Stephen Colbert to Replace David Letterman on The Late Show

Stephen Colbert has just signed a five-year deal to take over The Late Show when David Letterman retires next year. Said CBS President Les Moonves, “Stephen Colbert is one of the most inventive and respected forces on television. David Letterman’s legacy and accomplishments are an incredible source of pride for all of us here, and today’s announcement speaks to our commitment of upholding what he established for CBS in late night.”

I don’t know why this never occurred to me, probably because I thought his contract with Comedy Central would preclude him, but this is perfect. It will be sad to lose the one-two punch of The Daily Show and Colbert Report, but he’s gone from a correspondent on the first to making the latter show every bit as good as the first. I think he’ll do a fantastic job. As a matter of fact, he’s the first in all these replacements whose show I would actually want to see. In a perfect world, he’d be going head-to-head with Conan for a generation, but this is a home run, CBS!

David Letterman to Retire as Host of The Late Show in 2015

The last of the great late night talk show hosts is hanging up his hat.  On last night’s Late Show, David Letterman announced that he would be retiring some time in 2015 from the show he has hosted since 1993.  Before that, Letterman was the host of Late Night at NBC from 1982 until his departure to CBS (part of a chaotic series of events following Johnny Carson’s retirement from The Tonight Show that is covered brilliantly in Bill Carter’s book The Late Shift if you ever want to read more on the topic).