Stephen Colbert to replace David Letterman

metaoblivia

Not sure if this is the right forum, but David Letterman announced his retirement about a week ago, and it was just confirmed that Stephen Colbert will be his replacement.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/tv/2014/04/10/cbs-late-show-david-letterman-stephen-colbert/7547269/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+usatoday-LifeTopStories+(USATODAY+-+Life+Top+Stories)

A lot of people were worried about this and what it might mean for the Colbert Report.

I have mixed feelings, personally. I think it could be great for Stephen Colbert's career, and I really like his comedy. But going big network will probably have a impact on just how political he can get. I think it would be really unfortunate to lose that. And, who knows how the late night audience will respond?

Mr Pseudonym

:eek:

bradlente

Sounds bad,no more Colbert Report

expectationlost

say goodbye to stephen colber

Bit late for an April Fools.

bradlente

Wonder who'll get The Colbert Report slot?Shame it's ending but hopefully someone can fill the gap with a half decent show.Wonder if any of the writing crew will go along with him too?He's a great interviewer when he takes the piss,if he has to tone it down or change his style to fit in with the bland celebrity talk show format it'll be pretty terrible but I imagine it'll be more of the same of him in a different format.
Sad the show is ending,but hopefully whatever replaces the repor' will be good and if he makes Late night watchable then that's a new show to watch.

metaoblivia

According to this article, the Colbert Report will be ending at the end of the year and the character Stephen Colbert will not be going on to host the late show - it will be the "real" Stephen Colbert. But he is taking his writing crew, so maybe it won't be too bad: http://www.avclub.com/article/here-are-tonights-top-10-questions-about-stephen-c-203319

Slime Princess

bradlente wrote: »

Wonder who'll get The Colbert Report slot?Shame it's ending but hopefully someone can fill the gap with a half decent show.Wonder if any of the writing crew will go along with him too?He's a great interviewer when he takes the piss,if he has to tone it down or change his style to fit in with the bland celebrity talk show format it'll be pretty terrible but I imagine it'll be more of the same of him in a different format.
Sad the show is ending,but hopefully whatever replaces the repor' will be good and if he makes Late night watchable then that's a new show to watch.

My money would be on a new John Oliver fronted programme getting the Colbert Report timeslot. He did really well on the Daily Show when he was filling in for Jon Stewart a while ago and imagine the next step for him would either be his own show on CC or taking over from Stewart if/when he departs from the Daily Show.

I'd be somewhat interested to see how Colbert would work on a very mainstream show like the Late show and how he re-brands himself away from the Stephen Colbert character of the Report. Also in seeing how much of Colbert of the Colbert Report is actually a character rather than Stephen himself.

I'd be especially interested in seeing how he approaches the "interview with guest" segment and how much his style and method to that aspect of the his show will change. This is presuming heavily that he will neither be able to, want to or be allowed to conduct them with the same irreverence. That said he is a fantastic host and his interviews on the Report were almost always entertaining, even when I barely knew who the guests were, especially when countered against often embarrassing sycophancy of Stewart's interviews on the Daily Show.

Mr Pseudonym

Slime Princess wrote: »

My money would be on a new John Oliver fronted programme getting the Colbert Report timeslot. He did really well on the Daily Show when he was filling in for Jon Stewart a while ago and imagine the next step for him would either be his own show on CC or taking over from Stewart if/when he departs from the Daily Show.

bradlente

Trying not to be overly cynical at this point but his show is fairly unique,going to late night is going to tone down everything about what Colbert and the writers do regardless of whether he stayed in character or not.One of the great selling points of his show was the character.He's probably sick to death of it by now though so can understand the move.
The jump to uber-mainstream combined with more air-time for faceless celebrities makes me think this will be a great move for himself and the crew but a bad one for anyone who really liked his show.I'm guessing there will be far more celebrity pandering that all of these shows engage in and far less of Colbert doing what he's done best for a long time.Either way hope it goes well and hope I'm wrong about how it'll go but I'm a bit less optimistic after hearing he won't be in character.

Rubber_Soul

Sad to see the end of the Colbert Report but after 8 years of the show and over a decade basically playing the same character it's no surprise he wants to move on and try something new. It'll be interesting to see how he deals with interviews he probably isn't all that interested in (celeb promos etc) but if anyone can pull it off it's him. His out of character interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson was fantastic

Burt Macklin

Pretty bad timing in retrospect for CC to let Oliver go, he would have been a great replacement for that slot. Although obviously there is no way they could have known.

Sad to see the end of the Report, but I don't blame Stephen for wanting to try something new.