I assume the show will remain in New York, but I know that Los Angeles was campaigning to get it relocated there, and it might be easier to book guests if Colbert relocated to the west coast.
Did you ever see Pee Wee’s Playhouse? Or the 1 hour live taping of The Pee Wee Herman Show? Those were awesome, right? And Pee Wee’s Big Adventure was both a hilarious film and the highlight of it’s director’s career.
Pee Wee Herman is a hilarious character, with funny and pointed insights into the past 60 years of our culture and society.
How great a late night talk show host would Paul Reubens have been?
I like the Prescott bits, but I’m a chronic sufferer of Fractured Humerus Syndrome.
The one recurring bit of Colbert’s I really couldn’t stand was his “Esteban Colberto” routines. Those would get me reaching for the remote.
Another example of his comedy while not in character: his roast of Chevy Chase, perhaps the funniest roast I’ve ever seen. He’s got a beautiful sense of irony and a lyrical way with words when he wants to.
I’m optimistic about the move, although I’ll miss the report.
You’re about as good at criticizing network television hirings as you are at creating memes.
As an afterthought, I was also starting to become irritated at his overly-vocal studio audience, getting to the point where his introductions of guests was almost inaudible. I’m not sure how that’ll play out on CBS.
Are they going to pronounce it “the Late Show with Stephen Colbert?”
Sad to seeing my favourite late night character retire, but good on him.
Well, I’m glad I got to see his show. My initial reaction was “oh, no!”, but it’s true that some of his routines are getting old and others sound like they’ve been written by frat boys. He’s smart to get out before it all gets so stale that his audience drifts away, but his political voice will be missed.
I like the filler bits well enough, but (my subjective opinion is that) they’re not what the bulk of his audience tunes in for. It’s good for a slow news week, but his strength isn’t in shmoozing and playing the congenial late-night host. 3
The Late Show has only one purpose: to bring in the biggest guests to promote their next project. That’s it. To the industry everything else is secondary. That’s one reason why people try to deify Johnny Carson: he lived before late night was solely about promotion. (The other reasons are pure nostalgia and selective memories and denial of reality.)
Such an enormous constraint makes it tough on any host to break out. They stamp their personalities on half a show and then have to smile at all seven cast members of The Big Bang Theory rotating through because CBS wants to promote their biggest show. And they have to love whatever movies are opening this week. No movie opening this week has ever looked lousy in the history of show business talk shows.
I didn’t believe that Colbert could take a parody schtick and turn it into a successful show and I was dead wrong about that. Some weeks (some days) TDS is better, some days (some weeks) TCR is better. That’s an incredibly high bar. I’m forced to believe that Colbert could take all the standard show-bizzy idiocy of talk shows and do something new and fascinating with it. Craig Ferguson did for a few years until he burned out. It can be done. I’m the wrong audience for Jimmy Fallon’s silliness and games but he makes that work for his right audience. So, maybe. I hope it works because his leaving creates a huge hole.
Nobody’s asking the next big question. Who replaces Colbert? If CBS isn’t the right place for a non-white guy can Comedy Central be? They don’t have a good track record. Amy Schumer is hot but it’s hard to see her in that slot. They’d have to go elsewhere. My choice would be W. Kamau Bell, who did a great job at FX’s Totally Biased until they moved him to FXX which had an audience of 14 people and 6 cats so his show got canceled in a week - meaning that he’s free. He can do the politics and the entertainment and his writing staff was the most diverse on television.
Heck, give Colbert’s slot to a mockumentary series featuring a rotating cast of Daily Show correspondents given a half-hour to really dissect a subject, giving Stewart time for extended interviews with authors and filmmakers.
I’ve noticed that Colbert has been slipping out of character - or kind of acknowledging the shtick - a lot more recently. Stewart’s interviews are a lot better than Colbert’s because of the character problem. Kind of like how TDS correspondent reports were terrible when the interviewee was on to them and the correspondent had to play dumb.
The Times this morning had a column about this, since Colbert was in the lead for the job even before the announcement. The hope was that he could revolutionize late night which has been getting very tired. TDS is not that different from a typical late night show plus correspondents. Colbert is a lot different.
And he is brilliant. I think he can do it, and I’m going to have to start taping the show.
I’d like to see Chelsea Handler get a shot at it, I think.
I dislike Colbert intensely, so feel free to dismiss my opinion as politically biased.
To me, this is just the latest proof that ALL programming is niche programming now. Colbert has absolutely no hope of attracting a mass audience. He can only bring his hardcore niche audience with him to CBS, and MAYBE pick up a few viewers here and there.
That seems to be good enough for CBS, which just goes to show you how fragmented late night viewership is. OBVIOUSLY, there’s nobody CBS could have hired who’d get the kind of ratings Carson got in his prime, but you know what? Today, there isn’t even anyone who could get CBS the ratings of the ebbing Leno and Letterman.
There are some rumors out there that maybe CBS will give The Late Late Show to Chelsea Handler. I stopped watching the show not that long ago after kind of a long run. I love Craig and Geoff but I do feel like they’ve lost some steam. Craig’s always had lulls, at least during the time I’ve been watching. On the other hand the NY Post says his contract calls for him to get $5 million if he doesn’t get The Late Show, so don’t go feeling too bad for him.
People are already suggesting pretty much every Daily Show correspondent as a replacement for Colbert, and I think most of them would do fine. Jessica Williams might be really really good, but I don’t know if she would want to be tied down to that gig at her age. The only one I haven’t seen floated on Facebook or Twitter yet is Aasif Mandvi, which is funny because he’s my personal favorite and he has a spot on my personal Daily Show Mount Rushmore. But I think he prefers regular acting work.
What makes you say that? Five years ago, who the hell would’ve thought anybody would watch a late night show with that guy who was funny next to Tina Fey but couldn’t stop giggling through every SNL skit?
The best news is that he will not take the Colbert character to CBS. I watched and enjoyed the first 6-9 months of the Colbert Report and grew tired of it.
That means any audience that follows him will likely be disappointed. His work prior to the Report makes me think he has a responable shot but it is a tough market.
I love the Colbert Report, and am sad it will be ending, but I think Colbert could be great at the Late Show. He is obviously very smart and I think could think of a good way to do it. I wouldn’t be surprised if on his new show he admits his old conservative persona was a fake character, and now he can be real and true to who he really is, but it’s just a new persona fake in a different absurd way. Maybe someone who is either super fawning over the Hollywood people to an absurd degree to satirize that sort of thing, or someone who has a huge ego and feels above the Hollywood people. His character could still be stupid and ignorant like before. I don’t know what he’ll do, but I’m sure he’ll put his own spin on things in a way that will work.
If he is forced to keep the standard format of two interviews an episode, then maybe he would be able to have more Hollywood interviews than before, but still have some of the authors and politicians and other people like he currently has on his show. On his current show he has 4 interviews a week, the average late night show has 10 interviews a week. But I don’t know how that all works and how much ability the show has in choosing guests to come on.
I didn’t see much of W. Kamau Bell, but from what I’ve seen he is good. He would make a good replacement for Colbert.
Jimmy Fallon beat him to it. 
I like Fallon, mind you, but it’d be hard to put a satire like that next to Fallon. And a nasty blowhard character would turn people off. Letterman was already too prickly for some people. I think part of the appeal for Colbert here (along with the bigger audience and some more money) is that he doesn’t want to play a stupid version of himself anymore. He has the capability to do it, but I think he wants to be himself and interact with people that way instead of having the confines of his character dictate what he’s doing. He’s been playing the asshole version of Stephen Colbert for almost a decade - more, if you count his time on The Daily Show. So in the figurative sense maybe he wants to be Steve Colbert (non-silent t).