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"David Letterman has announced that he will be retiring from The Late Show on CBS. The late-night comedy icon revealed during a Late Show taping today (April 3) that he will step down in 2015.      Letterman has been a staple of the late-night television scene dating back to 1982, when he began presenting Late Night on NBC. His tenure on Late Night has been hailed as being highly influential to the likes of Howard Stern, Conan O&amp;#039;Brien, Jon Stewart and Jimmy Kimmel. Letterman said in a statement issued by CBS: &amp;quot;The man who owns this network, Leslie Moonves, he and I have had a relationship for years and years and years, and we have had this conversation in the past, and we agreed that we would work together on this circumstance and the timing of this circumstance.  &amp;quot;And I phoned him just before the program, and I said &amp;#039;Leslie, it&amp;#039;s been great, you&amp;#039;ve been great, and the network has been great, but I&amp;#039;m retiring&amp;#039;. I just want to reiterate my thanks for the support from the network, all of the people who have worked here, all of the people in the theater, all the people on the staff, everybody at home, thank you very much.&amp;quot; He then joked: &amp;quot;What this means now, is that [bandleader] Paul [Shaffer] and I can be married. We don&amp;#039;t have the timetable for this precisely down - I think it will be at least a year or so, but sometime in the not too distant future, 2015 for the love of God, in fact, Paul and I will be wrapping things up.&amp;quot;  He moved to CBS in 1993 to host The Late Show, after being passed over by NBC in favour of Jay Leno to replace Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show. Letterman has since surpassed Carson as the longest-tenured host in late-night history. He confirmed in October 2013 that he had signed a contract extension with CBS, which would keep him on the network into 2015. His retirement announcement comes just two months after his long-time rival Leno departed The Tonight Show for the second time. Watch a clip from The Late Show with David Letterman below:      "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/ustv/news/a562259/david-letterman-announces-retirement-watch-video-of-speech/>