On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 8:50 AM, Diner <[email protected]> wrote: > On Tuesday, August 11, 2015 at 9:45:47 AM UTC-4, Jim Ellwanger wrote: > > >> Seems like every new talk show has made this kind of statement, about >> "shaking up" the monologue, but it never seems to actually come to >> fruition. >> > > And of course Kimmel started out doing his opening set from the desk. They felt it did not generate enough energy and so went traditional - yet Stewart and Colbert always generated lots of energy from the desk up front, so I wonder if they can find a way to make it work. I also wonder if one variable that might be relevant is the introduction; perhaps any variant on "Here's Johnny!" really requires a host to walk in and stand up to the crowd, while if there is just a short theme and canned into, maybe the desk opening can work better. I hope they do try some experiments, even if in the end they drift back to the formula in many ways.
That Vulture article was pretty interesting though. I saw the "Dry Trumping" on my Twitter (and I am not at all a big Twitter user) and I see it started in this interview. I really liked the stuff on his meeting with Dave, and I LOVED this quote from Colbert: “I don’t like comedy in theory. That’s theology. I want to get to the religion.” That is such a great example of what I love about this guy; this is the kind of thing that reflective liberal Christians say, which really is a group that gets very little public exposure. We get a lot of crazy conservatives and feckless atheists, but the media does not have many representations of committed liberal religious people (though I do like that lady Rabbi in Transparent). But this quote did not scan for me: “The idea of war between hosts doesn’t make sense to me. It’s not like my success takes away from anyone. And It doesn’t sound very funny. ... I hope everyone has success.” Colbert is a nice guy, and comes from a more collegial, community approach to comedy than stand-ups like Leno and Dave did, but this is nonsense. It is *exactly* like Colbert's success will take away from others. There are a limited number of realistic viewers of late night talk shows. Some may be able to increase that pool a little by attracting college kids who otherwise are playing video games, getting high, screwing or (much less likely) studying, but that will only affect the margins. If Colbert's ratings are higher than Dave's, it will hurt one of the Jimmy's, or his own friends at The Nightly Show. If they are worse, it will help those people. I think what he probably means is something more like what Dave's people used to say, which is that while of course they would have liked to beat Leno, being #1 in the ratings was always more important to NBC and the Tonight Show than it was to CBS and Late Show. Late Show can be a very successful profit center for CBS as a respectable second or even a close third. I do not expect Colbert to challenge Fallon in the ratings - it will be interesting to see if he can nose out Kimmel. -- -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
