MovieChat Forums > The Late Shift (1996) Discussion > Fox at 11

Fox at 11

posted 9 years ago by Seven_Fetzer_Valve
4 replies | jump to latest

Letterman should have jumped at that 11pm offer from Fox. Fox might have been "three quarters a network" back in 1992, but that changed very quickly thereafter.

[–] zimbabwebob 9 years ago

Yeah, i thought it was weird that they wrote of FOX so quickly but I don't know much about FOX in '92. Did FOX still have local news at 10pm those days?

[–] MrBlondNYC 8 years ago

Fox had local news at 10 PM then and still does now.

Fox was still a relatively new network in 1992 and actually was not available in a lot of smaller markets. That's why Letterman wrote Fox off. He would have been on less markets than Leno. I believe this is stated in the film. Fox didn't have a top 10 hit show until 2000 (it was the forgotten "Joe Millionaire") and didn't become the #1 network until 2005.

George Carlin: It's all bullsh-t and it's bad for ya.

[–] [deleted] 6 years ago

Some did and some didn't. My local fox station was showing MASH reruns at 10 pm until a few years ago. Now they have probably 6 hours of local news on every day. They went overboard!

[–] a_l_i_e_n 9 years ago

Perhaps it was hasty to write off FOX, although the CBS offer certainly paid off well for him because, even when his lead over Jay eventually disappeared, CBS was still so thrilled with the numbers that they happily kept Dave for another 19 years. I think it's Conan who should've taken the job that FOX was offering him. It wouldn't take 5 years to get the job, and they wanted to pay him more than double what NBC was offering to wait all those years.