Letterman laments the death of US chat show
It has been a guest list for the ages: Bill Clinton, George Clooney, Oprah Winfrey, Julia Roberts, Barack Obama. All stopped by a New York TV studio to say goodbye to chat show host David Letterman – and also, perhaps, to bid farewell to an era when the television set was at the centre of US cultural life.
After a run of 33 years, Letterman’s show is over.
In the 1980s, his show was feted as ‘‘TV’s edgiest’’. His acerbic monologues, his oddball skits and his cynical wit formed, said Rolling Stone magazine, ‘‘the blueprint not only for modern talk shows, but for the cheeky, sceptical way we perceive and ridicule pop culture’’. Today, though, Letterman, America’s longestserving late-night host, seems like something of a relic.
He has admitted feeling adrift in the era of the iPhone, where the success of a chat show is gauged by its ability to produce clips that ‘‘go viral’’ online the next morning, and where celebrities use Twitter to speak directly to their fans.
A new crop of social-mediasavvy hosts such as James Corden have risen around him. As one pundit put it: ‘‘Letterman is like the last T rex after the asteroid hit, watching a bunch of chipper mammals scurry around the plains he used to roam.’’
His career wasn’t about comedy alone; there was a fair share of drama, too. There were rows with politicians and, in 2000, Letterman was taken to hospital for an emergency quintuple bypass operation.
In 2009, a blackmail plot forced him to admit on the air to a secret tryst with a colleague and in 2011 his life was threatened by alQaeda. ‘‘State department authorities are looking into this,’’ he told his audience, after jihadists threatened to cut out his tongue. ‘‘They’re questioning, they’re interrogating . . . but everybody knows it’s [Jay] Leno,’’ he added – a reference to his arch late-night ratings rival.
More recently, he has revealed that he now takes an antidepressant. ‘‘It saved my life. I used to wonder how other people weren’t always screaming and punching the walls. And then I started this, and I felt like, ‘ah, I see’! And now I don’t punch the walls and scream as much.’’
He leaves at a time of seismic shifts in the US late-night chat show world. In 1993, his show attracted more than 7 million viewers a night. By last summer that figure had dipped to below 3 million. His successor, the politi- cal satirist Stephen Colbert, will be angling to capture attention via smart phones and tablets, as much as on TV. It in an age where media is increasingly consumed alone, and on tiny screens, can anyone else make a Letterman-esque mark? President Obama spoke for many when he told the host: ‘‘You’re part of all of us. You’ve given us a great gift, and we love you.’’