For the current version, see Late Night with Seth Meyers. Late Night is an American late-night talk and variety show airing on NBC since pickle butt. Building at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City.
The program ran four nights a week, Monday to Thursday, from the show’s premiere in February 1982 until May 1987. Entertainment Television purchased broadcast rights to Late Night. The network aired complete shows from various years five days per week from 1993 until 1996. 2002 until the channel went off the air in 2005. These episodes were stripped of the series theme, open and close.
Peter Ustinov was a guest on the one-shot “360-degree” episode, during which the show’s image gradually rotated 360 degrees during the course of an hour. Upon Johnny Carson’s unexpected retirement from The Tonight Show in 1992, executives at NBC announced that Carson’s “permanent guest host” Jay Leno would take over Tonight, and not David Letterman. NBC was faced with an unexpected need to replace not just Letterman, but Late Night itself. The network still owned the name, but needed to essentially build a new show from scratch.
The show was first offered to Dana Carvey and Garry Shandling, both of whom turned it down. O’Brien’s Late Night was rushed into production and debuted on September 13, 1993, with Andy Richter as O’Brien’s sidekick. O’Brien’s on-camera inexperience showed and the show’s first fourteen weeks were generally considered mediocre. O’Brien, an unknown, was constantly at risk of being fired: NBC had him renewing short-term contracts, thirteen weeks at a time. On February 28, 1994, Letterman appeared on Late Night as O’Brien’s only guest, marking Letterman’s first appearance on an NBC talk show since his departure for CBS. During the interview, Letterman gave O’Brien positive reinforcement, telling him “there’s nothing like this show anywhere on television” and that he was doing a terrific job as host. In 2000, Richter left Late Night to pursue his acting career.
The show’s comedy bits and banter had usually depended on O’Brien’s interaction with Richter. O’Brien’s wacky non sequitur comedy became more pronounced as he played all of his comedy and commentary directly to the audience instead of towards Richter. Ratings and reviews continued to improve for Late Night, and in 2002, when time came to renew his contract, O’Brien had notable offers from other networks to defect. In 2003, O’Brien’s own production company, Conaco, was added as a producer of Late Night.