Letterman To Call It Quits Next Year

I read the news late yesterday afternoon that David Letterman was going to retire next year, when his current contract expires. He'll be 67 next week, and has been hosting late night television shows since 1982, which makes him TV's longest-running host, eclipsing even Johnny Carson's 30 years behind on desk on The Tonight Show.I've been a Letterman fan since around 1984. I even used my paper route money to buy an early-model VCR so I could tape his show each night-- it's 11:30 airtime meant it was on too late for me to watch it when it was on.

Dave's retiring only makes sense; the next generation of hosts are already on the air on competing networks-- guys like Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers. Letterman's show might seemed a little dated these days compared to those guys, but in his day, Dave broke real ground. In fact, he pretty much reinvented the late night talk show in the early 80's-- and just about every show, everywhere today has the attitude it does because of Dave. (He HAD to come up with new ways to do things, because seeing as his NBC 'Late Night' show was owned by Johnny Carson's production company, Dave was under orders to not make his show too much like The Tonight Show.)

That era, when he was hosting 'Late Night With David Letterman' on NBC, was when I believe Dave was at his best. Here's a vintage clip of that NBC show from early 1987, when I was a junior in high school, and never missed an episode.

And here's the clip of Dave announcing that he's going to be hanging it up next year...