this is a guy who hates humiliation. the cbs producer pled guilty to attempted grand larceny and spent four months in jail. a week after the scandal, dave apologized to his wife on air. my wife regina has been horribly hurt by my behavior. and when something happens like that, if you hurt a person and it s yurs your responsibility, you try to fix it. so let me tell you, folks, i got my work cut out for me. dave called this the lowest point in his life. the couple did reconcile and they are still together. talk about electric television. it s just television like nothing else you ve ever seen. his ratings went up. his ratings went up after that. but you know his ratings have never recovered much from the early days because he s always been playing from behind. and at some point i think he stopped feeling like he could win. coming up, dave.
think. it became an increasingly difficult struggle to counter all of that momentum at nbc. if you want to influence a congressman, you have to send him a full beer can. jay leno went on to win the ratings war for 15 years. gradual gradually, dave made peace with it. he is more comfortable as the hipper, slightly skewed show with a slightly skewed attitude and being at number one. it doesn t matter what the ratings are. it really doesn t matter. the fact of the matter is dave is the best there ever was. dave started something. dave dave dave dave dave dave dave! in 2000, dave showed a much softer side after emergency heart bypass surgery and five weeks of ott off the air, giving a touching tribute to the hospital staff that helped him. these men and women right here saved my life. and when dave shows his human side, it s a real treat. you re like, oh, what is going on here, who is this person we
conan o brien, then in high school. and it s very hard to explain that to people today. this guy was 180 degrees different from anything you had seen in that kind of format. would you like a tissue? thank you. the whole thing felt wrong/perfect. maybe perfect for conan but a poor fit for the time slot. after four months, david letterman was canceled. he thought his career was over. he was about as devastated as you could be. i think he remained for a lot of his career consumed with self-doubt. but nbc brass had other plans for dave. david letterman! dave letterman, come on, everybody up. in 1982 dave landed late night airing at 12:30 a.m., right after his hero johnny carson. so that s what they re doing. a dream job in a time slot so late you really could do anything he wanted on air.
didn t know? the episode earned an emmy nomination. the year later, the september after the 11th, he couldn t hold back his emotion. i was in the makeup room with him. he was pacing and trying to figure out what he would say. if you live to be a thousand years old will that make any sense to you? will that make any goddamn sense? letterman was the first late night host back on air. he made it okay to start laughing again. fatherhood also changed him. in 2003, he and his girlfriend had a son harry named after dave s late father. it s been really sweet to get to see these big moments in his life, from his heart surgery to the birth of his son and then i think as he s getten older we got to know him a little bit. your life doesn t really begin in the important ways until you ve had a child. when we come back, a
and i had a shot of her. it got big, bill laughs. turn the volume down immediately! she can t be stopped. nonstop laughs. yet writer steve o donnell said dave never thought he was good enough. i think it could be painful for people close to him. i have saved dozens of little notes he wrote and they were like i hate myself and standby show. he would underline that. even as he worried about his own success on cbs, dave paid it forward just as carson had done for him. you better be as good as letterman! i ll give it a shot. he should maybe put him away. conan o brien was a virtual unknown when he replaced dave on nbc s late night. i was being pummelled to death on television every night. hey, hey. we d only been on the air just a couple of months, and dave came on as a guest.