For nearly fifty years, the time slot between the 23:00 local news and station sign-off has been dominated by one format—the live talk show—and one show—NBC’s Tonight Show—under a succession of hosts. Other local stations generally fought back with movies and syndicated programming. CBS’ Tonight Show offshoot, Late Night with David Letterman, ABC’s Nïghtline and the syndicated Arsenio Hall Show, among others, have created viable alternatives, yet still within a conversational format.

Noting other experiments in late-night programming, NBC developed the Tonight Show from a local program hosted by Steve Allen, a witty urbane New York comedian and pianist. Between 1954 and 1957, Allen created the formula for the ninety-minute show—a living-room ambience, complete with family (announcer and band) and varied celebrity guests, from sex symbols to poet Carl Sandburg. Comic features, music and excursions into the live audience and onto the street framed and paced the talk, incorporating a democracy of celebrity into late-night relaxation. This era also established union scale as guest payment (while growing commercial revenues poured into NBC coffers for generations). Celebrities, nonetheless, have used this teleforum to sell their movies, songs and television shows, careers, athletic achievements and humanity (including political candidates).

NBC revived the Tonight Show under Jack Paar (1957–62), who hosted John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, as well as show business celebrities. Paar also began taping shows in advance, although still with a live audience. Edgy, personal and combative, Paar walked off the show—on air -in 1960 after a fight with censors.

In 1962 Johnny Carson took over for three decades. Carson did not change his predecessors’ formats, but overlaid them with a casual style that suited the Manhattan show’s move to California in 1972. He made the monologue more topical, while his approval legitimated newcomers in standup comedy, music and film for decades. Both star guests and the sheer repetition of formulaic jokes, sketches and banter with announcer Ed MacMahon, made Carson a constant fixture in American life and language.

Carson’s 1992 retirement created a battle between a frequent replacement host, standup comedian Jay Leno, and David Letterman. Letterman already had developed his sometimes surreal humor, more Allen than Carson, on NBC’s Late Nïght (1982–92).

Here, he took over a new 00:30–01:30 slot pioneered by Tom Snyder’s intimate, discursive Tomorrow (1973–82). The “wars” ended with Letterman getting millions from CBS, creating competition in style, features and location (Letterman’s Times Square versus Leno’s California), although guests migrate between these shows and the youngeroriented talk shows that follow.

Meanwhile, in 1979, ABC began nightly broadcasts on the Iran hostage crisis. A few months later, this became the half-hour Nightline., hosted by Ted Koppel. Nïghtline provides analysis, contentious interviews and debates on hot news, and longer investigative, town meeting and location reports confronting American dilemmas of riots, prison, racism, presidential scandal and challenges abroad. With its sobriety and immediacy Nightline has, at times, eclipsed variety-show rivals.

While various other syndicated talk shows and hosts have failed in the 1980s and 1990s, the Arsenio Hall Show (1989–94) was both a racial break-through for its African American host and a generational one, in contrast to the aging Carson. Hall, however, mixed super-hip with seriousness, including frank discussions of AIDS with Magic Johnson and poignant coverage/appeals for calm during the 1992 Los Angeles riots. A 1990s newcomer, Bill Maher’s Politically Incorrect (ABC), throws together celebrities, politicians and “average” citizens in pointed discussions of politics and culture, especially during Clinton’s unfolding scandals, while PBS’ Charlie Rose promotes erudite one-onone exchanges.

Morning television provides information and family chatter to begin the day. Latenight has permitted adult talk to chronicle, comment on and sometimes create fifty years of American life, media, politics and change, whether packaged as humor and gossip or serious debate. These shows have emerged as significant sources of political information and opinion for viewers. In the 1990s, viewers also can escape to multiple cable options—movies, reruns, cooking and sports—or simply go to bed.