So, it's time for another big farewell on NBC. Carson, Cosby, "Cheers" and now Letterman.
At 12:35 a.m. on WMAR (Channel 2) it's the final "Late Night With David Letterman" on NBC.
Of course, there's not the same sense of loss for viewers with tonight's farewell as there was with the others. Letterman is, after all, merely changing networks. The wise guy with the wire-rim glasses and the big cigar is leaving NBC to start the "Late Show With David Letterman" on Aug. 30 on CBS.
"It's just goodbye to NBC," said Peter Lassaly, the executive producer of "Late Night" who is making the move with Letterman.
"Same Dave, better time, new station," is the way CBS puts it in an ad campaign it will launch later this summer to trumpet the arrival of Letterman's new show. CBS and Letterman say the show will hardly change.
"The best way to put it is that you'll basically see the same show on CBS that you've seen on NBC," said Rosemary Keenan, a "Late Night" publicist who is also moving from NBC to CBS with Letterman.
New names might have to be used in some cases to avoid copyright problems with NBC, but Stupid Pet Tricks, Top 10 lists, Monkey-Cam, repeated visits by Teri Garr, a band led by Paul Shaffer, as well as most of the rest of Letterman's staples, will make the transition, CBS said.
But something will be lost from the TV landscape after the last Letterman show on NBC. It does mark a pop culture passage. Letterman's move is part of the larger movement by baby-boomers from the margins into the mainstream of American life.
From the start, the move was all about Letterman trying to seize the mantle as Johnny Carson's successor, which he feels he was wrongfully denied when NBC brass picked Jay Leno as the new host of the "Tonight Show." Letterman moving from TV's margins of late night into Carson's old time period is the show-business equivalent of Bill Clinton moving into the White House, succeeding George Bush's generation.
And one of the first laws of popular culture is that as you move from the margins into the mainstream, you change. There is no way "Late Show With David Letterman" is going to be as on the edge, sophomoric, critical, distanced, or as much the underdog as "Late Night With David Letterman" was when Letterman was eight or 10 years younger and looked like he actually belonged in blue jeans, rep tie, button-down-collar shirt and blue blazer -- the "dress up" uniform of the undergraduate male.
