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David Letterman Retires

Oscar Madison said:
Looks like they are rerunning episodes from the anticlimactic last two years - after the capture of "Red John" and after the show went down the tubes. Presumably this may have something to do with not conflicting with the episodes running in syndication. Still, it's a dumb move. CBS really would be better off with "best of" reruns but maybe there are now some contractual issues. Maybe Dave has made a deal to sell his reruns elsewhere. His hero, Johnny Carson, did alright selling his reruns to video.
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does Dave have any plans to sell best of DVDs on late night infomercials? what about some streaming deal? NBC hasn't done anything with their shows of him, they haven't been doing anything with Conan or Leno either
 
nomadcowatbk said:
does Dave have any plans to sell best of DVDs on late night infomercials? what about some streaming deal? NBC hasn't done anything with their shows of him, they haven't been doing anything with Conan or Leno either
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All depends on who owns the rights to those shows. During much of his run, Carson Productions owned the Tonight Show. The show reverted to NBC when he retired (as did Late Night, which Carson also owned). But Carson Productions owns the shows the company produced, including rerun, video and streaming. They may own Dave's Late Night shows, or at least have an interest in them.

Ed Sullivan's company is still profiting from specials using clips from The Ed Sullivan Show and from DVD sales.

Worldwide Pants (Letterman) apparently produced and owned the Late Show and Late Late Show during Dave's run and as part of his contract had a sitcom production deal (Everybody Loves Raymond).

As Disney has shown, scarcity can make properties more profitable. They may hold stuff off the market or put it on and take it off in order to bring it back later.
 
I still can't figure out why the show ended on a Wednesday instead of a Friday like it did with Carson and others. Maybe Dave's involvement in auto racing and this weekend's Indianapolis 500 was why? Also, from at least 4 pictures I've seen, they're already gutting the Ed Sullivan Theater studio, like it was 1993 all over again. Me personally? I think Jimmy Fallon will be the biggest winner once all is said and done. I haven't seen a single second of Corden's late show and don't plan to either (CBS of Hartford already delays it by half an hour). Lastly, do we have the final numbers as it relates ratings-wise? The one market I'd love to see is Indianapolis and the numbers for WTTV-TV (CBS) channel 4 of Bloomington. I know Dave was from Muncie originally.

P.S. I attended the show in person 3 times: 1995, 1997 and 1999. I was slated for one other visit but couldn't make it.
 
The Nielsen ratings week begins on Thursday.
The week beginning on Thursday, May 21, is a non-rated week (according to Nielsen TV ratings information).
 
Oscar Madison said:
All depends on who owns the rights to those shows. During much of his run, Carson Productions owned the Tonight Show. The show reverted to NBC when he retired (as did Late Night, which Carson also owned). But Carson Productions owns the shows the company produced, including rerun, video and streaming. They may own Dave's Late Night shows, or at least have an interest in them.


As Disney has shown, scarcity can make properties more profitable. They may hold stuff off the market or put it on and take it off in order to bring it back later.
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scarcity can also increase pirating
 
KML-224 said:
(CBS of Hartford already delays [Corden] by half an hour).
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Corden is also delayed in Houston, New Orleans, Tulsa and St Louis. And that's just in the Central time zone. Anywhere else?

Also, Seth Meyers is delayed half an hour in San Antonio.
 
mvcg66b3r said:
Also, Seth Meyers is delayed half an hour in San Antonio.
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I was not aware of that, but just verified it by looking up the schedule. Is WOAI the only NBC affiliate that still delays "Late Night"? I had sort of been under the impression that NBC had locked-up 100 percent live clearance of "Late Night" sometime ago.

Speaking of San Antonio, wasn't KENS the last CBS affiliate in the country to stop delaying Letterman by 30 minutes and put him on at 10:35? I believe KMOV in St. Louis was the next-to-last holdout.
 
When Jack Paar left the Tonight Show, Johnny Carson still had six months left on an exclusive contract with ABC. To fill the gap, "The Tonight Show" operated with a different host each week during the interim; everyone from Hugh Downs to Soupy Sales (!) It's unknown of course whether CBS ever considered such an idea (with a west coast-produced show while the New York theatre is being remodeled.)

The difference though, in my opinion, is that NBC has always been more format-oriented while CBS is more star-oriented. Not that starpower isn't important to NBC; but they are structured around the idea that there will always be a "Today Show" and a "Tonight Show," no matter who the hosts are. Pat Weaver's ideas from 1953 are still influential, and as far as NBC is concerned, they still seem to work.

CBS's late night shows have been built around specific stars, i.e. "The Merv Griffin Show" or "The Pat Sajak Show." The Letterman show might well have continued on CBS as "Late Night" had NBC not trademarked the title. I assume the Colbert series will continue the "Late Show" title, but I could easily be wrong.
 
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For the record, in addition to his kids' show, Soupy Sales hosted a ground breaking local late night show in Detroit (WXYZ-TV) which offered serious competition to Steve Allen and Jack Parr, before ABC picked up the kids' show and Soupy relocated to LA. He was an excellent interim Tonight Show host and might have done well in late night had he not been so strongly typecast as a kids' host. In the 80s, Soupy did a midday comedy/talk show on WNBC, New York (between Imus in morning drive and Howard Stern in PM drive) and more than held his own. In addition to his abilities as a comedian, he was (surprisingly) an excellent interviewer (both light and serious subjects).

In the late 50s, after dumping Pat Weaver, NBC emphasized stars as in: "The Jack Parr Tonight Show" and "The Dave Garroway Today Show."

As noted, Pat Weaver did not invent the Tonight Show format. Credit for that goes to Godfrey's daytime show and to Steve Allen's local show on KNX. He did invent what he called the magazine concept (what we now call "spots"). Instead of advertisers owning shows, produced by their ad agencies, and buying and selecting time slots (and renting network facilities), networks selected and scheduled shows and sold spot avails in them to advertisers. He can also claim credit for the Today Show format and for Monitor (a radio version of the Today format which ran throughout the weekend for almost 20 years).
 
frankberry said:
The Nielsen ratings week begins on Thursday.
The week beginning on Thursday, May 21, is a non-rated week (according to Nielsen TV ratings information).
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Wow I didn't know Nielsen did non-rated weeks since the "black weeks" ended in the 1970s. Is it just because it's a holiday?
 
Carson ended, specifically, on May 22nd, 1992.

If Dave had finished on Friday, it would have been May 22nd as well.

I'm surprised Dave didn't finish up the week, ratings sweeps week/month or not, on Friday.
 
Wright County Guy said:
Carson ended, specifically, on May 22nd, 1992.

If Dave had finished on Friday, it would have been May 22nd as well.

I'm surprised Dave didn't finish up the week, ratings sweeps week/month or not, on Friday.
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a series finale is worth more to the network on the last night of sweeps vs the Friday of a holiday weekend, they also used to to new shows during holiday periods, also Dave hadn't been doing new Friday shows (actually taped on Thursday) during the "summer" for the past few years
 
I imagine CBS and World Wide Pants could not come to a rebroadcasting agreement. But why put on a cancelled show in it's place. If they are going to go that route why not dig into the vault and pull out some old classic CBS hits. It's obvious that they are just planning to tread water in late night until fall.
 
Oscar Madison said:
In the 80s, Soupy did a midday comedy/talk show on WNBC, New York (between Imus in morning drive and Howard Stern in PM drive) and more than held his own. In addition to his abilities as a comedian, he was (surprisingly) an excellent interviewer (both light and serious subjects).
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Actually, I don't doubt it, but it may have been much easier for him to do that on radio than on TV; where he might have been expected more to rely on gags and schtick.
 
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