Later

History

1988–1994: Bob Costas

In 1988, NBC decided to again start producing original programming in the 1:30 a.m. Monday through Thursday slot following an almost five-year period—ever since the late fall 1983 cancellation of NBC News Overnight—during which the time slot had been vacant and local affiliates either signed off for the night or programmed the airtime themselves. NBC sportscaster Bob Costas was announced in late February 1988 as the host of a new program set to debut some six months later in August of that year.

By the time he was hired for NBC's new late-night talk show, 36-year-old Costas had been with NBC Sports for almost a decade, most prominently as the studio host of the NFL Live! pre-game show as part of the network's NFL package. He had furthermore been handling play-by-play announcing for the network's baseball telecasts (alongside color commentator Tony Kubek), and occasionally on their NCAA basketball telecasts as well. Only a month after being announced as the host of the upcoming late-night show, he was also appointed to host NBC's late night coverage from the upcoming 1988 Olympics in Seoul, South Korea. Outside of NBC, since November 1986, he had been hosting Costas Coast to Coast, a two-hour, nationally-syndicated Sunday night interview show, reportedly carried weekly by over 150 radio stations, where he got to branch out into longer-form interviews with various athletes. Additionally, since 1983, he had been making regular appearances on NBC's Late Night with David Letterman as part of the show's scripted comedy pieces—mostly as a straight man sportscaster providing live commentary of absurd 'events' thought up by Letterman's writing staff, such as elevator or fire extinguisher races in the RCA Building and search for the Late Night baby. According to Costas, it was in fact Letterman—an admirer of his sports interviews—who had something to do with Costas getting what turned out to be the Later job by suggesting that the sportscaster could do a late night talk show to former NBC executive Dick Ebersol (now heading his own production company No Sleep Productions) who, despite at the moment not formally being a part of NBC's management structure, still had influence within the network owing to many personal and professional contacts including a close friendship with the president of NBC's entertainment division Brandon Tartikoff. Apparently, Letterman—an avid listener of Costas's Sunday night radio show—particularly liked Costas's interview with retired NFL quarterback Bart Starr and told Ebersol that "anyone who can make Bart Starr interesting for two hours deserves to have his own [television] show".

Created and produced by Ebersol, he initially envisioned Later as a nightly reflection on current events in sports and pop culture. However, upon realizing Costas's unwillingness to move to New York City from his family's residence in St. Louis, Ebersol turned it into a stripped-down one-on-one interview show thus eliminating its dependence on current events. Consequently, Later ended up representing something of a break from the typical U.S. late night TV talk show format of the era; featuring Costas and a single guest having an intense conversation for the entire half-hour—without a house band, announcer, opening monologue, studio audience or guest musical performances, close to what Tom Snyder had done on Tomorrow in a similar time slot during the 1970s and would again do on CBS' The Late Late Show in the mid-1990s. Later was taped in New York City at the GE Building's famed Studio 8H, and occasionally in Los Angeles. Costas interviewed a single guest for 45 minutes to an hour in real time before turning the material over to editors, who condensed it down to 22 minutes plus commercials. On several occasions, an interview with a particularly noteworthy guest (examples include Paul McCartney, David Crosby, Bob Seger, Don Rickles, Jerry Lewis, David Letterman, Garry Shandling, Siskel & Ebert, Mel Brooks, Roger Corman, Robert Duvall and Martin Scorsese) was shown over multiple nights. These in-depth discussions won Costas much praise for his interviewing skills. Costas resided in St. Louis throughout his run on Later, flying to New York City once per week to shoot a week's worth of shows, recording all four in a single day. (Later did not air on Fridays as the hour-long music video program Friday Night Videos occupied the time slot following Late Night.)

1994–1996: Greg Kinnear

In late November 1993, as a consequence of Costas and NBC being in the process of finalizing his new deal that was to be based around sports, NBC named Greg Kinnear (who had been hosting the E!: Entertainment Television comedy clip show Talk Soup since its 1991 debut) as the new host of Later, initially set to take over in mid-January 1994. Kinnear's signing with NBC came amid him negotiating with a number of other American television broadcasters, including Fox (that reportedly floated a talk show opportunity in the wake of the quick demise of The Chevy Chase Show), Disney (which discussed potential sitcom and talk-show projects), and CBS (which considered him for the post-Letterman slot). Reportedly competing for the Later job against over two-dozen other candidates—including MTV's Chris Connelly and Rolling Stone's Bill Zehme—Kinnear ended up getting hired without a screen test with NBC additionally throwing possible prime-time specials into the deal. As per the terms of his NBC late-night deal, he was allowed to continue hosting Talk Soup. With Kinnear taking over Later, NBC decided to relocate production of the show from New York City to Los Angeles, reportedly in order to facilitate his continued appearances on Talk Soup. Furthermore, the network's publicly stated plan for Later was to initially keep the format Costas had previously followed—a half-hour interview each night with a single celebrity or public figure—before eventually tailoring the format to Kinnear's talents. A few weeks later, in a December 1993 New York Times interview, Kinnear stated the show would begin incorporating short skits and comedy performances while insisting that one-on-one interviews would remain its backbone.

Originally scheduled for mid-January 1994, Kinnear's debut was subsequently pushed back by a month to February 14. Contrary to the network's earlier pronouncements, the plans for Kinnear's Later to continue as a one-on-one interview show like it had been under Costas were abandoned during preparation for its launch. Instead, it was decided that the program would adopt more of a conventional American late-night talk show format: a studio audience, scripted comedy segments (opening monologue and skits) as well as single guest interview—mostly contemporary TV and movie personalities promoting their projects. Right from the announcement of his stepping into the Later job on NBC, Kinnear was seen by many in the American television industry not only as a successor to Bob Costas but also a potential replacement for the novice performer Conan O'Brien, whose talk show in the preceding 12:35 a.m. Eastern Time slot had been suffering from low ratings and poor reviews ever since it debuted on the network months prior. With news that Kinnear would be doing a conventional late-night talk show, this speculation only intensified.

1996–2000: Guest hosts and occasional SCTV reruns

After Kinnear's departure, NBC initially continued with the practice of having guest hosts while ostensibly looking for a permanent hosting solution to emerge. More generally, with its lead-ins—The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (which had been the most-watched late night show since the summer of 1995) and Late Night with Conan O'Brien (which averaged 2.6 million viewers with a strong showing among 18-to-49-year-olds)—dominating American late night television and ensuring enough spill-over viewership for Later, NBC reportedly began to treat the 1:35 a.m. show as "a lab" for discovering new talent.

NBC production executive Gary Considine acted as the show's executive producer, assuming the role from Kinnear, who had served as its showrunner during his tenure as host. His wife Rita Sever (then host of the weekly NBC variety show, Friday Night) was the most consistent Later guest host between 1997 and early 1999. Other guest hosts came from just about any facet of public life in the United States, including supermodel Cindy Crawford, actor Matthew Perry, actress/comedienne Lynne Koplitz, actor/comedian/radio personality Jay Thomas, rapper/actor Ice-T, stand-up comic/talk show host Jon Stewart, actress Tasha Smith, stand-up comic/actor Joe Rogan, stand-up comic George Wallace, comedian Tommy Davidson, actor Judd Nelson, actor/comedian Harland Williams, actor/comedian David Alan Grier, comedian Jim Breuer, sports personality Ahmad Rashad, actor Jerry O'Connell, actress Lisa Amsterdam, actor/comedian Michael Rapaport, cable host/VJ Cynthia Garrett, actress/comedienne Lisa Ann Walter, actress Peri Gilpin, actress/model Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, actor/rapper Daryl "Chill" Mitchell, comedienne Paula Poundstone, actor Duane Martin, comedienne Sue Costello and comedian Jeff Ross.

On multiple occasions between late 1998 and July 1999, instead of featuring a guest host or showing a rerun, NBC resorted to airing a package of syndicated reruns of SCTV (which the network had previously aired on Fridays following The Tonight Show from 1981 to 1983, when it was succeeded by Friday Night Videos) as part of Later. The practice was first implemented on December 21, 1998, with a total of 11 episodes of the Canadian sketch comedy series airing for almost three weeks until January 7, 1999. It was then brought back for week-long stints three more times—in March, April, and June–July 1999, respectively.

Several years into the rotating guest hosts strategy, to the extent that it even generated press coverage anymore, Later began to receive criticism over what many saw as creative neglect. The show's executive producer Considine—working for NBC's in-house production arm NBC Studios, along with a further advisory role on Leno's Tonight Show, Saturday Night Live and O'Brien's Late Night—was accused of a conflict of interest over his wife Sever's frequent guest hosting stints on Later. Considine defended his position by stating that though he makes hosting recommendations, he is "absolutely not involved in picking the hosts" before offering a claim that in the five weeks Sever hosted Later during the 1998-99 season, ratings were up 15% to 20% among 18-to-49-year-olds and that the final decision on Sever's Later run had fallen to NBC West Coast president Don Ohlmeyer, who left the network in June 1999.

2000–2001: Cynthia Garrett

In December 1999, NBC issued a press release announcing former VH1 VJ Cynthia Garrett, who had guest hosted Later twice that month, as its permanent host. The fact that her guest-hosting stints attracted the show's largest audience in nine months in the key adult 18-49 demographic was NBC's main consideration in hiring Garrett on a permanent basis by signing her to a one-year deal. Returning to the show's initial Bob Costas-led one-on-one interview format but this time with a studio audience, Garrett debuted on January 31, 2000 by interviewing current Oscar nominee for best supporting actor Michael Clarke Duncan, thus becoming the first Black woman in American television history to host her own network late-night show. For the rest of her debut week, Garrett welcomed guests Reba McEntire and Lenny Kravitz, the latter of whom was announced in the press as "Garrett's brother", although it would eventually be revealed the two are not blood relatives but lifelong friends who grew up together in New York City.

Writing about Garrett's debut, based on watching her first three shows, a New York Post reviewer criticized her tendency to "gush over [her] celebrity guests" through excessive use of superlatives to describe them and their work. Comparing Garrett to original host Bob Costas, the reviewer stated an overwhelming preference for Costas, adding that his one-on-one interviewing skill is rarer than one might think. Though admitting Garrett shows hints of the "kind of bubbling personality that plays well on TV", a Chicago Tribune reviewer still disliked her Kravitz interview, finding it sleep-inducing for Garrett nodding along to her "overrated rocker" guest as he "floated off into vague generalities about the afterlife". Assuming that going forward Garrett will be more spontaneous, challenging, and interesting when she's talking to someone with whom she doesn't have a history, the reviewer also recalled Costas's "obvious preparation and research" as something Garrett should aim for.

Over the coming months Garrett would interview guests such as Laurence Fishburne, Joe Montana, Angela Bassett, Leah Remini, Magic Johnson, Tipper Gore, and Tommy Hilfiger. Production of Later remained in Los Angeles from NBC Studios in Burbank, with single mother Garrett spending two days a week taping a week's worth of shows before flying back to New York City to work on VH1 shows and to be with her 7-year-old son.

Averaging 1.3 million viewers since October 2000, the program was canceled in December with the final episode airing on January 18, 2001, just as Garrett's deal with the network expired. Explaining the decision not to renew Later with Cynthia Garrett, NBC Studios president Ted Harbert stated the network "wants to develop a comedy show [in the 1:30 a.m. time slot]" because it sees the time period as a "laboratory to experiment with an idea or a personality that could perhaps find its way to primetime". Garrett became an on-air personality for the TV Guide Channel (eventually succeeding Katie Wagner as host of its daily TV Guide Music News segments) as it began interspersing previews and reviews of upcoming TV programs with hosted interstitials. Around this time, NBC began to negotiate with Carson Daly to take over the Later timeslot, but this would not happen for well over a year.

2001–2002: Later presents SCTV

Following the end of Later's run, the time slot was once again used to showcase time- and content-edited repeats of SCTV. A new voice-over introduction by Rita Sever presented the program as "Later presents...SCTV", but the series was otherwise identical to the syndicated SCTV repeats that had been airing for years.

On August 15, 2001, as part of a three-year hosting and development deal that he signed with the network, NBC announced that MTV VJ Carson Daly would be the new host of Later. To accommodate his existing duties as host of MTV’s Total Request Live, production of Later was to relocate back to New York City’s GE Building at its original home, Studio 8H. However by December of that year, as the new format was being finalized ahead of Daly taking over the time slot the following month, the network—in cooperation with Daly and his new show’s executive producer, David Friedman, who conceived the new title—chose to retire the Later name, wanting to “start something new and fresh”; the show instead premiered on January 8, 2002 as Last Call with Carson Daly, which would run under several formats throughout its 17-year run. The program ended in September 2019 and was replaced by A Little Late with Lilly Singh, hosted by the content creator/comedian; it ran until June 3, 2021, at which point NBC gave the 1:35 a.m. timeslot once occupied by Later back to its affiliates, either to run a rebroadcast of their late-evening local newscasts (a practice that many had earlier discontinued during the late 2000s into the early 2010s) or syndicated programming.

Nominations and awards

During Bob Costas's tenure as host, the show won the 1993 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Informational Series. It was nominated in the same category in 1992, and in the Outstanding Achievement in Graphic Design and Title Sequences category (currently called the Main Title Design category) in 1989.

In popular culture

The opening scene of the 1992 film Unlawful Entry features Bob Costas's Later interview of Chris Evert (from the show's November 7, 1990 episode) playing on a bedroom TV set late at night as Madeleine Stowe's character is asleep and gets woken up by a noise from inside the house.