David Letterman to retire in 2015. Stephen Colbert to take over.

No...they had to ask NBC for permission, and then were only given access to *some* clips. Vinnie Favale (CBS VP of East Coast Late Night/Exec Producer of the special) talked about this on Howard Stern Monday morning.

 

That was probably the one that had the strongest evidence of what I was talking about. Dave asked her how old she was (which I thought might be touchy), and she was only 22. That was a rough looking clip.

 

I wish they had shown a little more of this clip from David's old morning show:

 

Why be petty about it now? Not really sure why nbc would still be uptight about loaning clips at this stage

 

This was the kind of stuff that made Letterman so unique. Always reminded me of the stuff Steve Allen used to do.

 

Although Johnny Carson's influence was emphasized, clearly Dave's biggest influence was Steve Allen, especially from Steve's late night show. He even stole a line from him ("I wanted to be on your show in the worst way." "Well, this is the worst way.") on the special.

On another note, I thought NBC "owned" the character Larry 'Bud' Melman and wouldn't allow Dave to use him on CBS. I don't think they even mentioned that name last night, only his real name, Calvert.

 

Fun seeing Will do Harry Caray again last night.

 

He was "Calvert DeForest" from the first episode at CBS. (He was a distant relative of DeForest Kelley, by the way.)

 

I'd nominate Paul Dixon as a primary influence on Mr. Letterman. Paul Baby showed up on WLWI in Indianaplis as it was one of the affiliates of WLW in Cincinnati, the originating station of The Paul Dixon Show. Starting in the mid-50s, Dixon did crazy stuff like giving away giant salamis to audience members (canned hams for Dave), and marrying a pair of rubber chickens on-air.

 

The Letterman retrospective was pretty good, but easily could have been twice as long. At least we got more "Late Night" bits than we've been seeing on the regular show. So here is some more classic Dave for ya:

 

These anniversary shows the best. I taped every one and watched them over and over.

 

I'm pretty sure that's an urban myth (or a popular internet misconception). As best I can discern, DeForest Kelley was named after inventor Lee De Forest, but was not related to him. Calvert Deforest was a distant relative of Lee De Forest.

 

Ahhhhhhh, you are correct! Mr. Kelley explained it here. It was his mother's friend who was related to Lee DeForest.

 

Larry was so great. The "Ask Mr. Melman" segments were unbelievably funny.

 

I watch these great old clips of David and I have to wonder, what the hell happened to Dave? I mean, he has since completely lost almost everything that made me love him and his funny sarcastic way of hosting his shows, especially the NBC programs. Since I evidently stopped watching him on a regular basis years ago, just when exactly did Dave become this extremely bored and tired on-air personality?

 

Mmm, maybe because he's 68? He's not a young guy anymore.

 

I'm with you there. I started watching in the early 80s when I was still a kid and became almost obsessed. His style of comedy was so new and sophisticated at the time and I knew it. When I started watching he was an almost underground cult figure, no one in my school knew who he was. Eventually some of the cooler kids caught on!

Oh man, I have this on a VHS tape I made when it first aired. All 90 minutes including commercials and local KTSM El Paso bumpers. Just pulled it out and watched it a couple months back to relive his NBC glory days.

dan c

 

The NBC show was a comedy show that also had guests. The CBS show was much more of a traditional talk show which I don't think interested him as much.

 

I missed the "A Life on Television" special. Is this going up online somewhere? I don't see it on the Dave's part of the CBS site...

 

But doesn't his company own and produce the show? Couldn't he have done whatever he wanted? Or am I missing something here?

 

Dave didn't have control over the NBC show, that changed in the move to CBS.

 

NBC owns them outright.

 

Yes, I was responding to the post that said he stopped doing the things he used to do and got boring or something on CBS

 

Vinnie Favale (VP of Late Night Programming for CBS and Exec Prod of the special) let it slip on Howard Stern's show the other day that they had literally 2 weeks notice to throw the special together! Talk about a hasty, improper send-off for their 23-year-old late night show. IMO.