How Letterman Revolutionized Late-Night Television

When Late Night with David Letterman premiered in 1982, its ironic, prankish, smarty-pants sensibility revolutionized late-night comedy. But Letterman’s influence extends beyond the late-night shows that followed; he also trained a generation of comedy writers. The writers on shows like The Simpsons, Seinfeld, News Radio, Monk, and other great comedies all got their start with Letterman. His irreverent style even encouraged a young Kurt Andersen and some friends to launch Spy magazine.

Kurt met one of the show’s original head writers, Jim Downey, in college while they were both working on the Harvard Lampoon. Roughly a dozen Lampoon alumni ended up writing for Letterman during the 1980s. Downey says that those writers brought “the things that are often regarded as the downside of the Harvard Lampoon — a kind of silliness, a sophomoric approach to things, but with a lot of book learning in there.” That combination of stupid and smart in one vessel is at the core of the Letterman show’s genius. “I think sophomoric is a compliment,” says Downey.

That sensibility was especially evident in some of the more conceptual segments— like the time the show pitted a humidifier against a dehumidifier. “I think we kind of billboarded it like a fight,” Downey recalls. Staging a contest like that was totally out of place on network television. “It was fun to have someone like Dave who appreciated that in exactly the same way the writers did,” says Downey, “it was just a fun thing to do, it didn’t need any more defense than that.”

The show was also revolutionary for its use of remotes— those segments that sent Dave out of the studio. “He would go around to those various places and he would just introduce the audience to strange things,” explains Downey. Like the famous “Just Bulbs”bit that took Dave to a New York City store called “Just Bulbs” that sold nothing but light bulbs. “Dave went there and just kept asking her for other kinds of things,” Downey remembers. “He was great on his feet— and he had a great attitude. He was a wise guy.”