Rise to Fame
NBC handed him a morning talk show in 1980 that won two Emmys and pulled such weak ratings it was gone in four months. What came next was Late Night with David Letterman: 12:30 AM, after Johnny Carson, aimed at people who found talk TV insufferable. Top 10 Lists, Stupid Pet Tricks, a relentless disregard for the format's conventions. Carson mentored him, even slipped him jokes for his monologue. When NBC gave the Tonight Show to Jay Leno in 1992, Letterman took CBS's $14 million offer and spent two decades proving the snub was a mistake.
In the Spotlight
His Netflix show My Next Guest Needs No Introduction is now in its sixth season, renewed through a seventh. Barack Obama was the first guest in 2018. Volodymyr Zelenskyy showed up during wartime. The hour-long format gives him room network TV never did. In December 2024, he told GQ that 'retirement is nonsense' and 'the human mechanism will not allow you to retire.' He hosts up to three Netflix tapings a night at 77. He didn't wait for anyone to give him a third act.
Side Notes
While still at Ball State, he got fired from the campus radio station for disrespecting classical music, so he founded a competing one. In 2007, when the Writers Guild struck, his production company Worldwide Pants was the first in Hollywood to cut its own WGA deal, letting his show return with a full writing staff while Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien ran without theirs. He hasn't had a drink since 1983. He also endowed a Ball State scholarship for C students specifically. There's a version of David Letterman who never stopped being the guy they tried to fire from the radio station.