So that Cancel Colbert thing worked. Kinda’. 
I’m with you. I used to religiously watch Conan’s show in the late 90s and early 2000s, but in my mid-20s I decided I really really did not like celebrity interviews. They turned me off to the point of not being able to watch Conan anymore, and not being able to get in to any of the other late night shows no matter how funny and well-done they are. There’s too many gaps of boring.
I fell for The Daily Show and Colbert hard, but even on those shows I get super antsy when I have to watch a celeb pitching a movie, show or album.
But, that’s just me. I can’t begrudge Colbert for snapping up the chance to take the job, Report be damned. No doubt Letterman is one of his heroes and the spot is coveted amongst his peers.
I’m just sad that there’s a very good chance I’ll never watch him on TV again. I’m sure I’ll try it. I just don’t have the patience to stick around.
Much as I enjoy the Colbert Report, I was really getting tired of the schtick. Unfortunately, I don’t know if I’ll be watching his new gig - the only reason I see the Daily Show and Colbert is because they’re rebroadcast the next day. I’m not a night person, so I’ll probably never see Stephen again. Bummer. But good for him!
There’s been a lot of wailing and doomsaying in other portions of the internet, I think mostly from people who (perhaps unintentionally) seem to be conflating Stephen Colbert the performer and Stephen Colbert the character, or thinking that his hands will be completely tied with a Tonight Show-style program. Personally, I think he will do very well.
He’s a very, very talented man with a quick wit and some real intelligence behind that wit. I don’t see any reason why he can’t move into the Letterman time slot yet still play with the format a bit, the way Letterman did when he started. Colbert will be under more scrutiny than Letterman was, and perhaps under greater expectations to conform to the Tonight Show-style template that has become the standard for late night, but he’s smart and capable enough to do some creative things within that format. He can sing, he’s got a sketch and improv background, and he is genuinely likable.
I’m also assuming (maybe naively on my part) that he didn’t just say, “yes,” without having some discussions with CBS about the show format and how much creative control he’ll have. I doubt very much that everything will stay the same and they’ll simply replace Letterman with Colbert. He’d be a fool to take that job, and I doubt very much that Stephen Colbert is a fool.
Hell, maybe we’ll get some more Even Stevphen segments when Carrell comes on to promote his next movie.
Bad choice. Bad decision. Worse than choosing Dennis Miller for MNF. This will ruin Colbert (the character he created is why we like to see him) and it will ruin Late Night.
By the way it’s interesting to note that Colbert be on opposite Jimmy Fallon again, but now they’ll have the two biggest franchises in late night. They’ve appeared on each other’s shows a handful of times over the years and had competing Ben & Jerry’s flavors. Colbert even got the “welcome to 11:30, bitch!” topper on Fallon’s first Tonight Show. They seem legitimately friendly to me, though of course it’s hard to tell.
He does- improvising in character the way he does is not easy. When he’s not in character he’s a friendly, charming guy. That certainly seem to be the order of the day.
He’ll be under scrutiny because he’s new, but if CBS was happy to let David Letterman be David Letterman for 20-odd years, they probably wouldn’t pick Colbert with the idea of making him be more “normal” (whatever that template is at this stage). I agree that the two sides must have talked about this a great deal; it would be crazy if they didn’t. Colbert has things he wants to do and CBS has its own wants.
I’m sure Comedy Central owns the rights to Even Stevphen.
NOPE! I am not ok with this at all!!! :mad::mad::mad:
I know people see it as a step up hosting a network show with such history, but playing within the constraints of a late night network show is going to completely stifle his creativity.
The Colbert Report was like nothing on TV, a complete and utter satirical spin on news in which the anchor himself plays a character. Doing that allows him to free himself from normal rules of engagement, to ask pointed questions or react in a way that illustrates the absurdities of our political process. He played interviewees for fools but was the biggest fool in the room.
His brilliant mocking of the SuperPAC system during 2012 was one of the most engaging, intelligent, understandable, and entertaining dissections of a deliberately obtuse political subject I’ve ever seen in my life. That he spent his own time and money running a fake race or establishing a real SuperPAC and gave out kits to do it is something that will not be tolerated by the brass at CBS.
Yeah, I don’t care that he’s not even had time to make up a banner for his late night show yet, I know how safe networks play it and I can and will judge what I believe will happen in the future. There’s no way that he’ll be allowed to do what makes him Colbert! Does anyone think he’s going to interview someone like Russel Crowe and not joke about tossing phones at people, or make crazy proclamations now that he can’t say he’s just a comedian on Comedy Central? This show will be a weird attempt to mix his desire to muck up the process with a bunch of air-headed celebrities promoting their newest shit. I would love to see Colbert just say the movie was terrible or he didnt’ watch it but we all know this won’t happen :mad:
I just hope he’ll return to Comedy Central after the inevitable flameout.
So you don’t think Colbert, the actual guy, not the caricature, has the talent to pull this off then. Noted.
It’s all Viacom though.
So, #CancelColbert was a success?
I agree that his Super PAC series was outstanding and one of the best, smartest things he ever did on the Report. There’s no question his Late Show will be less political. However it’s really weird to hear people insist that CBS will play it safe and stifle the creativity of the guy who replaces David Letterman when Letterman himself was an oddball who shook up talk shows in all kinds of ways.
I did forget about that. Actually the fact that he’s already “in-house” may have given him a big advantage here.
Oh yeah, it most certainly did. This has probably been all worked out behind the scenes for weeks if not a month or more. Maybe Bill Carter can write a book about it… won’t be nearly as interesting as Late Shift or the one about the Conan/Leno fight though.
Just saw this:
“Sources say Colbert informed his Colbert Report staff a couple hours ago and that he told his team they’re all going to work on his CBS show.”
I’m the least-qualified commentator here, as I’ve only seen Colbert a handful of times, and I’ve watched only a smattering of late-night TV over the last several years.
But I’ll just say generally that there’s talent…but there’s also playing to your strengths. One could cite any number of artists in any endeavor who thought that because they did one thing well, they could do anything well. Sometimes they’re right, but often they’re wrong. Some careers that were pretty stellar early on ended up in the toilet when those artists insisted upon “growing” beyond what they were best at.
This is obviously far from an exact parallel, but who remembers Howard Cosell’s variety show? If you do, it’s because it, and he, was so bad. How about Garth Brooks as Chris Gaines?
I hope this doesn’t apply in the case of Colbert; I admire what he’s done and I wish him well. But I share some of the concerns that have been articulated.
Congratulations, but barring a surprise I think it’s a net loss for the country.
Perhaps he’ll take the Steven Colbert character with him, or perhaps he’ll simply keep the political perspective as central to the show. But if it’s the more generic comedy, if it’s the late night equivalent to mornign fluffery, than the country has lost an important voice.
If the increased budget means more Tek Jansen cartoons, I might be convinced.
I have to wonder about this myself. How much of the show’s quality is Colbert the created character and how much is Colbert the actual person? And can Colbert the actual person carry it off without the created character?
I think it is a bad choice too. Who is Stephen Colbert without his on-screen persona? He can’t keep that mask on while doing the new show, so who will he be?
The bombast and biting satire of The Colbert Report was great, but will the real Colbert just be boring?
A big gamble and maybe he will be able to put his own flavor on The Late Show, but without the bombast it might just bomb.
Completely agree.
It’s not even a matter of talent or wit; the interviews themselves are usually pretty boring, especially when the guest is an entertainment artist. At least on the Colbert Report some of the interviews are with politicians and activists, or with people who have written interesting books on historical or social or political issues, and Colbert’s conservative caricature can often throw in some great lines that keep it interesting. But the network late night shows are a wasteland of actors and singers flogging their latest movie or TV show or album, and when they do get politicians, the interviews are so tame as to be unwatchable.
On both the Daily Show and Colbert Report, i switch off before the interview about 50 percent of the time, especially with Stewart. There’s no way i would watch a show with either of them where interviews took up the majority of the time.
He’s got the talent to do just about anything on TV, i reckon.
I guess it’s also possible that he’ll be able to make use of that talent in a way that surpasses the vanilla limitations of network late night shows with their middle-of-the-road audiences. But i’m not optimistic.
If you don’t think Colbert can pull it off because his only schtick is the conservative persona, watch some old Daily Show episodes when he was a correspondent. He is quick and witty, and much more than a one-trick pony.
Talent will get you only so far. If the purveyor of that talent made his fame doing a kind of thing that the bosses won’t like, it’ll be a disaster.
What I don’t get is the target audience on this. Jon Stewart I can see as a replacement. He’s funny, but does more serious news, and is not himself a character. Colbert’s audience does not overlap much with Letterman’s audience, so either he would have to be more like Letterman, thus losing the built-in audience his employers are going for, or stay more like Colbert, which will lose the older late night audience.
People have mentioned how Conan on the Tonight Show was a shell of his former self. And that was a guy who already had a network show. How watered down do you think they will force Colbert to be?
There are a lot of talented people whose styles don’t mesh with their place of employment. I don’t think any less of Colbert’s talent but I don’t think he’ll be able to pull this off unless CBS is willing to make drastic concessions to the traditional late night formula. Maybe no house bands or musical guests, one interview a night, and the show’s host doing bits and sketches for 45 minutes. Do you really think CBS is going to alter the traditional late night formula enough to let Colbert shine? That’s the real debate, not about his talent