Thank You And Good Night, Mr Letterman

David Letterman, one of America’s most revered talk-show hosts, resigned in a star-studded finale yesterday, May 21, after a mindboggling 33 years on television. The finale was attended by the likes of Jim Carey, Bill Murray and Tina Fey, who paid a tribute to Letterman by reading off the “Top 10 Things I’ve Always Wanted to Say to Dave.”

This was a reprisal of Letterman’s own top-10 format through which he poked serious fun at celebrities like Snoop Dogg or made mincemeat of political hypocrisy.

Letterman’s history in television makes for a legendary tale. Moving from Indiana to Los Angeles in 1975, he started off as a stand-up comic at the Comedy Store. From 1977 onwards, he was a comedy writer for CBS from where his rise quickly followed. He debuted on February 1, 1982, with the “Late Night with David Letterman” show on NBC.

After talk-show legend Johnny Carson left The Tonight Show in 1992, NBC chose Jay Leno over Letterman to run the show. Letterman packed his bags and left for CBS. In 1993, his show on CBS rechristened “Late Show with David Letterman” was launched and that is what he has been running till he called it a day yesterday.

In many ways, Letterman is the first among equals in an industry that has changed unimaginably over the past decades. Late-night shows back in the ‘80s and ‘90s were about glamour, fun and Hollywood stars, and sure enough Letterman hosted iconic interviews with such luminaries as Madonna and Drew Barrymore.

After 9/11, however, with the advent of a new crop of late-night hosts in Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, Jimmy Kimmel and John Oliver, the thrust of late-night television shifted to politics. The tone was still light-hearted, but serious issues such as terror and the Presidential elections were now increasingly discussed on late-night TV.

Through it all, Letterman brought his relaxed style and suave persona to command a show that has set the benchmark for late-night TV. In all his years on TV, he has not once looked frazzled. Even when he has had to tackle difficult interviewees, he played it by the ear and did not let the show go off the rails. He takes no prisoners either, as this 2010 clip with actor Joaquin Phoenix reveals. Phoenix was reprimanded by Letterman for his disheveled appearance and for chewing gum on the show. When Phoenix refused to engage with Letterman, the latter suspended the segment and capped it with hard-hitting slickness: “Joaquin, I am sorry you couldn’t be here tonight.”

While Letterman’s sophistication has endeared him to an older generation of viewers as well as Hollywood royalty, it has also had its downside. He is often compared with Bill Clinton for the magnetic effect he has on women. Perhaps the most striking segment of the 33-year history of the show was that time in 2009 when Letterman came on the show and revealed that he had been the victim of an extortion threat over intimate details of his private life. He went on to reveal that he had indulged in sexual relationships with women that worked for him. Variety did a detailed piece on this story in which the perpetrator of the extortion threat was revealed to be Joe Halderman, a producer on CBS who helmed 48 Hours Mystery, a detective series. Halderman’s girlfriend Stephanie Birkitt was a staffer under Letterman.

But such was Letterman’s popularity that the scandal did not stick. Come to think of it, he played the scandal extraordinarily well. He got Halderman arrested and by revealing his indiscretion on television, earned the goodwill of Americans whose experience of public sex scandals had until then been defined by the Bill Clinton saga, in which the former President had done everything in his power to deny his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Due to his outspokenness, Letterman endeared himself to the audience as well as his colleagues in the media. All said, he kept hosting the show.

His influence has saved his neck on other occasions too. When Leno’s show grew more popular than Letterman’s, there were whispers in the CBS camp that he might get replaced. No such thing happened.

Letterman has been part of other controversies, notably jokes involving American politician Saran Palin’s daughter Bristol, whose pregnancy as an unmarried teenager was a point of debate during the 2008 Presidential campaign in which Palin was running mate to Republican candidate John McCain. After Palin’s outburst, Letterman was forced to issue a clarification. His stance that he could not defend his comments because “they are just jokes” sounds shockingly sexist and insensitive today. But then Letterman is not known to be a champion of women’s rights. He was forced to apologise to his wife and his female staff members after his sex revelations.

Even so, Letterman will be remembered for living through and, in many ways, heralding changes to late-night television. His glib unflappability has been replicated by everyone who came after him. The very format of the show that he pioneered – he being accompanied by an orchestra helmed by Paul Shaffer who also played his sidekick – is now the industry standard. Letterman may have walked into the sunset but his contribution to television, as the presence of comic giants on the last episode revealed, will reverberate for a long time to come.

Interestingly, this year has been one of departures for late-night hosts. Earlier this year, Jon Stewart, arguably the best in this field, announced his leave from the signature “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central, which will be hosted by South African comic Trevor Noah from August. Letterman’s show, meanwhile, will be taken over by Colbert.