What did Letterman, Ferguson have to say about NBC’s late-night reshuffling?

With all of the hullaballoo yesterday about what NBC may or may not do with its late-night TV lineup, you also may have been interested to know what the main competition over on CBS had to say about this. David Letterman had made almost nightly jokes about Jay Leno's 10 p.m. show for a while, and last night, Letterman poked fun at a late-night rival. But not Leno. Instead, Letterman's cue-card guy, Tony Mendez, got his own mid-show sketch in which he used a shout-out for a relative's birthday to promote Lopez Tonight on TBS. I'm guessing the ever-changing news on NBC caught Letterman's crew too late to want to say something last night, and considering Friday's show was pre-taped on Monday, you'll have to wait for their jabs until Monday, when perhaps they'll have a better idea of what to mock exactly.

Conan O'Brien himself was silent on the matter. Unless you want to read something into his monologue joke about David Hasselhoff leaving America's Got Talent to host his own show. Fallon remained quiet, too, but he taped earlier in the night, and also, his name had not come up in all of the rumors, so why insert himself into it.

Meanwhile, Craig Ferguson didn't have to wait, and he did not wait. He opened his show by announcing he couldn't appear since he was now going to be on NBC at 11:35 p.m., then continued his opening monologue by talking about how even though he's friendly with the NBC talk-show hosts, he's still more than willing to be somewhat happy about the mess that other network has made. Ferguson also readily concedes that he produces "the crappiest" late-night TV show, although there's something slightly endearing about the crap he's putting out each weeknight.

Sean L. McCarthy

Editor and publisher since 2007, when he was named New York's Funniest Reporter. Former newspaper reporter at the New York Daily News, Boston Herald and smaller dailies and community papers across America. Loves comedy so much he founded this site.

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