I’m going to skip around and hit some points I remember.
I’m pretty sure that TDS under Stewart was four days a week, not five. The lack of a Friday show for late-night meant that the stand-up host could do concerts on the weekends and make millions of more dollars above their salaries. Leno banked every penny from The Tonight Show and lived off his eight-figure stand-up money.
Noah, just like Stewart, has an Executive Producer credit on TDS, just like every other late-night host. From my understanding, they have and had showrunners, but they are in charge of the writers and their input. If his writers are putting their words in his mouth, as I said earlier, it’s with his full compliance.
It’s 2022, not 1999, when Stewart took over. The world has entirely changed. The new host will not be a stright white male or British or Canadian. The odds are probably a hundred to one that if it continues it will do so with a black woman, with second odds going to a gay woman. That’s just hiring reality no matter what your personal preferences or political opinions are like. This brings to mind Amber Ruffin and Jenny Hagel, who are writers on Seth Meyers show and who put together The Amber Ruffin Show. I’ve never seen it but that doesn’t matter to anybody. It got good reviews.
Jon Stewart is 59. Nobody his age will be considered for a nanosecond.
Colbert isn’t insightful? We must be thinking of different Colberts.
I’m not aware of anything amazing Stewart has done in entertainment since leaving the show, although perhaps his show I don’t watch is really good. He has performed some impressive political advocacy including getting 9/11 responders medical treatment, which they obviously deserve and which was shamefully delayed.
I think he would be welcomed back despite his age. I do not think he would likely consider this, however. I think a somewhat younger host might boost ratings if they are smart and funny enough. I would hope the best candidate gets the job.
Charlemagne tha God is a possibility that must be considered. His low rated show just got a makeover as a panel show, but it is on Comedy Central and executive produced by Stephen Colbert. He’s 44, which is pushing it but probably still acceptable for the short run.
But I doubt it. Again, the reality is that TDS is a political show aimed at white audiences. Noah was a parallel to Obama, someone who didn’t present as “black” the way that, say, Jesse Jackson did and could never overcome. Larry WIlmore couldn’t overcome this either, although his big handicap was that his show never came together properly. The white audience, no matter how liberal it pretends to be, still has a bias and overall, despite the few music exceptions, the ratings always reflect this.
I made the mistake of reading the comments on that NY Post article. It says he’s getting something like 400,000 viewers a night. Is that out of line given how fragmented everything is today? And is anyone including people who watch bits and pieces on YouTube and elsewhere?
Thanks for writing exactly how I felt about Trevor Noah. I watched TDS religiously since the Craig Kilbourne days, so I felt kind of guilty giving up watching after COVID, though I’ll catch an occasional monolog but nothing more.
I like the suggestion of Amber Ruffian. She’s been great on Seth Meyer’s show, but I haven’t been able to catch many episodes of her show, so I can’t say how good she is at interviewing.
If they are smart, they’ll follow the Jeopardy example and give several people a 2-3 week audition to see what they bring. I think Dara is the best combination of Funny and understanding, but they should see what people have…
E.T.A Since Dara’s show got ended, he may be extra interested.
I looked up some numbers for comparison. South Park, which is CC’s flagship show these days, got around 650,000 this season, which is down around 90% from its peak. Since this is summer and no new shows are around on CC, TDS gets about 100% more viewers than any other show on the station.
Still, TDS is getting pretty low even for cable and cable is dying. So is late night. Put those two together and the outlook is bleak. A new, exciting host could lift those numbers by a bit but is no sure thing. I don’t see the show having much of a future.
Rather than looking for someone funny, if I were a CC exec at this moment I’d find the most famous person willing to risk their reputation for a couple of years before the inevitable sword of doom.
That may contradict what I said earlier. I’m giving reactions off the top of my head just like the rest of you. The problem is that I can’t think of a world-famous white straight male of any nationality who would be willing to step into this deathtrap.
Appreciated. I have watched every show. After COVID the show moved into an empty studio and bombed continually. The audience returned a couple of months ago and the atmosphere instantly rebounded. They also made a slight reformatting - one correspondent each day does “traffic,” “weather,” “finance,” and the usual stock news segments and they’re surprisingly regularly good. I’d put the show second to Colbert among the dailies for humor. I don’t rank interviews.
A quick Google suggests Noah earned $6m each year for his first couple seasons, then more, but most of his reported current $28m annual income comes from stand-up and not the show (if these numbers are even true). Which means that at this point, doing the show might not be worth it to him independent of its ratings. Still, with that amount of coin it is a real stretch to say no one would do it. But perhaps not very well known stand ups…
She’s on her toes, the give-and-take is just what you want in a host.
Could she do interviews? I don’t know. I bet she’s a quick study. Now, 12 years later, a respected and moderately successful screen presence and director, perhaps she’s ready to try something new. If I were her agent, and she’d expressed interest in a change, I’d let her know about this. Doesn’t hurt to audition. (Being from the stand-up world is no guarantee of anything!)
Just now, Noah came on comedy radio and did a routine about the first time he tried tacos, bought from a truck at the insistence of a friend. (The radio called the skit “Learning America”). It was very funny, especially after the taco truck driver asked Noah if he wanted a napkin.
Noah explained that to him, a napkin is what a baby wears to keep its shyte together. Much hilarity around this, the possible effects of Mexican food, the general messiness of tacos, being told it is a “mistake to squeeze too hard” and “how shyte can come out” if eating tacos while driving.
