Los Angeles ? Johnny Carson, who in three decades as host of “The Tonight Show” became one of America’s most influential political satirists as well as one of the entertainment industry’s most powerful figures, died Sunday. He was 79.

His nephew, Jeff Sotzing, a former producer of “The Tonight Show,” said Carson died peacefully but declined to give a location or other details.

NBC, Carson’s longtime employer, said the comedian died at his Malibu home of emphysema. He had suffered a heart attack and undergone quadruple bypass surgery in 1999.

Sotzing said there would be no memorial service.

Former NBC chairman Grant Tinker once called his run on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” “the biggest and best television has ever been.” When Carson announced his retirement in 1991, another comedy legend, Bob Hope, said it was “sort of a like a head falling off Mount Rushmore.”

While Carson was not the first “Tonight” host — Steve Allen and Jack Paar preceded him — he carried the format to previously unimagined heights and made late-night TV an enduring institution.

Millions of fans stayed up past their usual bedtimes to watch his interviews with stars and odd newsmakers, as well as sketches involving his silly, sometimes demented characters such as TV host Art Fern and fortuneteller Carnac the Magnificent. He is also frequently credited with giving vital early breaks to two top-rated successors — David Letterman and Jay Leno — as well as a legion of stand-up comics. That list includes David Brenner, George Carlin, Billy Crystal, Don Rickles, Joan Rivers and Jerry Seinfeld.

Ed McMahon, the sidekick who always introduced Carson with “Heeeeere’s Johnny!” on Sunday said the former talk-show host was “like a brother to me.”

“Our 34 years of working together, plus the 12 years since then, created a friendship which was professional, family-like and one of respect and great admiration,” McMahon said in a statement.

“It’s a sad day for his family and for the country,” Letterman said in a statement Sunday. “All of us who came after are pretenders. We will not see the likes of him again.”

Leno, who followed Carson as host of “The Tonight Show,” called him “the gold standard” of television.

“No single individual has had as great an impact on television as Johnny,” Leno said in a statement. “It’s hard to believe he’s actually gone. It’s a tremendous loss for everyone who Johnny made laugh for so many years.”

Peter Lassally, Carson’s producer for more than two decades, told reporters last week that even though the comedian had been battling emphysema “a long time,” he remained an avid TV viewer and was even sending jokes to Letterman for his monologues on his CBS show “The Late Show with David Letterman.”

King of late night

Known for his deadpanned expressions and wry delivery, Carson proved that late night could be profitable for the networks, and the wee hours are now crammed with talk shows inspired by his success on “Tonight Show.” But none of those shows will probably ever match Carson’s reach. In 1969, singer Tiny Tim and his bride, Miss Vicky, married in an on-air ceremony on Carson’s “Tonight Show.” Critics derided the event as a stunt, but an estimated 40 million viewers tuned in — a staggering figure for late night.

Carson kept growing his audience throughout the 1960s and 1970s, even as NBC’s competitors cooked up rival shows designed to end his dominance. But TV viewers developed a bond with Carson that others could neither duplicate nor shatter. In a 1978 New Yorker profile of Carson, writer Kenneth Tynan observed that this was “a feat that, in its blend of staying power and mounting popularity, is without precedent in the history of television.”

That goes a long way toward explaining why virtually every figure of importance from show business and politics eventually wound up on the “Tonight Show,” from Martin Luther King Jr. and Bill Clinton to Tom Cruise. All told, Carson hosted 22,000 guests during his 30 years on “Tonight.”

Johnny Carson shows a magic trick to his three sons, from left, Ricky Carson, Barry Carson and Cory Carson, at their home in Encino, Calif., on Oct. 16, 1957. Rick Carson died in 1991 in a car crash.

Midwestern roots

Some attribute part of Carson’s vast appeal to his Midwestern roots and sensibility.

Born in Corning, Iowa, Carson was raised in Norfolk, Neb., where he began his career as a teenager, performing a magic act he called “The Great Carsoni.”

Carson served in the Navy (a ship he was on, the Pennsylvania, was torpedoed in August 1945, killing nearly 20 of his crewmates) and subsequently attended the University of Nebraska. Honing his act by performing during college, he landed a job at a local radio station after graduation — WOW in Omaha, where he wrote comedy and announced commercials.

The comic moved to Los Angeles in 1950, becoming a staff announcer at the local CBS station, KNXT, which led to his own program, “Carson’s Cellar.” He subsequently wrote for Red Skelton’s TV show.

Carson ascended to network television at age 29, headlining a daytime show and substituting on CBS’s “The Morning Show.” In 1957, he became host of what become a popular ABC daytime show, “Who Do You Trust?,” which first paired him with McMahon.

When Paar decided to leave “The Tonight Show,” NBC saw Carson as the obvious replacement. Desperate to have him, the network used guest hosts for six months until Carson — who initially turned down the job — was free of his ABC contract.

If Carson was a king in the entertainment world, his personal life was thornier. Carson remained an inordinately private person for such a public figure, but the facts that came out often seemed at odds with his genial on-screen image. He married four times, was said to be a chain smoker and wrestled with alcoholism. He endured the death of one of his three sons, Rick, in a 1991 car accident at age 39.