Worldwide Pants Incorporated

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Worldwide Pants Incorporated is an American television production and film production company owned by comedian and talk show host David Letterman. Current television productions include:

Late Show with David Letterman (1993-present)
The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (2005-present)
The Knights of Prosperity (on ABC's and CTV's schedules for 2006)

The company is headquartered at the Ed Sullivan Theater Building in New York City. The president and CEO is a former Late Show executive producer, Rob Burnett; Peter Lassally, a former Tonight Show and Late Show executive producer and current Late Late Show executive producer, is a senior vice-president.

1 Past television productions
2 Film production
3 Worldwide Pants title card
4 External links and sources

[edit] Past television productions

The Worldwide Pants card which is shown after every Pants-produced show (designed by Edd Hall).

The first Worldwide Pants production was Late Night with David Letterman, produced in partnership with NBC and Carson Productions.

Subsequent productions for CBS include:

The Building (1993)
The Late Late Show with Tom Snyder (1995-1999)
The Bonnie Hunt Show (1995-1996)
Welcome to New York (2000-2001)
The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn (1999-2004)
Everybody Loves Raymond (1996-2005)

The company also produced The High Life (1996) for HBO and Ed (2000-2004) for NBC.

In April 2005 the Sci Fi Channel announced Barbarian Chronicles, a half-hour animated ensemble comedy from Brendon Small, which will be produced by Worldwide Pants.

A 2002 Forbes article comments on the approach Letterman takes for Worldwide Pants television productions:

Letterman's approach is to nurture an idea with seed money from his production company, then get someone else to pay for the rest of it. He isn't particularly hands-on once the programs get past the initial stages, but his imprimatur carries weight with network buyers. "They've got a point of view about everything they do," says Chris Albrecht, president of original programming at HBO. "These guys are making television every night and have been for a long time. You feel more comfortable with them."

[edit] Film production

The company has produced its first film, a movie prequel to Strangers with Candy, also called Strangers with Candy. The film had its world premiere at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, within the "Park City at Midnight" category. Warner Independent Pictures subsequently signed up as North American distributor of the film, before ThinkFilm acquired the rights from Warner, scheduling a limited release of the film in summer 2006.

[edit] Worldwide Pants title card

The Worldwide Pants card following The Late Show With David Letterman is usually accompanied by a random one-liner somehow involving pants. Examples of this include "Nice pants, Pepe", "Time for pants!", "Take off the pants, Penny", "Mmmm...Deep-Dish Pants!" and "Did you say 'pants?'" Sometimes the voice-over is randomly odd or bizarre, for example, "That's damn good mayo," "I hate bread" and "Nice Shoes, Big Shot." The stranger lines are performed by show announcer Alan Kalter, while the mock-serious versions are usually voiced by freelancer Jay Gardner.

The title card first appeared when older Late Night with David Letterman episodes were briefly rerun on the A&E cable network. In that case, the logo aired at the beginning of the show, was more elaborately animated, and featured a consistent voiceover from Gardner:

"Worldwide Pants! The leader in pants and entertainment... and pants."