Late-night talk show

Many late night talk shows feature a house band which generally performs cover songs for the studio audience during commercial breaks and occasionally will back up a guest artist.

The Pepsodent Show, which opened each weekly episode with host Bob Hope's rapid-fire, topical and often political observational comedy, was a particularly important predecessor to the late-night format.

The first show to air in a late-night timeslot itself, Broadway Open House, aired on NBC in 1950 and ended a year later after host Jerry Lester left the show, a combination of frustration with being upstaged by his sidekick Virginia "Dagmar" Lewis, burnout from having to go through a large amount of material in a short time, and the lack of enough television sets in the United States to make television broadcasting in late nights viable.

(Lester himself was a last-minute replacement host for up-and-coming 26-year-old comic Don Hornsby, whom Hope had recommended to NBC but who caught polio and died less than a week before the show began.)

America After Dark, hosted first by Jack Lescoulie, and later by Al Collins, with interviews conducted by Hy Gardner, and a house band led by Lou Stein performing.

Carson streamlined the format of the show, focusing more on entertainment personalities, tweaking the monologue to feature shorter jokes, and emphasizing sketch comedy.

ABC's first effort at the late-night TV race was hosted by Les Crane, which pioneered the controversial tabloid talk show format that would not become popular until two decades later.

A number of restrictions on television networks that took effect in 1971, among them a nationwide prohibition on tobacco advertising, the requirement that a portion of prime time be set aside for local stations, and rules prohibiting networks from also acting as syndicators, prompted NBC to extend its broadcast day by an additional hour with programming it hoped would recuperate some of its lost revenue.

NBC felt that Snyder's more conversational style would not bring in enough viewership in the earlier time slot, forcibly changed the show's format to resemble Carson's, and added gossip reporter Rona Barrett as a co-host.

Many in 1986, including top executives at NBC, thought it was possible that Johnny Carson would retire after reaching his 25th anniversary on October 1, 1987, as it was such a logical cut-off point.

In the spring of 1986, a confidential memo, between top NBC executives listing about ten possible replacements in the event of Carson's retirement the next year, was leaked.

Brenner also left Tonight in 1986, although he did so amicably, to launch a syndicated 30-minute late-night talk show called Nightlife, which was canceled after one season.

Rivers was fired from The Late Show in 1987 after abysmal ratings and a battle with network executives, leading to her being replaced by Arsenio Hall.

On NBC's Later, Bob Costas gave way to the host of the cable show Talk Soup, Greg Kinnear, whose tenure was accompanied by a move to Burbank and toward a more conventional, audience-and-celebrity-driven format.

Unlike traditional late-night talk shows, Politically Incorrect was a half hour in length and (following a brief host monologue) featured a panel of four guests debating topical issues while Maher moderated in a comedic fashion.

The show was not presented in its normal jovial manner, and featured Dan Rather, Regis Philbin, and a musical performance from Tori Amos.

Politically Incorrect also resumed on September 17 and immediately drew controversy due to remarks Maher and a guest (Dinesh D'Souza) made concerning the "coward" label given to the terrorists by President George W. Bush.

Four months later, it expanded to five nights a week (from Later's four), and unlike the other shows on the air at the time, only a half-year's worth of first-run programs were recorded each season.

[10][11] Politically Incorrect was canceled due to low ratings in the summer of 2002, after which Maher joined HBO and began hosting the similarly formatted weekly series Real Time.

With Nightline past its prime in audience size due to the proliferation of cable news, and ABC believing in stronger ratings potential in the timeslot, Jimmy Kimmel Live!

[14][15] Jake Sasseville entered the late-night arena after a self-syndication campaign got him clearance on several ABC affiliates by local general managers in 2008.

Leno explained that he did not want to cause a repeat of the hard feelings and controversy that occurred when he was picked for the show over David Letterman following Carson's retirement in 1992.

The popularity of late-night shows in the United States has been cited as a key factor in Americans not getting a requisite seven to eight hours of sleep per night.

Jay Leno hosted his final episode of The Tonight Show on May 29, 2009, with his successor Conan O'Brien, and musician James Taylor as his guests.

[22] The program faced dismal ratings, which also led to complaints from NBC affiliates that it was impacting the viewership of their late local newscasts.

[34][35] Meanwhile, in May 2015, David Letterman retired from Late Show, ending a 33-year career on late-night TV,[36] and was succeeded the following September by Stephen Colbert—who departed from Comedy Central and The Colbert Report to host the program.

By July 2020, late-night shows began to migrate back to studio-based productions, but with reconfigured or different studios than normal with no audience, and continued use of remote interviews.

[44][45][46] The program shifted to a home-based production for its second season in January 2021, with Singh citing both the pandemic and a creative preference against a traditional studio-based format.

[48] Conan concluded its run on June 24, 2021, with O'Brien having announced plans to produce a weekly "variety" show for HBO Max and focus on other digital media projects.

Conan O'Brien, in a 2023 interview, noted that several factors played into the decline, all of which impacted his decision to end Conan and focus on other projects, including a saturated market, the loss of the captive audience to video on demand options, and a changing culture that made it more difficult to make genuine fun of the culture (O'Brien, who tended to rely less on political humor than some of his contemporaries, cited Donald Trump as an example of a figure so polarizing that even those who do not like him would be repulsed by the mention of him, even in a satirical context, while those who are his fans would be offended).