![\"Nick](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/nickbernstein1500.png\")
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\t\t\t\t\t\tPhoto: CBS\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Longtime late-night executive Nick Bernstein<\/a> spent more than two decades behind the scenes at NBC and CBS, working with Jay Leno<\/a>, James Corden<\/a>, Taylor Tomlinson<\/a>, and others.<\/p>\n But one of the strangest days of his career came near the end of After Midnight<\/a>.<\/p>\n On this week\u2019s episode of LateNighter\u2019s Inside Late Night podcast, Bernstein tells Mark Malkoff that CBS called him with good news: the network planned to pick up After Midnight for a third season.<\/p>\n Later that same day, he learned Tomlinson had told another group of producers that she didn\u2019t want to continue hosting the show.<\/p>\n CBS briefly considered continuing After Midnight with another host, but ultimately decided it would mean starting over after investing in establishing Tomlinson with viewers.<\/p>\n Within about a week, Bernstein says, the decision was made to end the show after its second season.<\/p>\n Bernstein\u2019s CBS tenure also included The Late Late Show with James Corden<\/a>, where the longtime behind-the-scenes executive unexpectedly became an on-camera personality during the COVID-era shows. What began as Corden bantering with staff eventually led to Bernstein being put on an increasingly tall chair, dressed as a jockey, and even strapped to a basketball backboard for a bit with Dwyane Wade<\/a>.<\/p>\n Elsewhere in the conversation, Bernstein recalls initially questioning the decision to air Justin Bieber<\/a>\u2019s first\u201dCarpool Karaoke\u201d after David Letterman\u2019s final Late Show<\/a>, pitching a possible 1:30 a.m. show with Josh Johnson<\/a> in mind, navigating NBC\u2019s Leno-Conan transition, and what he learned from years of meetings with Lorne Michaels<\/a>.<\/p>\n Click the embed above to listen to Mark Malkoff\u2019s full conversation with Nick Bernstein now, or find\u00a0Inside Late Night\u00a0on\u00a0Apple Podcasts<\/a>,\u00a0Spotify<\/a>, or wherever you listen to podcasts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo: CBS Longtime late-night executive Nick Bernstein spent more than two decades behind the scenes at NBC and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":889165,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[179997,16237,38388,88,15047,17974,121435,13727,372828,10674,224891,10675,349216,92],"class_list":["post-889164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-after-midnight","tag-conan-obrien","tag-dwyane-wade","tag-entertainment","tag-james-corden","tag-jay-leno","tag-josh-johnson","tag-late-show-with-david-letterman","tag-nick-bernstein","tag-stephen-colbert","tag-taylor-tomlinson","tag-the-late-show-with-stephen-colbert","tag-the-tonight-show-with-jay-leno","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=889164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/889164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/889165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=889164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=889164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=889164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}