LAST LAUGH
Letterman is sitting on a fortune worth of stupid pet tricks that will earn long after he signs off.
• When David Letterman walks off the stage of the Ed Sullivan Theater for the last time, he’ll take more than 4,000 hours of the Late
Show with him. And a couple thousand hours of The Late
Late Show.
The retiring host is the founder of Worldwide Pants Inc., which produced both programs, as well as a handful of sitcoms. Thanks to an unusual deal Letterman signed when he joined CBS Corp. in 1993, his company owns a library of footage that includes early Jerry Seinfeld standup, guest appearances by Bill Murray and Madonna and a piece of Joaquin Phoenix performance art.
Now the 68-year-old Letterman, whose final show was Wednesday, has to decide what to do with reel upon reel of Top 10 Lists, Stupid Pet Tricks and other moments of late-night history.
“There’s a lot of talk about the library, which is extremely valuable, if handled correctly,” said Rob Burnett, Worldwide Pants’s chief executive and executive producer of the
Late Show. Some of it hasn’t been digitized yet, and only a fraction has made its way to
YouTube, he said. “In today’s world, there are a lot of ways to monetize something with that volume and quality.”
Late Show with David
Letterman predates YouTube, Snapchat, Facebook and Twitter, which have reshaped latenight TV. Letterman’s peers, Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel, host programs crafted for the social media generation, with skits and nuggets that people share online the following day.
“The web has changed how people interact with archival footage,” said Jeffrey P. Jones, director of the Peabody Awards at the University of Georgia. “Whether Worldwide Pants can translate that into some currency on the web is really yet to be seen.”
Letterman is in a position to find out thanks to a career tragedy — being passed over by NBC to replace Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show. CBS then pursued him, awarding him a deal with no modern equivalent. Letterman would own his late-night show, with the right to produce and own a second show, The Late Late
Show. (Carson, too, owned his own show.)
For 22 years, CBS has given Letterman a lump sum, which he uses to pay himself, his staff and produce the Late Show. Any leftover cash went to Worldwide Pants; the company in-
vested most of it in the show.
The network isn’t likely to make that kind of arrangement again. It owns both Late Show with Stephen Colbert, which begins in September, and The Late Late Show, hosted by James Corden.
Worldwide Pants has produced several other shows, including Ed and Bonnie, the most successful being Every
body Loves Raymond, which it co-owns with HBO and CBS. But the owners have already extracted most of the value from the hit, as shows command less money the longer they’re in syndication.
It’s easier to map out how much revenue a sitcom will generate in syndication than a talk show that has few predecessors and isn’t popular overseas.
“The Letterman show doesn’t have the same kind of value that syndicated hits have,” said Seth Willenson, a former executive at RCA and New Line Cinema Corp. “There’s a very active half-life on variety shows. Clips would generate more revenue, but I don’t think it would be revolutionary.”
Burnett, who started working with Letterman 29 years ago as an intern, said he isn’t interested in overseeing a library business. The former head writer of the Late Show is editing a movie he wrote, produced and directed, an adaptation of the novel The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving, which stars Paul Rudd and Selena Gomez.
He wants to spend more time on his own creative endeavours and less time managing other people’s projects, he said. Letterman has said he wants to let his 11-year-old son dictate his schedule.
The company may need to hire someone, Burnett said.
“I honestly don’t know what the future of Worldwide Pants will be,” Burnett said. “We’ve built a brand here. There is value. Ultimately, it will be up to Dave to decide what he wants to do with that.”