Late night television in the United States is the block of television programming airing after 11:00 pm and usually through 2:00 am. Traditionally, this type of programming airs after the late local news and is most notable for being the daypart used for a particular genre of programming that falls somewhere between a variety show and a talk show.
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Popular shows of the late night talk show genre include The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, the Late Show with David Letterman, The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, and Conan. Famous former hosts include Johnny Carson and Jay Leno of The Tonight Show, Arsenio Hall of The Arsenio Hall Show, Tom Snyder of Tomorrow and The Late Late Show, Steve Allen, the father of the late night talk show and founder of Tonight (now known as "The Tonight Show"), Merv Griffin and Dick Cavett, early competitors with Carson, and Jack Paar, the man who followed Steve Allen as host of the Tonight Show and who is responsible for setting the standards for the genre.
Television networks typically produce two late-night shows: one taped in New York and one in Los Angeles. Most are taped late in the afternoon (with the exception of Jimmy Kimmel Live, which finishes taping about an hour before it goes to air). The fact that this limits accurate coverage of the latest news cycle is sometimes the source of ironic humor or notable delays (for instance, the death of Michael Jackson, a frequent butt of late-night jokes, on the afternoon of June 25, 2009 came after all but Kimmel had taped their shows, and as such, Kimmel was the only one to mention it that night).
Until September 2009, the Big Three major networks all began their late night programming at 11:35 p.m. Eastern Time each night, with the exception of Fox, which aired only one day of late night programming (Saturday) starting at 11 p.m. This is a half-hour to one hour after the end of prime time to allow local stations to air newscasts, and most stations (with a few exceptions) do. NBC, however, began following a significantly different model in September 2009, following severe losses of audience for its scripted dramas. Jay Leno, formerly the host of NBC's long-standing The Tonight Show franchise, had moved his show to the 10 p.m. time slot, ahead of the local newscasts on most stations in a time slot that competes with CBS's and ABC's prime time programming (though Fox affiliates would have cut to post-primetime news or sitcom reruns by this time). Beginning in September 2009, Leno hosted The Jay Leno Show, which is mostly similar to Leno's version of Tonight with a few adjustments. This made way for Conan O'Brien (formerly the host of Late Night, another long-running NBC late night franchise) to take over The Tonight Show, while Jimmy Fallon has assumed hosting duties for Late Night. The remaining late night programs (Poker After Dark and Last Call with Carson Daly) remained as is, and NBC warned its affiliates not to preempt or delay Leno for local news.[1] After affiliates' fears of significantly lower ratings for local news were in fact realized, NBC announced it would indeed cancel its 10 p.m. experiment and move Leno back to his traditional start time of 11:35.[2]
Of the major networks, the Big Three (NBC, ABC, and CBS) program the late-night slot on weekdays, but only NBC has late night shows on Saturday. None of the major networks had late night shows on Sunday nights. Until the early 1990s, syndicated late-night talk shows were fairly common, due to NBC having the only network shows at the time. The Arsenio Hall Show, which ran from 1988 to 1994, was able to pick from CBS, ABC or Fox affiliates. When Late Show with David Letterman debuted in 1993, Hall lost a large number of affiliates and ended up leaving the air at the end of the season. There has not been a successful syndicated late night talk show since that time. Fox carried late night programming from 1994 to 2010, but since the cancellation of The Wanda Sykes Show, no longer airs traditional late night programming on any day of the week (a six-week test run of a daily talk show hosted by Craig Kilborn failed to be picked up by the network, and the 90-minute Saturday late night block previously occupied by Sykes and before that by MADtv presently consists only of reruns of Fox primetime programming).
These shows often follow the same canonical format:
Most shows in this genre have an in-house band that plays musical interludes. Popular late night band leaders include Paul Shaffer, leader of The CBS Orchestra/The World's Most Dangerous Band on Late Night and The Late Show with David Letterman; Max Weinberg, leader of The Max Weinberg 7 on Late Night and the Tonight Show Band on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien; Kevin Eubanks, leader of the Tonight Show Band and the Primetime Band and The Roots, famous eclectic hiphop band now host-band of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.
Usually the band leader is a major part of the show, and the band leader and host often exchange playful banter during the monologue and comedy segments; the band leader has thus taken over the part of being the host's sidekick, which in the past was played by Ed McMahon and Andy Richter, among others. Of the current late night talk show band leaders who play this role, Paul Shaffer is well-known for being a straight man to David Letterman. However, on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien, Max Weinberg rarely spoke during the show, and his interactions with O'Brien were often short and awkward—a recurring gag on the show (Richter, now the announcer, was O'Brien's primary sidekick on The Tonight Show and has carried on in that role on Conan, whereas new band leader Jimmy Vivino has barely any interaction with O'Brien), and Kevin Eubanks is often the butt of Leno's jokes, particularly regarding drug-related stories. Most notably the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson does not have a house band, and Ferguson has often used that fact as a running gag in his show; Ferguson currently has a robot named Geoff Peterson as his sidekick. (The Late Late Show has never had a house band with any of its three hosts, Tom Snyder, Craig Kilborn, or Craig Ferguson, due to size restraints of the studio and in part because of the show's more low-key original format.)
Often, the show's announcer is also a major part of the show. Famous announcers include Gene Rayburn and Hugh Downs (both from the early years of The Tonight Show), Ed McMahon from The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, Edd Hall and John Melendez from The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Bill Wendell and Alan Kalter from Late Show with David Letterman, Andy Richter from The Tonight Show With Conan O'Brien and Conan and Don Pardo from Saturday Night Live. These announcers often have significant career accomplishments outside of their particular shows.
The "midnight movie" format is another popular late-night format, found particularly among local stations. Buffalo, New York's Off Beat Cinema, Cleveland, Ohio's now-discontinued Big Chuck and Lil' John, and Elvira's Movie Macabre are some of the better-known late night hosted movie series.
There are also some daytime talk shows that air in late night, such as The Jerry Springer Show (because of the program's adult content). Most of the time however, daytime talk shows air in late night involuntarily because of low ratings in their original daytime slots, no room on their station's schedule in an appropriate timeslot, or to fill time otherwise taken up by infomercials or sitcom reruns.
A brief influx of game shows began to fill the late night airwaves in the mid-1980s, such as Tom Kennedy's nighttime Price Is Right, The $1,000,000 Chance of a Lifetime, and High Rollers; these were shows that were targeted for prime time access slots but found that Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! had already cornered the market for that time slot. Virtually all of those game shows were cancelled after one year on the air. During the 1990s and early 2000s (decade), the dating game show also filled late night slots in syndication, Love Connection and Studs were some of the earliest successes in the 1990s; though the dating game shows that debuted after 1998, such as Blind Date, The 5th Wheel and Elimidate, were often known for pushing the boundaries of sexually-suggestive content on broadcast television; the genre largely died off from syndication by 2006.
Still other late night programs break the standard format; most notably, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is a parody of an evening news program, while The Colbert Report parodies political talk shows. Fox News Channel's Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld uses a roundtable format which has a mix of news discussion mixed with comedy, although roundtable is only used in the descriptive sense; some guests appear on the program via satellite, while a regular on the show appears from another part of the Fox News studios.
ABC's Nightline has long been an exception to the networks' "comedy/variety" formula. Debuting in 1980, Nightline is a nightly half-hour newsmagazine that airs immediately after ABC affiliates' local newscasts. It has finished at or near a tie for second-place (along with Letterman's show) in the late-night Nielsen ratings in recent years.
Two prominent late night-only cable and satellite channels currently air in the United States: Nick at Nite, a collection of primarily reruns of older and some recent network sitcoms that airs in the channel slot of Nickelodeon between 8 p.m. and 7 a.m. ET. weeknights (the start time is subtracted by one hour on Fridays and two hours on Saturdays, due to Nickelodeon programming), and Adult Swim, a block of animated and a limited amount of live-action programming targeted toward young adults that shares space on the channel slot of Cartoon Network each night from 9 p.m.-6 a.m. ET.
In the 1980s, it was more common to split one cable television feeds into two separate channels: one that aired during the daytime, and the other at night. Prior to the launch of Nick at Nite, Nickelodeon aired the Alpha Repertory Television Service (ARTS) beginning in 1981, which eventually became known as A&E by 1984 (A&E became its own channel the following year). In the 1980s, the Financial News Network broadcast carried the sports-oriented SCORE network during the nighttime hours; "FNN-SCORE" (as it was known collectively) was bought out by CNBC in 1991. One of Nickelodeon's digital spinoff channels was, like its parent channel, divided so that preschool-oriented programs would air during the day as "Noggin" and teen-oriented programs aired at night as "The N", this format lasted from April 2002 to December 2007 (these two blocks are now their own separate channels, Nick Jr. and TeenNick, and both broadcast 24 hours a day).
Jetix was an overnight block Disney used on its Toon Disney channel; the two entities have since been discontinued, with the channel having since relaunched as Disney XD; similarly from 1983 to 1997, Disney XD's parent network Disney Channel had a nighttime program block featuring family-friendly feature films and music specials aimed at adults in the form of "Disney Nighttime", from 1997 to 2002, another late night block on Disney Channel called "Vault Disney" offered classic Disney series and films in the five subsequent years following the discontinuance of Disney Nighttime (reruns of Disney Channel original series and programming aimed at preschoolers have populated the network's late night programming since the removal of Vault Disney in 2002, making Disney Channel the largest family-oriented cable channel in the U.S. without a nighttime block aimed at an older audience). TeenNick, itself a former late-night block, announced its intentions to launch a late-night block of its own, The '90s Are All That, targeting viewers who watched Nickelodeon in the 1990s with reruns of Nickelodeon programs of that era; the block begins in July 2011.
Late night talk shows, once exclusive to network television, have begun to be included on cable channels as well in recent years in part due to the success of Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart; other late night cable talk shows such as Conan, Lopez Tonight, The Colbert Report and Chelsea Lately have also proven successful; however, late night talk/variety programs on cable have a slight advantage over their broadcast counterparts as most of them typically air at 11 p.m. ET, at the same time that most local broadcast stations air their late evening newscasts and 35 minutes before the major networks begin their late night network programming. These shows also have the advantage of not being subject to Federal Communications Commission guidelines, though internal network standards generally result in these shows not being much more ribald than network counterparts.
Premium channels often air softcore pornographic feature films and series during the late night hours, containing simulated sexual intercourse and nudity that would likely not air during the daytime hours; Cinemax is the most notable pay service to carry programming of that genre, though most of the Showtime Networks (including Showtime and The Movie Channel) and HBO's multiplex channel HBO Zone also carry adult films or series. Most American cable channels often air either blocks of infomercials or time-shifted replays of prime time programming during late night time periods, while only a handful of basic cable channels (e.g., TNT, Nickelodeon/Nick at Nite, ESPN, etc.) air a round-the-clock schedule featuring entertainment programming overnight.
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