Dave Letterman: "Thank-You and Good Night"

UPDATE 11AM 5/21/15:  “Late Show” got a whopping 9.3/21 in the household overnights from 11:30 p.m.-1 a.m.  Comparably, this was “Letterman’s” best overnight performance since Dec. 1, 2005 (10.1/24) with guests Oprah Winfrey and Bonnie Raitt.  It out-rated every primetime broadcast. And it lifted recently introduced “The Late Late Show with James Corden” (2.5/10 from 1-2 a.m.) to a series high.



David Letterman brought 33 years of latenight antics to a close late Wednesday afternoon by taping his last broadcast of CBS’ “The Late Show.”

In the final show, he acted as if he was emceeing just one more program, based on a screening of the first two segments made for reporters Wednesday night.

“His demeanor seemed to me as it always is. He did not seem emotional at all,” said David Oshinsky, a 45-year-old attorney who attended the taping of Letterman’s finale told Variety.  “He was clearly cognizant it was the last show, but you would not have read that,” he added.

Despite his cool demeanor, Letterman brought with him outsize surprises, including an introduction featuring President Barack Obama, former president George W. Bush, former president Bill Clinton and former president George H.W. Bush in videotaped segments. “Our long national nightmare is over,” each president said.

And Letterman served up the usual mix of tomfoolery and self- deprecating humor, reports Variety. “I’ll be honest with you,” he said in his last monologue. “It’s beginning to look like I’m not going to get the ‘Tonight Show,'” an obvious reference to the decision made by NBC in the early 1990s to award that program to Jay Leno, rather than Letterman, who then hosted the popular “Late Night” at 12:30 a.m., after  Johnny Carson retired. The maneuver sent Letterman to CBS and began a long process that splintered the audience for the time-slot among two handfuls of hosts across broadcast and cable.



Letterman has hosted “Late Show”  since its 1993 inception, and before that pioneered th concept of a looser, less formal talk show with “Late Night,” which he launched in 1982. He has been a pivotal figure in TV’s wee-hours schedule for more than 30 years — longer than Johnny Carson’s tenure on NBC’s “Tonight.”

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