33 Years Ago Today: A Late-Night Legend Jumped Networks—and 23 Million People Watched

"Late Show with David Letterman" premiered on CBS on August 30, 1993. But before Letterman hosted the "Late Show," he hosted "Late Night with David Letterman" on NBC from February 1982 to June 1993. Why did he switch networks? Well, CBS offered him a deal that was too good to refuse.

In December 1992, CBS tried to poach either Jay Leno or David Letterman from NBC. It's not clear how much Leno was offered, but CBS offered Letterman a $14 million annual salary, as well as $25 million to Letterman's production company — not bad considering Letterman was making only $3 million annually at NBC. One NBC source told Entertainment Weekly at the time, "We did everything we could to keep both of them," but ultimately they chose to prioritize keeping Leno over Letterman.

Most importantly for Letterman, CBS offered something NBC couldn't: the 11:30 p.m. time slot. Over at NBC, Letterman was stuck with the later 12:30 a.m. time slot. He had hoped to move to "The Tonight Show" at 11:30 after Johnny Carson retired, but Leno (a frequent, popular guest host on Carson's show) was gifted the position instead. To get that 11:30 slot, Letterman's only option was to either wait until Leno left or switch networks entirely. "Trust me," head of NBC Warren Littlefield told EW. "This was always about the 11:30 time slot. Any other stuff was so infinitesimal it never mattered."

CBS went to great lengths to get its own successful late-night talk show, which might surprise modern viewers given how CBS announced its outright cancellation of "The Late Show" — then hosted by Letterman's replacement, Stephen Colbert — in July 2025. From a sheer ratings perspective, the change in priorities makes sense: Colbert averaged around 2.7 million viewers for Q1 of 2026 during his final season, whereas David Letterman in his first season raked in 7.8 million viewers on average. 

Letterman's first-ever episode of "The Late Show" was even more impressive: He drew in 23 million viewers that night, instantly confirming to CBS that they'd made the right call. The previous year, Johnny Carson had achieved another late-night record: His final episode drew in an estimated 55 million viewers, much higher than the 13.8 million who watched Letterman's final "Late Show" episode in 2015, or the 6.7 million viewers who watched Colbert's star-studded finale in May 2026.

When asked about the future of late-night TV in May 2026, Letterman told The New York Times, "We still have Jimmy. We still have Seth [Meyers]. It's not completely dead on arrival, but I would be surprised if it lasts more than a year or so. But it's such an easy soothing format that it's got to stay on." He clarified about the late-night format, "I don't think it'll ever go away because it's just the best. It's humans talking to humans."