Later is an American late-night talk show that aired on NBC from August 22, 1988 to January 18, 2001. The half-hour program—which aired Monday through Thursday nights (early Tuesday through Friday mornings) at 1:37 a.m. Eastern Time, serving as the lead-out for Late Night with David Letterman until 1993, and Late Night with Conan O'Brien thereafter until 2001—was originally hosted by Bob Costas, who, taking upon a similar format as Tom Snyder’s former NBC late-night show Tomorrow, conducted long-form interviews with a single guest for the entirety of each episode.
The show mostly retained this format after Costas’ departure in 1994; however, when Greg Kinnear succeeded him as host, it began to incorporate more traditional elements typical of the late-night talk format, adding a monologue, comedy bits and occasional musical guests, along with switching from an intimate one-on-one interview style to being taped in front of a studio audience. After Kinnear left Later in 1996 to concentrate on his acting career, the show featured various guest hosts for the next four years until Cynthia Garrett—who became the first African-American woman to host a network late-night show—was named permanent host in 2000.
Following its cancellation in January 2001, Later continued as a showcase of repackaged episodes of the Canadian sketch comedy series SCTV. NBC initially reversed course on its earlier decision to cancel Later in August 2001, announcing that Carson Daly would take over as host; however, the network later chose to instead launch Daly’s program as a new talk show, Last Call with Carson Daly, which premiered in the timeslot on January 8, 2002.
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.)
Debuting on August 7, 1988, guests during the show's first week of episodes were Linda Ellerbee, Gary Coleman and Billy Crystal. An early, generally positive review in Chicago Tribune, though not sure about the need for yet another [nationally broadcast] talk-show, still complimented Costas for coming across as "incontestably genial and dedicatedly sincere" and being "a deft interviewer and a good listener, who knows when to keep quiet, and whose ego doesn't splatter all over the set like Donahue's, Winfrey's, Rivera's, and Downey's". Los Angeles Times television critic Howard Rosenberg—though heaping praise on Costas as one of "the best, smartest and wittiest sportscasters in the business", being "a talk show host in a sportscaster's body", and "an ideal candidate to succeed in any area of broadcasting"—felt that, on Later, Costas needed time to improve due to a poor choice of "uninspired" guests. Only weeks into its run, Later was preempted for NBC's telecast of the 1988 Summer Olympics, with Costas hosting the network's Olympic late-night coverage that aired live on the U.S. West Coast from 9:30 to 11:30 p.m. Pacific Time.
Despite having late-night ratings leaders The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and Late Night with David Letterman as its lead-ins—thus being a part of a 2.5-hour programming block that was the biggest money-making group of shows in the entire U.S. television—Later with Bob Costas struggled for ratings individually, rarely clearing one million viewers. Still, with Ebersol's ever-expanding influence on NBC's decision making—now via a formal return to the network's executive management as he was named president of NBC Sports in April 1989, followed by another promotion in July to senior vice president of NBC News in charge of the Today program—both Later and Costas continued receiving ample support, attention, and cross-promotion within the network. With his mentor Ebersol firmly established as one of NBC's top executives, wielding influence in the network's sports, entertainment, and news divisions, Costas also benefited. Adding to his existing duties, he began to substitute host for Bryant Gumbel on the highly-rated Today while, from April 1990, reruns of Later with Bob Costas began airing on NBC's recently-launched cable channel CNBC.
Costas's duties with NBC Sports would expand in 1990. With NBC paying US$600 million over a four-year contract for the American network television broadcast rights to the NBA, beginning with the 1990-91 season, Costas was announced in May 1990 as one of the network's two primary announcers for the upcoming NBA telecasts starting in November 1990. Initially splitting the play-by-play and host assignments during the regular season and playoffs with Marv Albert, Costas eventually convinced NBC Sports president Dick Ebersol to leave the play-by-play duties exclusively to Albert and use Costas solely as the studio host for the NBA Showtime pre-game show (as well as sideline desk host on location during the playoffs).
In August 1990, Later began bringing in guest hosts to occasionally substitute for Costas: Jonathon Brandmeier, Tom Snyder, Pat Sajak, Katie Couric, Linda Ellerbee, Matt Lauer, Chris Connelly, Paul Provenza and Jeff Cesario. Guest host Snyder's March 21, 1991 interview with the 37-year-old New York City-based syndicated morning drive-time shock jock Howard Stern—who came on Later to plug his Crucified by the FCC CD boxset—gained long-term notoriety as the two, though generally remaining within the bounds of civility, nevertheless aggressively and sarcastically expressed dislike for each other by engaging in heated, testy, and uncomfortable exchanges throughout the conversation. Though they met for the first (and last) time face-to-face on this occasion, former NBC late night host Snyder now doing a nightly radio show for ABC Radio and shock jock Stern heard in the New York City, Philadelphia, and D.C. radio markets had had a prior record of mutual attacks on their respective media outlets that continued after their Later confrontation. On October 3, 1991, Later celebrated the third anniversary of its premiere, with an hour-long special airing at 11:30 p.m. Eastern Time, during the time slot normally reserved for The Tonight Show.
Later went on two-month hiatus for the summer of 1992, from late June until early September, in order to accommodate Costas's coveted assignment hosting NBC's primetime coverage of the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona. During December 1992, finishing up his ninth year as host of NBC's NFL coverage, Costas announced he would not be returning as studio host for the telecasts the following season, citing a desire to do something beyond "reading the scores in three minutes during the halftime". In late January 1993, to celebrate its fifth year on the air, Later taped a special anniversary show—5 Years Later—in front of a live audience at the Tonight Show with Jay Leno studio at NBC Studios in Burbank; it aired on the Saturday before that year's Super Bowl, held at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, with Costas pulling double duty that weekend on Later as well as on NBC Sports' Super Bowl coverage.
During one of his last shows, Costas said personal considerations led to his decision to leave Later. He did not want to move his family to New York and felt worn out by the workload consisting of his obligations with NBC Sports and his duties on Later. Costas' last episode, an hour-long special, aired on Friday, February 25, 1994. In January 2019, after leaving NBC, he expressed interest in reviving Later on another network.