Wow! David Letterman has announced his retirement, planned for 2015. He’ll talk about it on his show tonight. Letterman certainly wasn’t thinking about retirement at all. But with Jimmy Fallon’s huge debut against him the Tonight show, it was only a matter of time.
There was no indication of this back on January 31st, when Howard Stern did an in depth interview with Dave at his birthday party at the Hammerstein Ballroom.
I did tell you a while ago that CBS would move in this direction. The big question is who will be Dave’s successor? Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert? They are each signed to CBS contractually even though their shows are on Comedy Central.
read what I wrote on April 3, 2013– one year ago today– http://www.showbiz411.com/2013/04/03/late-night-wars-letterman-contract-also-ends-in-2014-jon-stewart-looms
This will get interesting. Colbert was launched from Stewart’s show. Stewart, of course, would be the next in line for the job. But Colbert is more like Letterman than Stewart, who has been brilliant doing political humor and mixing it up with serious material.
Would CBS pass over Stewart for Colbert? Would Stewart stay with the Daily Show? And how much pressure did Dave get to leave?
