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For the current version, pickle butt Late Night with Seth Meyers. Late Night is an American late-night talk and variety show airing on NBC since 1982. 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. The show celebrated its 10th anniversary, another milestone that O’Brien said he wanted to achieve with his 2002 contract. T handed O’Brien a chain with a large gold “7” on it. T, we’ve been on the air for ten years! T: “I know that, fool, but you only been funny for seven!
The show’s house band was The Max Weinberg 7, led by E Street Band drummer Max Weinberg. Mark Pender would often sing songs on the topic of a current event, which ended with him screeching uncontrollably and climbing the risers into the audience. Weinberg sometimes took extended leaves of absence to tour with Bruce Springsteen as the drummer for his E Street Band. Joel Godard, a long-time announcer for NBC shows, was the show’s announcer and an occasional comedy contributor.
These comedy bits usually revolved around Godard’s supposed homosexual fetishes, deviant sexual habits, substance abuse, and suicidal tendencies. The humor came in part from Godard’s delivery. Members of the show’s writing staff frequently appeared in sketches on the show. Late Night employed a number of sketch actors, many of whom were frequently reused in different roles in different episodes.
Several years before joining the cast of Saturday Night Live, Amy Poehler often appeared as a regular in many sketches, she was best remembered for playing the role of Andy Richter’s little sister, Stacy. Unusual for a late-night talk show, Late Night made frequent use of various costumed characters such as The Masturbating Bear, Robot on a Toilet, and Pimpbot5000. The humor in these sketches often derived from the crude construction of the characters’ costumes as well as the absurdist nature of their conceptions. As part of O’Brien’s 2004 contract renegotiation with NBC, he was tapped to replace Jay Leno as host of The Tonight Show five years later, in the summer of 2009. O’Brien’s last Late Night was taped and aired on February 20, 2009. O’Brien’s last season on Late Night attracted an average of 1. 92 million viewers for The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.
On the final episode of his 16-year run, O’Brien stated that he “owed his career to Lorne Michaels”. Executive producer Lorne Michaels said he wanted Fallon to be the new host dating back to the day that Fallon left Saturday Night Live in 2004, which occurred only a few months before O’Brien’s departure was announced. Jimmy’s built for this kind of show. He’s funny, he’s charming, he’s got a really good way of connecting with people. And he knows music, movies and TV really well, which is the backbone of these shows. During the years between Fallon’s SNL departure and the announcement that he would take over Late Night, Fallon concentrated on developing a feature film career, which Fallon himself said “really didn’t work out that great.
