Word: letterman
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...Letterman's second coming in late night has set off a high-stakes scramble. A week after his debut, Chevy Chase will launch his own talk show on the Fox network. A week after that, Conan O'Brien, the tousle-haired comedy writer plucked from obscurity by producer Lorne Michaels, will try to fill Letterman's old chair on NBC. Leno, feeling the competitive heat, has had his mug plastered on billboards around the country, while Arsenio Hall, despite slipping ratings, is still a hip-hop force to reckon with. Add to that Ted Koppel's sturdy (and frequently...
...revolving around Letterman. His new TV incarnation represents more than just a change of networks and an earlier bedtime; it marks the ascendance of a new generation. When Late Night with David Letterman made its debut on NBC in 1982, it was the prankish outsider, a subversive send-up of talk shows, television, the entertainment world in general. Letterman refused to fawn over guests; with the help of Vegas-obsessed bandleader Paul Shaffer, he took deadpan aim at show-biz phoniness. He griped about his NBC bosses, turned stagehands into stars, conducted elevator races in the hallway. His medium-twisting...
...question of the moment is whether Letterman's offbeat, sometimes abrasive style will work at 11:30, where the mainstream audience is more accustomed to the enthusiasm that Carson (and now Leno) brought to the job of helping celebrities promote their new movies. Industry prognosticators are cautious, if not downright skeptical. Leno, inheritor of the powerful Tonight franchise, is generally regarded as the front runner, if only because Letterman's show will have a weaker station lineup: more than 30% of CBS affiliates will be delaying his program by half an hour or more to make room for syndicated fare...
...Madison Avenue has a poor record of foreseeing seismic shifts in TV viewing patterns. As he moves closer to the mainstream, Letterman may find the mainstream has met him more than halfway. Letterman's hip, ironic, show-biz- hardened sensibility has, in the decade since he arrived, moved to the center of the culture in everything from sitcoms to Spy magazine. Billy Crystal used to poke fun at Tonight Show blather on Saturday Night Live ("You look mahvelous"); now he hosts the Academy Awards. Knockoffs of Letterman's Top 10 lists have turned up everywhere but on the backs...
None of which appears to be causing much concern among Letterman and his brain trust, who have spent the past month settling into their new digs and holding twice-daily meetings to plan their new show. Much of the activity has been on the architectural front. In 12 furious weeks, the old Ed Sullivan Theater -- where Elvis and the Beatles were once presented by the Great Stone Face -- was given a complete overhaul. In his new setup Letterman will have a more cavernous auditorium, a bigger audience (about 400 seats, nearly double the capacity of his old NBC studio...