The main change is in late night. There is a peculiarity about the US
whereby there is a lot of TV being produced very late at night and very early in
the morning (local TV morning programmes can start at 4:30). Some of the most
famous shows attempt the late night talk shows which start at 11:35 at night
(and tend to be followed by another an hour later). That is apart from in
Chicago, whereby being on the Central time zone they show everything an hour
later (as opposed to on delay which happens on the west coast). This means that
I was able to see a bit more of them than usual on this trip.
Since I was last in the US there has been a wholesale set of changes in hosts going on. For many years there has been Jay Leno on the Tonight Show and Dave Letterman on Late Night. Now Leno left a year or so back (for the second time) to be replaced by Jimmy Fallon. He seems to have settled in well into the role and has kept the spirit of the show whilst adding his own personality to it. Letterman has only just left Late Night and they have be used to have a pause before the next host and are putting on repeats of the likes of Hawaii Five-0 (the current one) which means that their first talk show is now gone midnight thirty. CBS seem to like their British hosts for this show, replacing Craig Ferguson (who was always more famous in the US than the UK) with James Cordon (who is almost certainly more famous in the UK than the US). I only saw a small bit of this show (even an hour earlier it is still a bit late for me!) and it does seem a bit odd to see him there. You wouldn't think that a show gone midnight was a "promotion" for him, but in the strange world of US TV it kinda is.
PS - the fact that the backdrop for the local news in Chicago isn't real was shown in the heavy rain on Monday as there were some rather large raindrops behind the presenters...
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