So David Letterman announced his retirement from the Late Show after a long and tenured career in the late night chair. Then, naturally, rumours began swirling as to who exactly would take over the desk. Those rumours were proven true when CBS unveiled Stephen Colbert as the new host of the Late Show just a few days ago. Now the attention is turning to the really late night slot, with speculation running rampant that the network is considering a change up from current host Craig Ferguson, and that, for the first time in network television history, women are among the leading candidates to fill that chair.
Despite Ferguson being the current follow-up to Letterman, hosting The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, it seems he might never have been a serious candidate to succeed Dave in the Late Show slot. CBS head honcho Les Moonves revealed that the network more or less locked their sights firmly onto Colbert from the moment Letterman announced he was stepping aside. “It appeared to us that he was the only logical successor to David.” Whilst this would obviously be a disappointing decision for Ferguson, he’s not exactly getting nothing out of it. His contract with CBS reportedly contains a clause stipulating that, in the event of Letterman’s retirement and someone other than Ferguson getting the Late Show chair, he receives a compensatory payout reported to be anywhere from 5 to 12 million dollars. Which is a far cry from a voucher for a free Big Mac after getting rejected for a job at McDonald’s when you’re 14.
But Ferguson isn’t even a guarantee to retain his Late Late Show spot, with Moonves further stating that the 12:30 slot is “up in the air.” Even more interestingly, Moonves mentioned the following when referring to potential candidates for Colbert’s follow-up, “Obviously, we’re considering all sorts of candidates and women are among them. A woman would be great in late night.” Women are not exactly totally foreign to late night hosting; Joan Rivers regularly filled in for Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show, and Wanda Sykes had a short-lived weekend talk show in 2009.
The two leading candidates that immediately spring to mind, should CBS go in this direction, are Chelsea Handler and Ellen DeGeneres. Handler, an experienced hand with the talk show format, has signalled her intention to leave her current cable home the E! Network once her contract expires this year. Whilst Ellen has carved out a wildly popular global following on the back of her popular syndicated daytime talk show “Ellen,” but could foreseeably be swayed by the opportunity to helm a regular network late night show.
Putting a permanent female host in charge of a nightly talk show would be groundbreaking territory for CBS, and has long reaching, positive benefits for the medium as a whole.
Photo: Mike Windle via Getty Images.
