The country’s last local late-night show may be over, but one of its longest-running bits still has a little suspense left in it.
Dan Cashman, the former host of Maine’s The Nite Show with Danny Cashman, is up for two Boston/New England Regional Emmy Awards, both connected to the final-season run that brought David Letterman to Bangor and gave Cashman a sendoff that brought the show national media attention.
The Nite Show‘s Letterman episode is nominated in the Interview/Discussion category, while Cashman himself is nominated in the Program Host/Moderator/Correspondent category.
For Cashman, this year’s nominations come with a bit of built-in comic tension. Over the course of The Nite Show’s 15-year run, he racked up 14 previous Boston/New England Emmy nominations without a win—a streak he turned into a recurring bit on the show. In “Never Won an Emmy!,” Cashman would cheerfully spotlight fellow Maine TV personalities who, like him, had managed to get through life without taking home one regional television’s shiniest statuette.
Cashman ended The Nite Show last spring. As LateNighter reported at the time, Cashman grew up a Letterman fan and built his Maine-based late-night dream the hard way: writing jokes, booking guests, selling sponsors, working with student video crews, and keeping the show alive while also holding down a full-time job and raising a family.
Letterman’s surprise appearance on the show, which aired in May 2025, turned that farewell into something much bigger. The former Late Show host traveled to Bangor to help send Cashman off, praised him as “a self-made man,” and called the show “no small accomplishment.”
The Letterman interview also brought Cashman a wave of national attention after years of operating in a lane that had become nearly extinct. Following the appearance, he was interviewed by NPR, Howard Stern, and People, among others—an unusually high-profile victory lap for a show that had long aired across an ad hoc network of Maine stations.
Whether that’s enough to finally break his Emmy losing streak remains to be seen.
Cashman’s path to the stage runs through the wonderfully regional world of New England television: In Interview/Discussion, The Nite Show is up against Vermont Public TV’s A Dancer’s Journey Toward Loving Her Body | Homegoings and WJAR’s First Responders Reflect On Deadly Assisted Living Fire. In the host category, Cashman is nominated alongside Erin Fehlau of WMUR’s NH Chronicle, Pamela Watts of WSBE’s The Bubblah, Shayna Seymour of WCVB, Dan Andelman of Phantom Gourmet, and Carmen Martinez of Telemundo New England.
All will be revealed this Saturday, June 6, at the 49th Boston/New England Regional Emmy Awards ceremony in Boston.
