News from the fringe: Letterman, Kimmel resign -- uh, re-sign

Three items from the daypart that made my career, such as it is.

1. As was quietly reported in a number of outlets last week, David Letterman re-upped his contract to host "Late Show with David Letterman" through the 2009-10 season. This means he will officially outlast Jay Leno by one season, though if he retires after that, both men will have held their time periods for the same duration, 17 seasons.

I still contend (as I did last year) that Letterman is more likely than not to call it quits after that 17th season. He will be 63. He will have competed for one year against Conan O'Brien, a year that I expect will not produce much of a change in the late night pecking order (where NBC dominates the ratings hour after hour). He has two successors waiting in the wings in Craig Ferguson and Jon Stewart. He has done it all.

Above all, I think Letterman is profoundly uncomfortable with the idea of being a late night host longer than his idol Johnny Carson was.  By May of 2010 Letterman will have had a show for 28 years and change, and any contract renewal would put him past Carson's tenure, which was just short of 30 years. Perhaps Dave will re-up on the theory that those first 11 and a half years, in which he was merely reinventing TV with NBC's "Late Night," didn't count. But I think he's smarter, and wiser, than that.

2. Before Letterman renewed, Jimmy Kimmel signed with ABC for another couple of years, meaning that he will be a network late-night host for at least five seasons, or longer than Bill Maher was (indeed, longer than all but a very few in the history of late-night TV). To mark the occasion, and fill time before the season launch next week, ABC is giving Kimmel his own prime time special, which airs at 9 tonight.

Jimmy Kimmel is a very funny guy. His show has its moments. But as long as "Nightline" continues to do well in the ratings -- you may recall this story about its recent rebound -- it's not clear at all that Kimmel has a secure part of ABC's long-long-term late night plans. Then again, maybe ABC is resigned to a schizophrenic strategy in late night, with news for seniors followed by humor for sophomores.

3. And for you local readers, Kansas City Chiefs running back Larry Johnson will appear on next Tuesday's "Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson" in an ESPN UK segment. This is the one where Craig puts on a bad wig -- OK, that really narrows it down -- and blusters through sports interviews as a character loosely based on the late soccer great George Best.

What Larry Johnson would be doing on ESPN UK is a good question, but we'll just go with the flow here, as Ferguson's sketches, for all their deliberate thrown-togetherness, rarely disappoint.