"After tonight, David Letterman will be the longest-serving host in late-night TV history. He is responsible for expanding our understanding of what late night television could be," Entertainment Weekly reports. "He is also, in a funny way, responsible for the complete destruction of late night TV. He started out in the hour after Johnny Carson, and you could argue that — especially in the early years — Letterman’s show represented a complete deconstruction of the whole Carson model."

Bill Zehme notes a defining moment in his career. "That Johnny Carson clearly would have bequeathed his desk to David Letterman has never been lost on Leno—indeed, I am fairly sure it haunts him still, if just a little," he writes. Chuck Salter profiles his right-hand man – and Frank Bruni profiled his longtime stalker!

Mark Seal explains how he was the victim of an extortion attempt – and guilty of fooling around. "Even before 48 Hours Mystery producer Joe Halderman allegedly caught David Letterman kissing his girlfriend, Late Show staffer Stephanie Birkitt, the cash-strapped veteran newsman and the multi-millionaire entertainment star were on a collision course," he writes. "In the wake of Letterman’s stunning on-air confession of sex with employees, and as Halderman prepares to stand trial for attempted grand larceny, the author tracks the converging emotional sides of the explosive triangle—Birkitt’s ambition, Halderman’s bitterness, and Letterman’s self-loathing—that rocked CBS."

Writing about the same event, Robert Kolker posits that "how the late-night talk-show host handled his extortion crisis says a lot about the peculiar mix of function and dysfunction that got him in, and (for now) out, of the mess."