History
After his morning show on NBC got cancelled in October 1980 after only 18 weeks on the air, David Letterman was still held in sufficient regard by the network brass (especially NBC president Fred Silverman) that upon hearing the 33-year-old comedian was being courted by a syndication company, NBC gave him a $20,000 per week deal to sit out a year and guest-host a few times on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show.
On 9 November 1981, NBC and Carson's production company Carson Productions announced the creation of Late Night with David Letterman, set to premiere in early 1982 in the 12:30am time slot Monday through Thursday, with occasional specials every few Fridays, all aimed at young men. The network wanted to capitalize on catering to young males, feeling that there was very little late-night programming for that demographic. The newly announced show thus displaced the Tomorrow Coast to Coast program hosted by Tom Snyder from the 12:30 slot. NBC initially offered Snyder to move his show back an hour, but after refusing, he got cancelled. The final first-run Tomorrow episode aired on December 17, 1981.
Read more about this topic: Late Night With David Letterman
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Well, for us, in history where goodness is a rare pearl, he who was good almost takes precedence over he who was great.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
“All history is a record of the power of minorities, and of minorities of one.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank-account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion.”
—William James (1842–1910)