Talk:Late Show with David Letterman

Characters, possibly recurring

Does anyone know about that lady who sometimes shows up at the Late Show. She seems to look Korean, and is the costume designer for the show. She usually likes to disrupt the show by sitting down on the couch, putting on make up in front of the camera, or giving Dave some water during that hot day. Does anybody have a clue about what I'm talking about? I can't find her in any of our articles.--Ed^{talk c E} 14:22, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

you're a tool. you sound like a tool. and she's just one of many random comedy bits involving the show's staff. and "that hot day" proper or parallel grammar with the rest of that sentence. no one likes a knob who can't speak their own native language. and don't assume she's korean. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.86.36.55 (talk) 07:30, 2 September 2006

Dave calls her "Sue" and she interrupts almost every night these days, always ending in her yelling an insult and storming off. There is also a guy who interrupts Dave's monologue a lot, and there were some skateboarders at one point. Clearly a decision has been made to add more of these random characters to recent shows. There are sometimes people who show up outside the window behind his desk. It's fun. A mention could go in the show "sketches" category. Rugz 06:01, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

She's Sue Hum, costume designer for the show. "The guy who interrupts" is Johnny Dark. Fitfatfighter 09:41, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Small Town News

I don't think it can really be argued that Leno is much more known for his "Headlines" bit than Letterman is for his "Small Town News."

Does anyone know how far back Small Town News goes? I'm guessing he did it during "Late Night," but I'm not sure if it actually precedes Headlines, which I assume he did during his guest-host stints for Carson.

And I'm curious if anyone has any speculation as to why the Late Show has decided to regularly have Small Town News air on the same night as Headlines. Km9000 23:38, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, that is my point. You think the Leno bit is more notable than the Letterman one, probably because you watch Leno. My wife and I have been watching the "Small Town News" bit on Letterman for years without realizing that Leno has something similar, because we can't stand Leno and don't ever watch him. Why don't we just note that they are similar routines and leave out any opinion about which one is better known. I also looked at The Tonight Show with Jay Leno article and saw that there was no reference to the Letterman bit in that article. --rogerd 01:50, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Small Town News preceded headlines by at least 6 or 7 years. Dave was doing Small Town News on his morning show in 1980 even before he did it on Late Night. Leno didn't begin guest hosting for Carson until 1986. NIST91 17:20, 26 May 2007 (UTC).

   Dave had been on NBC doing "Late Late..." immediately following Carson, and a lot of us expected him to succeed Carson. But when Carson retired (one suspects NBC might have preferred to stick with Dave, but that NBC was willing to give him a better combination of $ and artistic control) NBC end up giving "Carson's show" to Leno, and Dave went to CBS. NBC insisted that most of the running jokes Dave had created were their intellectual property -- probably rightly, since NBC got paid to let him continue doing Top Ten over on CBS.
   CBS gave him two things he apparently really wanted:

-- he could set up his own production company (Worldwide Pants) to produce the show (so everything was WP's IP, not the network's), and

-- basing the show in NYC instead of SoCal. (I don't recall whether he did a Top Ten on the last page of the NYTimes Sunday Magazine before or after the breakup, but the category was Ways That NYC Could Be Better; one was that there would be a place to get the news, that would get greasy ink all over your hands -- which at the time WAS already true of the NYT. In any case, i think "... from New York, the greatest city in the world" is something he believes in his gut.)

But a lot of his stock-in-trade wasn't so clear cut, or perhaps so worth threatening to litigate over; it might be worth researching -- is obviously fake news a humor genre that goes back to "humorist, social commentator ..." Will Rogers? Or Mark Twain (who spoke of current events under discussion "even in Podunk")?
   There could still be room for further research to add to the article, if this hasn't already been reflected there.
--Jerzy•t 10:07, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Confusing

"The rating separating Letterman and Leno increased and Letterman ended this experiment a month after it began." - This is confusing? Who had the higher ratings? Can someone rewrite theis? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.232.177.247 (talk) 08:11, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Seriously?

I read the entire article. So much space is allocated to trivial things, yet information about ratings is not included. Additionally I noticed that the whole Palin Controversy it not mentioned?? I know Wikipedia as a whole is ultra left wing and hates Palin, but its still interesting. Far more interesting then most of the information in the article. Maybe someone people need to let go of their control of this article and let it be improved by others.Mantion (talk) 09:42, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Hardly "interesting" -- it's covered over at List of Late Show episodes, with various other notable episodes. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 14:00, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

What's the implication? That the ratings for the Late Show are less than others from other channels? Not exactly an industry secret, bub, just read the news. Or do you want current numbers? Other sites have them readily available: as an encyclopedia it's not feasible to pull down numbers for 3,000+ episodes to cover all of the past seasons, which would have to be done if we did the current season. 75.141.15.56 (talk) 02:45, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Late Show compared with Late Night

I put in several hours on this, which was immediately deleted as “not encyclopedic” and “insufficiently referenced”. I’m putting it here for the select few that read talk pages. The talk page is where improvemeents to articles are discussed, and I think the article would be better if this were included:

The Late Show compared with Late Night

The Late Show is sometimes treated like it was the second part of Letterman's "nightly talk show", that Late Show is Late Night moved to another network. In fact there are significant differences between them.

Late Night is an outsider's show as well as a young man's show. Stuck in a time slot of little value: "nobody's listening", as he discussed with a guest. He had a lot of freedom to be wacky, and he wanted to. There were no major advertisers to inform content. Only a hard core of Letterman enthusiasts were watching a show at that hour.

With The Late Show, Letterman reached the peak of his career, even though it was an offshoot of his devastatin career failure, not getting The Tonight Show upon Carson's retirement. Just as the cancellation of The David Letterman Show led to a $1,000,000 contract to do nothing, and then Late Night, the end to Late Night led to his salary being doubled, and other externals showing success. Shaffer's band was larger, with a horn section (prohibited, on Carson's order, at NBC). Letterman had for his sole use an updated, historical theater, renovated on a 24-hour schedule (to have it ready for the first broadcast) at considerable expense. (The workmen appeared on the first broadcast.) The set was larger and more luxurious. The average age of the viewers was higher because of the earlier hour; older people in the United States on average go to bed earlier. Advertising was up, as one would expect in an 11:30 PM instead of 12:30 AM time slot. Budgets to pay guests were larger.

The show, however, lost most of its edginess and became a much more traditional talk show. "The World's Most Dangerous Band" became the sedate "CBS Orchestra". Announcer Bill Wendell retired, and long-time director Hal Gurnee and producer Jack Rollins also soon departed. At this point the show ceased to be serious competition for the Tonight Show. The greater distance between Letterman and Schafer cut down on their banter, since now they could no longer appear in a single camera shot. Gone were colorful characters like Brother Theodore, Father Guido Sarducci, and Chris Elliott's series of characters. There was less audience participation and fewer stunts. Trips outside the studio were limited to visiting the attendees or would-be sttendees waiting in front of the theater and to visits to Rupert Jee's Hello Deli, around the corner but in the same building. There were no more "suits of suet" or dental chairs, no bullhorns used out the window to passers-by floors below on Sixth Avenue, or to occupants of the same floor (the 6th) of the building across the street. Calvin DeForest had a much smaller role than did his NBC predecessor Larry "Bud" Melman, and certainly no sending him off on a road trip to Mexico with an early picturephone. (He got as far as Guatemala City.) Guests were much more distinguished — in a memorable January 8, 2015, segment, there was a 15-minute interview with Donald Trump, described by Letterman as "America's favorite cut-throat real estate mogul and slumlord".

But gone were the humble but colorful characters like the nut lady Elizabeth Tashjian, who ran a one-person Nut Museum with both the world's largest nut and the world's largest nutcracker, for which admission was one nut.

deisenbe (talk) 11:54, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

This is something you yourself wrote? The Nut Museum site supports none of it; and I assume the YouTube reference is just a clip of Trump's appearance. This isn't where you get to publish your own opinion of the show in such detail. What you wrote needs to be reflected by reliable sources, and then it won't need such extensive quoting. Phrases like "But gone were the humble but colorful characters..." are what I meant by "not encyclopedic", in case there's confusion on that score. It's a matter of tone. Dhtwiki (talk) 19:32, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

References