David Letterman Counts Down to His Exit

David Letterman

In recent weeks 68-year-old David Letterman has been enjoying a victory lap, and he has had to shush the audience at the Ed Sullivan Theater during extended standing ovations featuring chants of “Dave! Dave! Dave!” The run has included a prime-time special and energetic appearances from favorite guests like Mr. Seinfeld, Tina Fey, Julia Roberts, Tom Hanks and Bill Murray.

The NY Times reports for his last show on Wednesday, Mr. Letterman has not announced any guests, and the network has offered little more than to say that it will be full of “surprises.”

Before Mr. Letterman joined the network in 1993 after 11 years at NBC, CBS had little to no footprint in late night.

“It’s been substantial, the revenue and the profits over these 20 years,” Leslie Moonves, the chief executive of CBS, said in an interview on Monday. “Previously we were rerunning bad dramas. NBC had been making hundreds of millions of dollars back in the days of Carson. CBS was getting zero. It’s an important part of our makeup.”




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