I don’t have any friends, in school or recently graduated, who don’t at minimum have basic cable. $100 bucks a month for premium cable + internet is a lot, but nobody lives alone so most people’s share ranges from $20 (5 roommates total) to $50 (two roommates total). Actually, come to think of it, I think only one friend had basic cable, not standard (the full range of channels). DSL is very rarely available without a phone line, so they’d be paying $65/month for internet anyways. The bump of $35 for TV split among a few people really isn’t much.
Me, I’m excited, and I hope he’s as good as he was on Late Night. I started watching him in high school (gosh, 8 years ago now? Damn) and was sorely disappointed when he went to the Tonight Show. I’ve missed the masturbating bear and the lewdness of being on later at night; the Tonight Show was wrong on many fronts, but the lack of swearing and disgusting humor really hurt it to me.
#1 in a LANDSLIDE. I like the disgusting/offensive/dirty jokes that you can do late at night. I’ve always felt Jon Stewart’s show suffers with every bleep. I find myself much more involved in shows that originally air on HBO, Showtime, et al.
Does anyone know how much more leeway is given to a cable show than to a network? I know we’ll never see the masturbating bear again (SIGH) but what will we get back that was taken by Tonight?
He brought it back on his live stage show, but called it the “self-pleasuring panda.” I believe he’ll do like David Letterman did with a lot of his gags (Calvert Deforest, Mailbag, etc.) when he moved over to CBS, in that he changed their names and tweaked them just enough so as to avoid infringing on NBC’s “intellectual property.”
Cable doesn’t have to abide by the strict FCC imposed content restrictions that the broadcast networks have to follow. Cable channels can show pretty much whatever they want and not worry about fines from the government. Cable channels still follow the spirit of those restrictions mainly because its difficult to get advertisers for programs with too much swearing or nudity, which is why you only find uncensored content on HBO or Showtime.
And it’s also why South Park was able to do that whole, “Night of a thousand shits” years ago. As long as the advertisers are on board, they can do whatever they want.