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I won't mind it as much if he uses half his show to do what he's always done and the other half to pander. At least then I know I can turn it off at midnight.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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If he's smart, he'll pander in two six-minute blocks twelve and forty minutes into the broadcast.
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Colbert is no slouch at this necessarily, but he's leaving a very specific format, and so he either has to continue what Letterman was doing (DONT DO THIS PLEASE COLBERT) or he has to carve out a new *very different* show. Letterman and Leno mostly differentiated themselves by their personalities, with small differences (Top 10 list/Jaywalking) I don't think that will be good enough when he competes with Fallon for the late night TV audiences.
People forget that they asked Leno to leave because he was getting too stale. Top 10, monologues, and other bits are all hangovers from the pre-internet talk shows. Colbert has plenty of things he's good at, and he's not like Fallon at all. Why would he just go in and do the show Dave Letterman used to do? He's smarter than Letterman was when he started.
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What Lyrhawn said. I don't know how much CBS's producers will try to control the format. And all I'm saying is Colbert is departing from his format, and stepping into something completely different.
Fallon has been notable in that he's been charting new territory, and gobbling up some of the low hanging fruit.
Colbert will have to work to come up with his own stuff that the network will let him try, and that is successful. He's certainly capable! But it's going to be tough.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: What Lyrhawn said. I don't know how much CBS's producers will try to control the format. And all I'm saying is Colbert is departing from his format, and stepping into something completely different.
Fallon has been notable in that he's been charting new territory, and gobbling up some of the low hanging fruit.
Colbert will have to work to come up with his own stuff that the network will let him try, and that is successful. He's certainly capable! But it's going to be tough.
Content wise, Seth Myers gives me some hope. His comedy is much more rooted in political type stuff. He's also the most cerebral of the late night guys. His audience doesn't seem to get half his jokes, but he's trying and they're letting him.
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quote:Originally posted by Jake: I really hope that Colbert, if the position is offered to him, declines, both for Lyrhawn's reason #1 and also because I actively enjoy The Colbert Report, and would sad to see it go off the air (and the show is too tightly integrated with the character that Colbert plays on it to be successfully handed off to some other performer the way The Daily Show could be (and has been)).
I can relate too. I don't care about interview-talk shows. But if Colbert wants it, he's earned it. I'll watch the first few episodes to support him.
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I am happy for Colbert - I like him a lot. But I'll miss his character. I've actually always liked the Colbert Report more than The Daily Show, actually.
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I think TDS does more on point, hard-hitting satire.
I think Colbert comes in just below TDS on that count, because Stewart is much more to the point and unapologetic, it makes for better critical analysis. But Colbert is much more funny.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Because it's the network tv format.
He's not going to have nearly the freedom he had on Comedy Central
Dave owned, produced, and directed his own show. He employed the entire staff himself. That's a fair amount of freedom, he was just personally conservative.
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Do you mean "conservative" as in cautious? Because I never got the impression that his politics were at all conservative. Leno, on the other hand...
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I meant as in traditional, or non-challenging in sensibility. His politics are infantile, as are Leno's, and I think particularly younger people, raised on a diet of Jon Stewart, are tired of facile, digestible commentary. There's a reason that print journalism is actually growing quite fast in total volume (and in article length), even as the industry loses money.
I know that above comment may seem a bit silly: I say that Jon Stewart is the antidote to digestibility, but he's more of a gateway drug. He's digestible, as a function of his format, but he frequently engages with topics that do not suggest easy conclusions, and is more comfortable in that arena than certainly any network host has ever been.
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Because it's the network tv format.
He's not going to have nearly the freedom he had on Comedy Central
Dave owned, produced, and directed his own show. He employed the entire staff himself. That's a fair amount of freedom, he was just personally conservative.
I'm still pretty confident in saying that CBS will have far more restrictions on him than CC would.
It's a late night talk show. It's a format. He'll have to follow some of the rules.
He's not going to do an hour long version of the Daily Show on CBS, because it would alienate too many people, and CBS won't do that. Though I think it'd be an incredibly smart move for him if he tried to.
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I think you'd be surprised. I think you may be. Ultimately, the power of the host in the late night format is that they have the air every night. The migration cost (to a new host) alone is so prohibitive, that they do get a lot of leeway in what they want to do, and how.
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And, so far, CBS hasn't stopped him. I can't imagine CBS executives are thinking that they will get less political with Colbert.
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