Buzz
If you press the menu button on your cable remote, you'll find the TV schedule displayed in an orderly grid. Most shows begin on the hour or at the half-hour, a pattern that has been in place since television’s early years, with one significant exception: the late-night talk shows on major broadcast networks. Shows hosted by Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert, and Jimmy Kimmel all kick off at 11:35 p.m. eastern time, and subsequent programs also start shortly after the half-hour. These are some of the only shows in American television that don't follow the typical pattern of starting on the hour or half-hour. So, how did late-night talk shows end up with these unusual time slots?
Saddam Hussein plays a part in this.
In the early 1990s, affiliate networks had been pushing hard to take back more control from the major networks,” Bill Carter—a former TV journalist for The New York Times and author of The Late Shift: Letterman, Leno, and the Network Battle for the Night and The War for Late Night: When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy—explains to mental_floss via email.
Local TV stations, which buy programming from national networks like ABC, CBS, and NBC, sought more time for their newscasts. According to Carter, NBC faced particularly strong pressure because they demanded extra time from their local affiliates during the late-night hours for national programming. Being an NBC affiliate meant dedicating two hours each weekday evening to The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and Late Night with David Letterman. While CBS, ABC, and Fox did air some late-night programming, none had the same unyielding block of late-night TV as NBC’s.
“Some NBC affiliates were advocating for moving The Tonight Show [to midnight],” Carter recalls, “which could have ended the show’s dominance.”
When the Gulf War erupted in the summer of 1990, local affiliates ramped up their demand for more news time, arguing they needed to cover the conflict. In response, NBC agreed to shift its late-night block by five minutes, starting at 11:35 p.m. instead of 11:30 p.m. However, once local stations gained those valuable five minutes, they weren’t willing to give them up.
Johnny Carson, who had been hosting The Tonight Show for nearly 28 years by then, was frustrated by the time shift. “He understands the TV industry and knows that once you lose that time, it’s gone,” Carter explains, describing Carson’s perspective. “He worries the next move will be to start at 11:45 p.m., and eventually midnight.” But since Carson was planning to retire in a couple of years, he didn’t protest the change too strongly.
After NBC granted its affiliates an extra five minutes for news, the other networks followed suit. CBS didn’t want to offer its affiliates a worse deal, so when David Letterman began hosting Late Show on the network in 1993, CBS chose to air it at 11:35 p.m. ABC made a similar move, shifting Nightline to 11:35 p.m. and later slotting Jimmy Kimmel Live! to the same time in 2013.
A new standard was established for the major networks, which played a key role in expanding the late-night scene. "This opened up opportunities for cable, which began its late-night programming at 11 p.m. and 11:30 p.m.," Carter explains, "giving rise to the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert phenomenon, as well as [Cartoon Network's] Adult Swim." Beginning in the early 2000s, these cable networks started to chip away at the big networks' previously unbeatable ratings dominance.
In the end, Johnny Carson had the final laugh.
