It was the first single, then the first video, now “The High Road” gets its late night debut via The Late Show. Letterman introduced the band with a little misinformation — he promised that their self-titled album came with balloons and other prizes. No prizes or balloons, but it is really smart packaging. Brian Burton […]
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Broken Bells Take “The High Road” To Letterman
Posted on 10 March 2010
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Conan O’Brien And NBC Reach Exit Deal
Posted on 21 January 2010
Departing ‘Tonight Show’ host reportedly gets $32 million, plus $12 million for his staff.
By Jocelyn Vena
Conan O’Brien
Photo: Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images
Conan O’Brien and NBC have finally reached an agreement after more than a week of tense negotiations between the network and the departing “Tonight Show” host.
The Wall Street Journal reported that at about 1 a.m. Pacific on Thursday (January 21), O’Brien and the network settled on a deal that would ensure that he and his staff will be taken care of when he walks away from the show, which will then be hosted buy Jay Leno again. NBC rep Allison Gollust confirmed to The Associated Press that a deal had been made, though she wouldn’t elaborate on the details.
The deal allows Jay Leno to go back to hosting the show at 11:35, while O’Brien will receive a payout of $32 million. An additional $12 million will go to his staff, many of whom relocated to Los Angeles from New York to work when O’Brien took over “Tonight” last year. The WSJ also reports that there is likely a nondisparagement clause for both NBC and O’Brien, as well as a provision for the comedian that would limit or not allow him to appear on or host other shows for a set amount of time.
“In the end, Conan was appreciative of the steps NBC made to take care of his staff and crew, and decided to supplement the severance they were getting out of his own pocket,” Gavin Polone, O’Brien’s manager, has said about the deal. “Now he just wants to get back on the air as quickly as possible.”
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The 12 Best Late Night TV Performances Of 2009
Posted on 28 December 2009
It was a tumultuous year for late night laffs, with Jimmy Fallon joining the fray, Conan taking over Tonight only to find awful Leno sink the NBC ship at 10PM, and Letterman enjoying career-high ratings despite (or because of?) a sex scandal. It was, however, a solid year for late night music booking. We regularly saw bands leap from our backyards and comments section to network television, and indexed highlights for you the mornings after. Here’s a look back at a dozen memorable late night TV jams in reverse chronological order. It kicks off with last week’s surprise in which a Stroke and some ex-SNLers revisited a yuletide classic.
Continue reading The 12 Best Late Night TV Performances Of 2009…
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The Cribs Do "I’m A Realist" On Letterman
Posted on 03 December 2009
The Cribs returned to David Letterman last night (minus a Johnny Marr). Or, as UK fan Richard, who uploaded this clip, put it:
The Cribs playing the wicked “I’m A Realist” on American chat show Live with Letterman — a bit like a shit version of Friday night with Jonathon Ross with worse jokes and a dickhead band leader who keeps making stupid noises through the opening monologues
Ignore the ignorant. Come on man, we share the same skies.
Continue reading The Cribs Do “I’m A Realist” On Letterman…
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Skream Remixes Bat For Lashes
Posted on 06 October 2009
Joining Dave Sitek and Fever Ray producers Van Rivers & the Subliminal Kid, UK knob turner Skream offers up a new take on Two Suns track, injecting the heart of “Pearl’s Dream”’s witchy synth-pop with a darkened, dubstep pulse.
Continue reading Skream Remixes Bat For Lashes…
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David Letterman Apologizes To Wife For Affairs With Staff
Posted on 06 October 2009
On Monday night’s ‘Late Show,’ host says wife Regina has been ‘horribly hurt.’
By Gil Kaufman
David Letterman on “The Late Show” on Monday
Photo: CBS
When David Letterman revealed last week that he had testified before a grand jury about a $2 million extortion scheme tied to his affairs with staffers, the typically self-deprecating late-night icon said that was probably the last he would speak of the scandal.
But on Monday night, Letterman dove back into the topic to apologize to his wife, Regina Lasko, who he said had been “horribly hurt” by the news that he had slept with women on his staff in the years leading up to their marriage in March.
“Now the other thing is my wife, Regina,” Letterman said on Monday’s show, after apologizing to his staff for the unwanted attention focused on the show in the wake of the scandal. “She has been horribly hurt by my behavior, and when something happens like that, if you hurt a person and it’s your responsibility, you try to fix it. And at that point, there’s only two things that can happen: Either you’re going to make some progress and get it fixed, or you’re going to fall short and perhaps not get it fixed, so let me tell you folks, I got my work cut out for me.”
Letterman being Letterman, he opened up the show with a joke, asking the audience, “Did your weekend fly by? … I get in the car this morning, and the navigation lady wasn’t speaking to me,” Letterman quipped in the monologue.
“There’s a possibility that I’ll be the first talk-show host impeached,” he said later, while seated at his desk. “It’s fall here in New York City, and I spent the whole weekend raking my hate mail. It’s cold, too — chilly outside, chilly inside my house.”
After pretending to start bits about former President Bill Clinton, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford and former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer — all of whom were embroiled in their own infidelity scandals — Letterman, who has made light of such tabloid fodder often in the past, stopped himself. “This is only phase one of the scandal,” he told the audience. “Phase two, next week I go on ‘Oprah’ and sob.”
While still mildly joking about the extortion scheme by “48 Hours” producer Robert Halderman, who allegedly tried to blackmail Letterman with threats to reveal the affairs, the host was a bit more serious when discussing the scheme during Monday’s show. To date, Letterman, 62, has reportedly been linked to at least two staffers, and both affairs appear to have taken place concurrently with his relationship with Lasko, whom Letterman dated for 23 years before their marriage.
Halderman’s attorney has made a number of appearances on morning news shows denying the charges against his client, saying the Emmy-winning investigative reporter did not have criminal intent when he accepted a $2 million check from Letterman’s attorney as part of the alleged scheme. ”[Letterman is] a master at manipulating audiences, that’s what he does for a living,” attorney Gerald Shargel told NBC News. “So, to think that David Letterman gave the entire story, and there’s nothing more to be said, is simply wrong.”
Letterman allegedly had an intimate relationship with former assistant Stephanie Birkitt, 34, whose diary entries about the affair are said to have enraged former boyfriend Halderman. Those diary revelations are among the items Halderman is alleged to have put into a package that he presented to Letterman last month, telling the veteran talker that he would produce a screenplay about his infidelities unless Letterman paid him the $2 million. Halderman pleaded not guilty on Friday to attempted grand larceny charges and was freed on $200,000 bail. If convicted, Halderman faces five to 15 years in prison.
While some have called for Letterman’s ouster in the wake of the scandal, EW.com noted that though his conduct likely violated the rules governing interoffice affairs for CBS employees, Letterman is not an employee of CBS but of his own production company, Worldwide Pants, whose rules do not specifically bar relationships between supervisors and managers.
“I’m terribly sorry that I put the staff in that position,” Letterman said on Monday. “Inadvertently, I just wasn’t thinking ahead. And, moreover, the staff here has been wonderfully supportive to me, not just through this furor, but through all the years that we’ve been on television and especially all the years here at CBS, so, again, my thanks to the staff for, once again, putting up with something stupid I’ve gotten myself involved in.”
Though they also acknowledged the seriousness of the situation, Letterman’s guests also got in on the action. Martin Short fell into Steve Martin’s lap at one point and pretended to be his ventriloquist’s dummy. Martin quipped that Short might be subject to “sexual harassment charges.”
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David Letterman’s Ratings See A Boost In Wake Of Sex Scandal
Posted on 06 October 2009
Late-night host apologized to his wife for affairs with female staffers during Monday’s show.
By Gil Kaufman
David Letterman
Photo: Ray Tamarra/Getty Images
David Letterman’s sex scandal could be the very thing that helps boost the 30-year veteran back to the top of the heap after nearly 15 years in second place.
Based on overnight ratings from the Nielsen company, Letterman’s “Late Show” boasted a 4.2 rating, higher than anything rival NBC had opposite him in that time slot — or even anything on their prime-time roster, according to The Associated Press.
After the scandal over an alleged blackmail attempt by a fellow CBS employee broke Thursday, Letterman took to the air that night to admit that he had engaged in affairs with female show staffers and that someone had threatened to go public with the information if he didn’t pay $2 million.
On Monday night, Letterman was back on the air and he apologized once again, this time to his wife, Regina Lasko, a former “Late Night” staffer he married in March after 23 years of dating and with whom he has a 5-year-old son. While Nielsen didn’t have an estimate on the size of Letterman’s audience Monday night, it did report that the overnight rating was slightly lower than Thursday’s tally, when 5.8 million people tuned in to hear his mea culpa.
Police alleged that Letterman was the subject of an extortion scheme by “48 Hours” producer Robert Halderman, who they say tried to blackmail Letterman with threats to reveal affairs with staffers at the show. Halderman pleaded not guilty Friday to attempted grand larceny charges and was freed on $200,000 bail. If convicted, Halderman faces five to 15 years in prison.
Ever since Conan O’Brien took over the “The Tonight Show” on June 1, Letterman has been building up a lead in the ratings, boosted a week after O’Brien’s debut when the previously scandal-averse host made a joke at the expense of the daughter of former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin that resulted in some protests and calls for his resignation. That lead has stayed steady or grown in the interim months.
Letterman lost his ratings crown to former rival Jay Leno in 1995, when Hugh Grant came on “The Tonight Show” to try to explain his arrest with a prostitute in Hollywood. Leno held on to the ratings lead until he stepped down earlier this year.
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David Letterman’s Alleged Extortionist Joe Halderman Could Face 15 Years
Posted on 02 October 2009
Manhattan DA identifies man who allegedly threatened to reveal Letterman’s affairs with staffers.
By Gil Kaufman
David Letterman on the “Late Show”
Photo: CBS
The Manhattan district attorney has identified the man at the center of an alleged $2 million extortion plot against David Letterman. During a press conference on Friday morning, DA Robert Morgenthau said CBS News producer Robert “Joe” Halderman, who works for “48 Hours,” has been charged with the crime of attempted grand larceny for an extortion plot that allegedly took place between September 9 and September 30.
According to Morgenthau, Halderman waited outside Letterman’s New York apartment on the morning of September 9, hoping to give him a package and saying he needed a “large chunk of money” in exchange. The package allegedly contained a screenplay treatment Halderman was planning to sell that outlined Letterman’s various liaisons with staffers on his show. Halderman is alleged to have threatened that the late-night host’s life was about to “collapse” around him if the news got out.
People magazine reported that the one-page treatment mentioned Letterman’s 6-year-old “beautiful, loving son,” Harry, and referred to “ruined reputation and severe damage to [Letterman’s] professional and family lives.” After handing off the package, Halderman allegedly said he would contact Letterman at 8 a.m. to further discuss the matter. Letterman immediately called his lawyer, who met with Halderman at the Essex Hotel on September 15, when Halderman allegedly tried to extort $2 million from Letterman in exchange for keeping the news of the affairs quiet.
TMZ reported that Halderman held three meetings with Letterman’s lawyers at the Essex Hotel — the last two of which were recorded — and that at the third one, Halderman was given a phony $2 million check. He was arrested on Thursday morning while trying to cash the check.
Letterman began dating wife Regina Lasko beginning in 1986, and they married this March, nearly six years after Harry’s birth. It was not revealed when the affairs with staffers took place. Letterman discussed the alleged extortion bid on his show on Thursday night, admitting to the affairs and giving some details of his grand jury testimony about the plot.
In a further twist to the case, until recently, Halderman was reportedly living with Stephanie Birkitt, a woman who once served as Letterman’s assistant. TMZ reported that Letterman and Birkitt had a relationship that ended before Harry was born in 2003. Halderman is reported to have held onto Birkitt’s diary, correspondence and photos, which allegedly incriminated Letterman.
CBS legal analyst Lisa Bloom said on Friday morning that Letterman likely was forced to come clean about the affairs to avoid the fallout from potential leaks once the matter went to the grand jury. “There’s always the possibility of leaks, so he had to get out there first. He had to tell the story; he had to acknowledge his part in it,” she said. “He had to acknowledge all of the allegations that he’s making. I think he had to do what he did.”
Bloom suspected that by delivering the news on his own show, Letterman was probably trying to protect his reputation by getting ahead of the story. She said Halderman could be facing nine to 15 years in prison for the attempted grand larceny charge. If the sting went down as Morgenthau explained it, and Halderman took the phony $2 million check, Bloom said the DA’s office has a “pretty good” case on its hands.
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Tags: britney-spears, celebrity, david-letterman, graphics, lyrics, movies, MTV, playlists, podcasts, top-10-list
Britney Spears To Read Top 10 List On ‘David Letterman’
Posted on 18 August 2009
Visit marks her first appearance on the show since stopping by before her divorce announcement.
By Jocelyn Vena
Britney Spears
Photo: Jon Kopaloff/FilmMagic
Britney Spears is set to stop by “The Late Show With David Letterman” on Tuesday night (August 18) to read the top 10 list.
Us Weekly reports that it’s the VMA-nominated singer’s first appearance on the show since she surprised Letterman with a visit in November 2006, just after her son Jayden was born and right before announcing her divorce from ex-husband Kevin Federline.
During her appearance nearly three years ago, she said, “Thank you so much. I’m in town, and I’m just such a huge fan. I had to stop by.” Letterman cordially accepted the compliment, responding with, “That’s very nice of you to say. That means so much to me.” But it wasn’t Letterman she was paying the compliment to, it was another guest he had on that night. “Uh, no, I wasn’t talking about you,” she said. “I was talking about Will Ferrell.”
It’s been an action-packed summer for the singer. Spears will resume her Circus tour later this month after taking a short break from it to spend some quality time with her sons. Earlier this month, she appeared at the Teen Choice Awards, where she accepted the Ultimate Choice Award from Miley Cyrus. Also, in September, Spears is up for seven Moonmen, including a nom for Video of the Year for her “Womanizer” clip.
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Dinosaur Jr. Offer Fallon "Pieces"
Posted on 26 June 2009
“Pieces” is one of the more straight-up old-school Dinosaur-style rockers on the band’s second post-comeback album Farm. “Old school” in the sense that it’s one of those late-period tracks that, in a very good way, conjures “Freak Scene” (in the opening) and a handful of other older anthems before it’s through. For their showing on Fallon last night the guys don’t look quite as spry as they did in the “Over It” video, but you can’t complain too much about the performance or sound. I say this knowing you will.
Continue reading Dinosaur Jr. Offer Fallon “Pieces”…
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