David Letterman‘s long tenure in late-night is about to get a global boost as his Worldwide Pants teams with NBCUniversal and Merzigo to expand distribution of more than 6,000 episodes on YouTube, Facebook and other platforms around the world.
The deal calls for tech Merzigo to optimize Letterman’s archive of late-night variety shows, starting in 1982 with NBC’s “Late Night With David Letterman,” which ran until 1993, and CBS “The Late Show With David Letterman,” which aired from 1993 to 2015. The company will focus
“David Letterman’s unparalleled run in late night, across four decades from his shows on NBC and CBS, contains 6,000 hours of some of the most memorable television content in pop culture history. As we continue to expand our distribution of these iconic moments on YouTube and Facebook, partnering with Merzigo will enable us to better reach fans and new viewers across every platform and device, delivering our thousands of videos in the best quality they have ever been seen,” said Walter Kim, Worldwide Pants’ executive producer for digital.
NBCUniversal Global TV Distribution already teamed with Worldwide Pants to launch a Letterman themed FAST channel via Samsung TV Plus last year. The expanded deal and its focus on free, ad-supported streaming platforms is another sign that owners of large content libraries are seeing more potential in FAST channel distribution. NBC owns the “Late Night With David Letterman” archive. Worldwide Pants owns the CBS “Late Show” archive — a deal that reflected Letterman’s enormous clout when he made the move from NBC to CBS.
