"LATE NIGHT" 12,326

The master of
"Late Night"

"LATE  NIGHT" TURNS  20
WITH  DAVID  LETTERMAN  !

BLOG  POST

by Felicity Blaze Noodleman

Los Angeles, CA

08.30.13

From "wikipedia.com"  Image supplied from the CBS television network.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Show_with_David_Letterman

*  Special thanks to "Google Images", "wikipedia.com", "The Hollywood Reporter", 
"about.com", and "The Washington Post".

This has been a very busy week for me with the new article I’ve been writing.  This is also the Labor Day weekend and I’m running short of time!  There has been much research and analyzation for this piece we are still writing and it still is not ready to post.  My apologies for presenting this story on David Letterman and his “Late Night” show which has always been “sometimes worth watching TV”.  If you have not heard David is celebrating 20 years with his “Late Night” show on the CBS network.

Hopefully by next week the new article will be polished and ready to post.  We’re still not sure of a title for the piece but it is a look at slavery and how it is being adapted for use into today’s world.  We hope you’re going to have a great holiday week end as it is the official end of summer, make it a big blow out!  We also want thank all of our wonderful reader who have stayed with us over the summer.  You all are a big part of the "Noodleman Group" and have been growing lately.   All of you are just as important as the contributing sources in the group! Until next week, all my love, Felicity. 

Late Show with David Letterman

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Late Show with David Letterman is an American late-night talk show hosted by David Letterman on CBS. The show debuted on August 30, 1993, and is produced by Letterman's production company, Worldwide Pants Incorporated and CBS Television Studios. The show's music director and band-leader of the house band, the CBS Orchestra, is Paul Shaffer. The head writer is Matt Roberts and the announcer is Alan Kalter. Of the major U.S. late-night programs, Late Show ranks second in cumulative average viewers over time and third in number of episodes over time. The show leads other late night shows in ad revenue with $271 million in 2009.

In most U.S. markets the show airs at 11:35 p.m. Eastern/Pacific time, but is recorded Monday through Wednesday at 4:30 p.m., and Thursdays at 3:30 p.m and 6:00 p.m. The second Thursday episode usually airs on Friday of that week.

In 2002, Late Show with David Letterman was ranked No. 7 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time. CBS has a contract with Worldwide Pants to continue the show through 2014; by then, Letterman will surpass Johnny Carson as the longest tenured late-night talk show host.

When Letterman moved to CBS and began Late Show, several of Late Night's long-running comedy bits made the move with him. Letterman renamed a few of his regular bits to avoid legal problems over trademark infringement (NBC cited that what he did onLate Night was "intellectual property" of the network). "Viewer Mail" on NBC became the "CBS Mailbag". and Larry "Bud" Melman began to use his real name, Calvert DeForest. Paul Shaffer's "World's Most Dangerous Band" became "The CBS Orchestra", a jab at NBC regarding the show's new home, and a play on the NBC Orchestra of the long running The Tonight Show. Letterman's signature bit, the Top Ten List, was perfunctorily renamed the "Late Show Top Ten List" (over time it was simply referred to again by its original name).

After Letterman was introduced on Late Show's very first episode, NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw accompanied him on stage and wished him "reasonably well". As part of a pre-arranged act, Brokaw then proceeded to retrieve a pair of cue cardswhile stating that "These last two jokes are the intellectual property of NBC!" After he carried them off stage, Letterman responded, "Who would have thought you would ever hear the words 'intellectual property' and 'NBC' in the same sentence?" In his opening monologue, Letterman said "Legally, I can continue to call myself Dave" but joked that he woke up that morning and next to him in bed was the head of a peacock (while the orchestra played the theme from The Godfather).

In ratings, Letterman's Late Show initially dominated Leno's Tonight Show for its first two years. However, Letterman was more reluctant than Leno's Los Angeles-based show to capitalize on the 1994–1995 O. J. Simpson murder case. Finally, Leno pulled ahead on July 10, 1995, starting with a Hugh Grant interview, after Grant's much-publicized arrest for picking up an LA prostitute.  Leno also benefited from the lead-in provided by NBC's popular Must See TV prime time programs of the mid-to-late 1990s. Likewise the CBS network was hurt by affiliation switches in late 1994 relating to Fox picking up CBS's National Football League rights, stunting the Late Show just as it was beginning to gain traction.

"wikipedia.com"  

David Letterman, through the years: The comedian has been a mainstay of late-night television for three decades and a Kennedy Center honoree. He will celebrate his 20th year as the host of “Late Night” Thursday.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/david-letterman-2012-kennedy-center-honoree/2012/11/30/77d96768-38bd-11e2-b01f-5f55b193f58f_gallery.html

David Letterman, Bill Murray to mark 20 years of ‘Late Show’ on CBS

“The Washington Post”

By Dan Zak, E-mail the writer

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported that Bill Murray was the guest on the final episode of "Late Night with David Letterman"; Murray last appeared on the show in February 1993, four months before Tom Hanks was Letterman's final guest on NBC. This version has been updated.

On Thursday night, David Letterman marks 20 years on CBS, a length of time that is nearly one-third the age of the network’s average viewer (cue rimshot). His guest will be fellow sexagenarian Bill Murray, who was also the guest on Letterman’s first show on CBS, in August 1993, and his first late-night show ever, on NBC in 1982. If the pair’s 24 previous interviews on “Late Show” are any indication, this one will involve a costume, a song, some kind of gag, and the trading of unpleasantries between two men who have settled into a good-natured glumness about their elder statesmanship.

Letterman made his initial mark by subverting the talk-show template, and Murray proved an enduring and capable foil by subverting the role of the talk-show guest. They were troublemakers of television, equals in their rebellion.

Paul Shaffer, Musical Director, The Late Show with David Letterman on CBS. Late Show With David Letterman .  Paul is David's partner "in comedy"!

 “I swear, Letterman, if it’s the last thing I’m gonna do,” said a 31-year-old Murray during the first “Late Night,” on Feb. 1, 1982, “I’m gonna make every second of your life, from this moment on, a living hell.”

Nobody would’ve said that to Johnny Carson, and nobody would say that to Jay Leno. Now Leno is preparing to pass the “Tonight Show” torch — for real this time — when he airs his last show Feb. 6. The baby boomers, represented by Leno, are surrendering to Jimmy Fallon and Generation X, hoping to also lure millennial viewers and whichever tortured demographic watched the entirety of Sunday’s MTV Video Music Awards, at which Fallon, literally genuflecting, introduced Justin Timberlake as if he were Nelson Mandela.

“I am so honored to be standing right here next to you!” Fallon gushed to his fellow 30-something, who was receiving the equivalent of a lifetime achievement award.

Letterman, a Kennedy Center honoree last year, would never have given such an obsequious introduction without laying on sarcasm with a trowel. But Fallon’s hosting shtick is buddy-
buddiness, evidenced by his sunny jam sessions with musicians on his late-night show. Letterman has always been a cynic. Fallon will take over his ratings rival as an optimist, an Eddie Haskell without the smarm, a real ESFP (for you HR types). It’ll be grump vs. cherub — vs. whatever Jimmy Kimmel is — in the 11:35 p.m. time slot.

Letterman’s contract is up next year, and in an interview with The Washington Post in November, he implied that he can’t see beyond a 25th anniversary with CBS. As for an heir to “Late Show,” he pulled a familiar name out of the air.

“I would be eager to see what the next thing is,” Letterman said during the interview, which took place in his production offices in New York. “And I don’t wanna keep jumping up and down for Jimmy Fallon, but I think — I can’t tell whether he’s figured something out, or, I dunno. I don’t think he’s radically different enough for the form to say it’s breakthrough, but he’s doing different things that people respond to.”

Fallon, of course, was offered the “Tonight Show” job and took it. Regardless, we are witnessing the final years of David Letterman’s late-night career, which has staked territory for rough-hewn absurdity in an otherwise polished and regimented environment. For 20 years, “Late Show” has been Letterman’s attempt to conjure chaos within the strict talk-show format, whether by inviting and then needling unpredictable guests, hurling objects off the top floor of his building at 53rd and Broadway, or rendering zany non-sequiturs into a Top 10 list. As always, Letterman will mark a special milestone in this career with his peer in sarcasm, Bill Murray.

The actor was David Letterman's first guest when the CBS late-night talker premiered Aug. 30, 1993. He will be back on the couch to celebrate the Late Show's 20th anniversary on Thursday, Aug. 29, marking his 26th time on the show.  (“The Hollywood Reporter”)

There was Bill, in 1982, performing Olivia Newton-John’s “Physical” after his sit-down interview.

There was Bill, in 1993, spray-painting “DAVE!” on Letterman’s desk on the first “Late Show.”

There was Bill, in December, turning his entrance into a rendition gag, arriving on the stage of the Ed Sullivan Theater after being hooded and tasered, because why not?

Murray has shown up in football gear, a smoking jacket and beret, and, most extravagantly, on crutches and wearing a ushanka, with a sequined magenta leotard underneath a winter coat. Paul Shaffer always plays him on with “Physical” or the theme to “Star Wars,” which Murray memorably set to words on “Saturday Night Live” during the Carter administration.

Letterman knows to step out of his way, and Murray knows how to push the host’s buttons.

“Well, I got a message, a phone call, in my dressing room from a hysterical woman,’ Murray said in 1994, speaking in a frontiers-y accent and wearing a cowboy getup. “May I borrow your phone for a moment, please?”

“Bill, I’m going to ask you to stop talking like that,” Letterman said. “Or I’ll take your little kerchief there, tighten it up and hook it to a bus on Broadway.”

For 30 years, David Letterman has redefined the late-night talk show while

perpetuating its traditions. 

They laughed, and Letterman gave him the phone, and Murray called Letterman’s mother, and told her that her son hadn’t given up smoking, and then asked about Indiana’s corn crop.

In 2007, to celebrate Letterman’s 25th year on late-night TV, Murray showed up in a top hat and tuxedo, uncorked a bottle of champagne and then asked for the phone to call CBS chief Les Moonves for Super Bowl tickets. In June 2012, Murray, inspired by the Tupac Shakur hologram at Coachella, appeared with his own hologram.

Murray, by virtue of his comic legacy and carefree attitude toward stardom, has stayed relevant with the 18-to-35 demographic, and Letterman has stayed relevant, in part, by booking people like Murray with high frequency. Charged next year with ferrying “The Tonight Show” into a new era while maintaining the institution’s dedicated older viewership, Jimmy Fallon’s best move might be to snag Murray as his first guest, and then offer him a standing invitation when Letterman retires.

"The Washington Post"

http://politicalhumor.about.com/od/politicalcartoons/ig/Political-Cartoons/Letterman-Scandal.htm

http://fbnoodleman.blogspot.com/

 Tell your friends and associates about us! 

It's easy!  Just copy and paste me into your email!

* “The Noodleman Group” is pleased to announce that we are now carrying a link to the “USA Today” news site.We installed the “widget/gadget” August 20, and it will be carried as a regular feature on our site.Now you can read“Noodleman” and then check in to “USA Today” for all the up to date News, Weather, Sports and more!Just scroll all the way down to the bottom of our site and hit the “USA Today” hyperlinks.Enjoy!