Why haven't late night talk shows like we have here in the United States not been as successful in the UK? Why has the format been a failure there?
Late night talk shows in the UK
We did have our own Saturday Night Live.
Good point. The only one we used to have was in the late 80s/early 90s I seem to recollect - the live "After Dark", that would go on with no set time to end and would usually end when everyone was too pissed to be coherent and/or an argument broke out. There were more serious ones, but they weren't so interesting. 
I remember Anthony Burgess was always very interesting and one of them was when he became obsessed with someone's sex life (can't remember who the other person was now unfortunately!) and there was another on comedy where a big argument broke out and somebody stormed out big time, but thinking about it now that may have been another late night show.
It's all a bit blurred now, my recollection, as they would all sit there drinking and smoking and you would be doing the same. 
Having said all that, I would love to have the opportunity to see some of the U.S. late night talk shows over here such as Jay Leno or Johnny Carson or David Letterman.
Yeah, I wish they'd just show the American ones over here. (Especially seeing as some of them are presented by English people.)
We used to have Leno and Letterman, but not anymore. 
They show The Tonight Show on CNBC. Jimmy Fallon has settled in well taking over from Leno.
Problem when they've tried these before in the UK (Jack Docherty for example) Is that having 5 shows a week, you run out of guests pretty quick & have to scrape the barrel.
People soon grow tired of them & they don't get the viewing figures
Once a week is plenty, keeps it fresher.
I love Jimmy Fallon.
I quite like Conan.
Conan is Cray Cray
In a good way
Didn't Letterman come over here at the end of the 90s and do his show from one of the London theatres for a month?
Does anyone remember Jonathan Ross?
Quote: Chappers @ 6th March 2016, 11:05 PM GMTDoes anyone remember Jonathan Ross?
And Graham Norton and Alan Carr and more recently Clare Balding.
I think if you mean nightly shows instead of once a week, it's simple logistics. Britain is just physically much smaller than America. Two thirds of all the potential big name guests are American. When actors/directors/musicians come over to the UK to promote something, they are generally only here for a week or less, so that gives you very little opportunity to book big names.
Even if you just consider Graham Norton and Jonathan Ross, I've read Ross sometimes has trouble booking big names because they tend to favour Norton's show (I assume because BBC is seen as better than ITV, the format of having everyone on at once and possibly better money), and that's just between two shows that are only on once a week.
If you had a nightly show it would end up having lame guests like reality TV 'stars' and people from ITV2 just to fill the time. Anyone remember The Jack Docherty Show? Exactly.
I wish they'd show Stephen Colbert over here. He's ace.
Love Conan! They used to broadcast episodes that were shown a few days after the States had them on truTV (aka The 24/7 Container Wars Channel) but I guess a deal must've fallen through because it hasn't been shown on there for a while.
I think they did attempt the Graham Norton show as a nightly thing on Channel 4 a few years ago didn't they?
Parkinson, Wogan, Ross etc. all wanted to go nightly but were prevented I believe.
Craig Ferguson is the best talk show host I've ever seen, ripping up he question cards and just chatting and being witty, sometimes they're having so much fun they forgot to promote whatever they were there for.