What We Have Lost With The Late Show

There may be a day again when TV executives have the backbone to support a show like Colbert’s. But The Late Show will be gone.

I don’t know that I’ll watch Stephen Colbert’s final episode of The Late Show tonight, which will also be the final episode of The Late Show’s 33-year run on CBS. I did, however, watch David Letterman’s. Last Thursday, the enigmatic, Santa-bearded comedian emerged from retirement for one last appearance on the show he created at CBS back in 1993. It was, as one might expect, a bit sentimental and a bit silly. The only two hosts The Late Show has ever known talked briefly about the death of the show, then about Letterman’s new dog, then about memories of his mother—who had been a frequent guest on the original version of The Late Show—and then the two adjourned to the roof, from which they hurled Colbert’s custom-made chairs, along with other sundry objects, in a bit they called “The Wanton Destruction of CBS Property.” And while it made me melancholy to watch these two titans of linear TV throw their last meal of watermelons from the roof of the Ed Sullivan Theater, it wasn’t only Colbert’s demise that was bumming me out.

It feels appropriate that the house Dave built would eventually fall due to the sniveling cowardice of the “suits,” as he liked to call them. (CBS declined to renew Colbert’s contract last year and decided to shutter the show in what they say was a business decision, but which many observers interpret to be an apparent move by Paramount to appease the Trump administration.) In 1991, David Letterman was the host of Late Night With David Letterman, a zany, aggro variety show that occupied the post–Tonight Show time slot on NBC. That year, Johnny Carson, the longtime host of Tonight, shocked both the viewing public and his network by announcing his retirement. As detailed in Bill Carter’s extensive history of the drama, The Late Shift: Letterman, Leno, and the Network Battle for the Night, Letterman had long dreamed of replacing his idol Johnny Carson, and Carson himself saw Letterman as his heir apparent. But, unbeknownst to either of them, NBC had made an agreement with frequent Tonight Show guest-host Jay Leno that the show would be his upon Carson’s retirement.

So Letterman lit out for the territory, taking his talents to CBS, where his Late Show began airing in 1993 as a direct time-slot competitor to Leno’s Tonight Show. Letterman’s show, then, came into the world as a giant middle finger to the network executives at NBC who did him wrong. Of course, it’s not as if Letterman independently financed a late-night talk show on public access TV. He just swapped one set of suits for another, but CBS granted him the independence to continue directing his venom toward his........

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