for the tribute.
The news tribute to anchors Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather and the late Peter Jennings was nice to see because it gave the viewer a chance to see the importance of journalism and how having journalists who gave you the news vs. a political agenda.
The tribute to the victims of hurricane Katrina, which entailed the wearing of large Magnolia flowers, which are the state flowers of Louisiana and Mississippi, was too much. The flowers were extremely large and they looked like those comical squirting flowers on the men and like giant corsages on the women. They should have worn the "traditional" ribbons or wristbands, which are visible but not distracting.
