Word: lettermans
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...course, hindsight is easy. As Bill Carter reveals in The Late Shift (Hyperion; $24.95), his richly reported book on the network battle over Letterman, NBC's blunder was, if not excusable, at least understandable. When the network negotiated a new contract with Leno in 1991, in part to keep him from jumping (ironically) to CBS, it guaranteed him the Tonight slot after Carson left -- not an unreasonable promise to the man who had been capably filling in for Carson for four years. Letterman, who preferred private sulking to office politics, never let top NBC executives know how crucial the Tonight...
...Letterman's ascension at CBS as the undisputed king of late night was confirmed by the Winter Olympics. Appearing each evening with his Top 10 lists and Gillooly gags, Letterman's Late Show was the Official Comedy Wrap-Up of the '94 Games. Ratings for his second Olympic week soared to 8.9 (compared with an average 5.8), the show's highest ever. What clinched it for Middle America was Dave's mom, who was sent to Lillehammer to report on the Games and banter on the air with her son. What a guy: he not only has higher ratings, makes...
...formidable influence of Letterman, the man and the mystique, could be felt when he showed up last Monday as a guest on Conan O'Brien's show. Dave's gracious praise for his successor on Late Night -- "You've really done a great job to carve out a wonderful identity for yourselves" -- was like the Pope's benediction. O'Brien needs it; after six months, he is as awkward and clueless in front of the camera as the day his show was born...
...took over as host of Later, NBC's post-Late Night half-hour recently abandoned by Bob Costas. Kinnear, the snickering host of the E! channel's Talk Soup, has done exactly what might have been expected with Costas' low-key, single-guest interview show: turned it into another Letterman knockoff. He has added a studio audience, an opening monologue (video clips of the day's news followed by Kinnear wisecracks) and lots of prepared shtick to keep the interviews from bogging down in, say, real conversation. For Julia Louis-Dreyfus, he introduced a taped bit purporting to reveal that...
Television: David Letterman is in his glory days...