Late night talk shows are a highly profitable venture for television networks when they attract an audience, and they are
a drain on the network coffers and network credibility when they do not. For many years, the late night programming area was staid and unexciting. NBC's Tonight Show dominated the 11:30 time period, and for the last decade the same network's Late Night with David Letterman was also a high ratings winner. Other networks attempted talk shows at the late hour and floundered as Johnny Carson, host of the Tonight show for 29 years, continued to draw the bulk of the audience. A secondary franchise was created by the Iranian hostage crisis--Nightline on ABC came into being first as a nightly report on the hostage situation and then as a continuing late night news program with a strong core audience. Syndication was another challenge with hosts like Arsenio Hall trying to challenge the Carson hegemony, with only minimal success. All this changed in the Fall of 1993 as competition increased greatly with the move of David Letterman to CBS. An analysis of the situation in late night television today will contribute to a perception of the likely direction this programming will take in the future.
The audience for late night television has been developing since the beginning of the medium, and the nature of the programming and its audience has changed over that time from the night-owls of early television to a much broader audience today, an audience now much prized by advertisers for its demographics identifying it as youthful and upscale and so a good target for advertising. The Tonight Show developed as a major success beginning in 1953 when Steve Allen became the host. At that time, advertising rates were going for as little as $4,000 per minute for a national audience. At the time, advertisers could get a substantial discount by buying time on both the Today and Tonight shows. Jack Paar was the next hos...