CBS Late Night Changes

That's not really a bad comment.

Indeed. Channel 5 should give Peter Simon a daily show from 10pm-1:30am. All you need a Thomas Kinkade painting and he'd manage to fill the 3 and a half hours.

Complete with falling over the set too!

I dunno, though, The Big Breakfast didn't bring in loads of people who weren't previously watching at 7am, it took more or less all its audience from GMTV and Breakfast News. There wasn't a huge untapped audience tuning in, it was the existing audience split differently. And C4 had always done well at teatime with Countdown, the thing stopping teatime telly being really big before that was that BBC1 and ITV were committed to kids' shows and BBC2 often had adult education commitments, so only C4 really had the opportunity to do something there.

I don't watch all that much of Letterman so I can't identify what his sense of humour is like, but that came across as pretty scolding.

I think what Mr Letterman seems not to realise that the new Late Late Show isn't just a change of host, as it was when Craig Ferguson took over from Craig Kilborn in 2005. The whole show is being relaunched, so I think Dave should be asking CBS why there's a delay between the old host leaving and the new host taking over.

The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson was produced by Letterman's production company Worldwide Pants, and the current run with guest hosts is also being produced by his company. The all-new Late Late Show With James Corden is (AFAIK) being produced in-house by CBS, so that's a whole new production team being brought in.

Not only that, but there's also likely to be a completely new set being built for the show, plus for the first time, The Late Late Show is apparently to have a resident houseband. All that takes time to prepare, so as much as I still think Dave is a TV legend, I reckon he's being rather unfair on James Corden. If it was only a case of replacing the host, and nothing else, James Corden would have probably already been hosting the show for the last few weeks.

It's worth bearing in mind, there'll be quite a lengthy gap between Dave's final Late Show, and Stephen Colbert's debut. Letterman ends his run on 20th May, while Colbert takes over in early September. During that time, the old Late Show set (installed in 1996) will be taken down, the Ed Sullivan Theater is (AFAIK) to be fully refurbished.

So Letterman's production company has lost the production contract for the show, and Letterman is less than complimentary about the production of the new show... Hmm... Is that really a surprise?

However not launching because of a refurb is a bit lame. You can make TV shows in more than one studio, you can move a set, you can hire an OB truck for a run in a temporary venue. If you want to launch a show, you can, and you can launch it well in a tight timescale technically and in craft terms.

However producing a good show (writing it, finding the right voice and tone, getting the 'feel' right) takes time - and probably only really happens on-air... If you have a team who know their jobs well - you just do it...

Or bitter...

I've watched a couple of the guest hosted shows, and I have to wonder why they actually bother to run the guest hosted shows, and not some repeats of other shows. Surely having all of these guests hosts, especially Regis Philbin of all people is going to diminish 'The Late Late Show' brand to the younger audience who i imagine James Corden is going to try and grab. They even had the women from 'The Talk' do a stint of the show. What else could they possibly do to screw it up?

This happened 10 years ago aswell.

It's tricky though isn't it - they don't really want a guest host to be better than the new permanent host they've chosen. Think it's more a case of trying to get people in who would never commit to signing a multi-year deal to host a show in the middle of the night.

P.S. Are all the network talk shows filmed in New York? Quite naively I always assumed the reason most of the networks ran two shows was to film one in NY and one in LA, but that doesn't seem to be the case at all.

New York:

The Late Show With David Letterman (CBS) The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and Late Night With Seth Meyers (NBC)
(The Tonight Show moved to NYC when Jimmy Fallon took over. Jay Leno - and briefly Conan O'Brien - hosted it in L.A.)

Los Angeles:
Jimmy Kimmel Live (ABC) and up until last month, The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson (CBS)

Conan O'Brien also does his TBS show "Conan" in Los Angeles, but that's on basic cable, rather than network TV.