Worldwide Pants, NBCU, Merzigo to Distribute 6,000 Letterman Episodes Globally
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- Worldwide Pants is partnering with NBCUniversal and Merzigo to expand global distribution of more than 6,000 episodes of David Letterman's late-night shows on YouTube, Facebook, and other platforms, building on a Letterman-themed FAST channel that launched on Samsung TV Plus last year.
- Merzigo will use its proprietary technology to optimize the archive — which includes NBC's "Late Night With David Letterman" (1982–1993) and CBS's "The Late Show With David Letterman" (1993–2015) — creating compilations, collages, bespoke graphics, multilingual dubbing, and search and filtering options.
- Walter Kim, Worldwide Pants' executive producer for digital, said the partnership will deliver the archive "in the best quality" to fans and new viewers across every platform and device, while Merzigo Americas managing director Dilip Bala framed the deal as a way to "unlock the full digital potential" of the CBS show and introduce it to new generations.
- NBC owns the "Late Night With David Letterman" archive, while Worldwide Pants owns the CBS "Late Show" archive — a split that reflected Letterman's leverage when he jumped from NBC to CBS in 1993.
- Merzigo, based in London, Los Angeles, and Istanbul, also holds partnerships with Hearst Media Production Group and Steve Harvey Global, and the expanded Letterman deal reflects growing industry interest in FAST channel distribution for large legacy content libraries.
Why it matters: Owners of massive legacy TV libraries are increasingly betting on FAST channels and optimized social distribution as a second life for decades-old content; here, a 6,000-episode Letterman archive spanning NBC and CBS gets platform-native treatment aimed at new global audiences, with NBCU and Worldwide Pants splitting rights along the 1993 network switch.
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