During Bob Costas's tenure as host, the show won the 1993 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Informational Series.

Additionally, since 1983, he had been making regular appearances on Late Night with David Letterman as part of the show's comedy pieces—mostly as a straight man sportscaster providing live commentary of absurd 'events' thought up by Letterman's writing staff, such as elevator or fire extinguisher races in the RCA Building and search for the Late Night baby.

[5] On several occasions, an interview with a particularly noteworthy guest (examples include Paul McCartney, David Crosby, Bob Seger, Don Rickles, Jerry Lewis, David Letterman, Garry Shandling, Siskel & Ebert, Mel Brooks, Roger Corman, Robert Duvall and Martin Scorsese) was shown over multiple nights.

Later occasionally had guest hosts substituting for Costas, including Pat Sajak, Katie Couric, Chris Connelly, Matt Lauer, Tom Snyder, Jonathon Brandmeier, Paul Provenza and Jeff Cesario.

Guest host Snyder's March 21, 1991 interview with then 37-year-old New York City-based shock jock Howard Stern—whose raunchy morning drive-time radio show, in addition to New York, had been syndicated to two more U.S. East Coast markets and who came on Later to plug his Crucified by the FCC CD boxset—was particularly notable since the host and guest, while mostly remaining cordial and civil, aggressively and sarcastically expressed dislike for each other throughout the interview, often engaging in heated, testy, and uncomfortable exchanges.

On Thursday, October 3, 1991, Later's hour-long three-year anniversary special aired at 11:30 p.m. on NBC, a time slot normally reserved for The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.

[9] Following Costas's departure, Later adopted a conventional late night talk show format, with Greg Kinnear becoming the new host.

Sometime during 1995, he quit Talk Soup and in December of the same year the movie Sabrina opened, a big-budget motion picture remake in which Kinnear had a notable supporting role.

Other guest hosts came from just about any facet of public life in the United States, including the supermodel Cindy Crawford, actress/comedienne Lynne Koplitz, actor/comedian/radio personality Jay Thomas, stand-up comic/talk show host Jon Stewart, actress Tasha Smith, stand-up comic George Wallace, comedian Tommy Davidson, actor Judd Nelson, actor/comedian Harland Williams, actor/comedian David Alan Grier, comedian Jim Breuer, sports personality Ahmad Rashad, actor Jerry O'Connell, actress Lisa Amsterdam and actor/comedian Michael Rapaport.

[11][12] Returning to the show's initial Bob Costas-led format, Garrett interviewed guests such as Laurence Fishburne, Joe Montana, Angela Bassett, Leah Remini and Magic Johnson.

Following the end of Later, the time slot was used for time- and content-edited repeats of the Canadian sketch comedy SCTV, a show which had previously aired on NBC from 1981 through 1983.