Former `Tonight Show' host Johnny Carson dies at 79.

Byline: Sid Smith

His generation produced edgier, more outlandish and more innovative comedians. But for nearly three decades, none of them got the nightly welcome bestowed on Johnny Carson, the amiable, boyish funnyman whose hosting of NBC's "The Tonight Show" came to be synonymous with bedtime for countless Americans.

An icon, a living institution and familiar friend to so many he never met, Carson, who died early Sunday at age 79 at his home in Malibu, Calif., was that rare figure in show business, an industry so given to hyperbole: He was one star for whom just about every conceivable superlative fails.

"My reaction is with the rest of the country, in that I'm stunned," said Oprah Winfrey, who was told of Carson's death moments before addressing a gathering of television critics in Los Angeles on Sunday. "He has been one of the greats of our time."

Carson's longtime sidekick, Ed McMahon, said Sunday that Carson was "like a brother to me."

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

"All of us who came after are pretenders. We will not see the likes of him again," said David Letterman, host of the "Late Show with David Letterman." "Thank God for videotapes and DVDs. In this regard, he will always be around."

The comedian died peacefully, according to family members, who declined to give other details, except to add there will be no memorial service. NBC said Carson, a longtime smoker, died from emphysema

Last week, Carson's former producer Peter Lassally, now an executive at Letterman's production company, told reporters that Carson was still at it, occasionally writing monologue jokes for Letterman, in direct competition with Jay Leno, Carson's "Tonight Show" successor.

"I think what the thing he misses the most is the monologue," Lassally said. "When he reads the paper in the morning, he can think of five jokes right off…