Featured: Mike Chisholm, John Oliver, Stephen Colbert, Jay Leno, Seth Meyers
What’s in This Episode
- Stephen Colbert’s Late Show exit and succession plans
- Network late night TV profitability crisis and revenue collapse
- John Oliver’s HBO special and criticism of corporate ownership
- Jay Leno’s controversial take on comedy for broad audiences
- Late night show economics: 2015 to 2030 financial forecast
Questions Answered in This Episode
Is Stephen Colbert leaving the Late Show?
Yes, Stephen Colbert is exiting the Late Show, and he expressed hope that the franchise would continue with someone else taking over the host role.
Why are network late night shows losing money?
According to Late Nighter analysis, network late night shows became unprofitable because revenues dropped dramatically while production costs could not be reduced at the same pace, with typical 11:35 PM shows losing tens of millions by 2025.
What did Jay Leno say about comedy audiences?
Jay Leno argued that late night shows should be made for everyone with broad appeal, which John Oliver publicly disagreed with, saying comedy is inherently subjective and cannot be prescriptive.
How much money do network talk shows project to lose by 2030?
Using exponential smoothing analysis, network late night shows are forecast to lose approximately 70 million dollars each by 2030 if current trends continue.
What did John Oliver say about late night TV’s future?
Oliver expressed hope that late night will exist in some form elsewhere, but acknowledged he has no idea if his streaming show’s success is replicable or scalable to other formats.
How much revenue did network talk shows make in 2015 versus 2023?
In 2015, a typical 11:30 PM talk show brought in over 200 million dollars in revenue and made healthy profits, but by 2023, the same show was underwater with significant losses.
Full Transcript
This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.
Caloroga Shark Media. John Oliver said, I’m going to take a hard pass. I’m taking comedic advice from Jay Leno. Hi. I’m Johnny Mac with your Daily Comedy News Today, my guest or my co host.
I think we did a home in homier, so I don’t think he’s the guest. I might be the guest on his show, regardless. I said some words, and so did Mike Chisholm from The Letterman Podcast, and we talked about Late Night Colbert Gate. We got into all the hosts. We eventually got around even as Seth Myers, the Jay Leno of it all gets into this.
You’ll hear me talk about that. So I won’t play that card yet. I’ll share that interview in a minute. I do want to talk about Oliver a little bit. There was a big profile of him in the Hollywood Reporter.
They pointed out that John Oliver seems to you enjoy biting the hand that feeds him. John said, there’s no taste to your hand, Holly Reporter, what point you started railing against your corporate parent, the idiocy of the HBO Max name changes seemingly with Glee. Did you hear from anyone. After Oliver said no, and You’re right, I’m truly happy. In those moments.
That’s probably the most at peace I am when I’m trying to draw fire from our owners. Good follow up by the reporter. Should we unpack? Then? What does that say about you?
John? I don’t know. I refuse to turn this into a therapy session. Then he laughs. But I always used to love watching David Letterman do it.
See that’s why I did this before Chisholm in the Letterman Podcast. Johnny macknow’s had a host a show. I know what I’m doing here. I always used to love watching David Letterman do it. To me, it felt like a really healthy sign of contempt, just a very fun and slightly important indication of non compliance.
So I loved it when he’d make fun of GE and CBS and yeah for me, making fun of whoever owns us on a minute to minute basis is at the rill Johnny macknows how to run a show. I pulled the question here to John Oliver. Just John Oliver. Worry about the future of late night TV, John Oliver told The Hollywood Reporter on Network TV. Yeah, it’s constantly evolving.
What happened to the Late Show is incredibly sad for comedy and obviously for the staff in that building. It really resonated with me when Steven said he was hoping to hand the show over to someone else. You hope that the franchise lives on, partly because there were generations of teenagers watching those shows and deciding maybe I’d like to be a comedy writer, and then maybe you’re writing on that show. So just as there are Colbert writers that watch Letterman, there will be future writers that watch Colbert and you want that to continue. I’m sure it’ll find a way to exists in some form.
We just don’t know yet exactly what that’s gonna look like for network television. Holly Reporter said, Late Night used to be broad, unifying entertainment. I know Jay Leno recently spoke on this topic about making a show for everyone. Oliver cut that off and said, I’m going to take a hard pass on taking comedic advice from Jay Leno, who thinks that way executives, comedy can’t be for everyone. It’s inherently subjective.
So yeah, when you do stand up, some people try to play to a broader audience, which is completely legitimate. Others decide not to which is equally legitimate. I guess I don’t think it’s a question of whether you should do it, because I don’t think comedy is prescriptive in that way. It’s just what people want. I think iowur show clearly comes from a point of view, but most of those long stories we do are not party political.
They’re about systemic issues. Good question from the reporter. As someone who’s found a version of a late night show that succeeds on streaming, do you think it’s replicable, and if so, what should it look like? Oliver said, I have absolutely no idea. The late New York Times columnist David Carr said something so nice at the end of our first year.
He liked our show, and he said to me, if you had described the show to me before I said it, I would have said it sounded terrible. Was so honest. I’ve never forgot it because I don’t think on the page our show sounds very good. I mean, we’re doing like forty minutes on juvenile justice, So I don’t know that you can emulate this success. I think it might have been a mistake or a lightning strike.
I don’t know that this is scalable, but I really like late night to exist in some form elsewhere. My favorite thing is when you can have things that have both a strong point of view and are incredibly stupid. Seth Meyers last week did some great shows, and he also did an amazing segment about how to pronounce croissant. Did you see that? It was so good?
It was the hardest I laughed all week. While we’re on the topic. From the wonderful Latenighter dot com, their headline and analyst said network late night talk shows became unprofitable. In twenty twenty three, Late Nighter said we asked a network TV research analyst if they thought the CBS number of around forty million rang true. Late Nighter says their response was a qualified yes, quote I would believe anywhere between twenty five to four forty million dollars.
Revenues have dropped at a pace that far outstripped the speed at which costs can be reduced. Late Nighter reports in twenty fifteen, the typical eleven thirty PM talk show brought in well over two hundred million dollars in revenue and made a healthy profit. By twenty twenty, three, the same show was underwater, and by twenty twenty five, lossers are well into the tens of millions of dollars, even with cost controls. They have some nice graphs here, or not nice at all graphs. You can just see how the numbers get pretty ugly.
Late Nighter says, using standard exponential smoothing, the analyst forecast that losses for a typical eleven thirty five PM network show could reach seventy million dollars by twenty thirty. Yeah, hey, should we make a show and lose seventy million dollars or not make it? That’s a pretty easy decision, the secret analyst told Late Night Or this isn’t about Colbert or Fallon or Kimmel. The platform economics have changed across the board. It’s like trying to sell newspapers in two thousand and nine.
Well, I have some ideas what they can do, and I share them with Mike Chisholm. Mike hosts the Letterman podcast, which you can guess the title is about Late Night and Late Show with David Letterman, and obviously Stephen Colbert hosts the Late Show franchise these days, so it all makes sense. And when I heard about Colbert Gate. I reached out to Mike do We haven’t met in real life, we don’t live in the same country, and we don’t live on the same coast. We do sometimes zoom and zoom.
We did to talk about late night. Here is Mike Chisholm. All right, it’s circus time right now in late night and because of that, the mashups of shows where hey, let’s have a conversation and connect the dots and we’ll both put this conversation on both our platforms. It is a pleasure to be with Johnny Mac and the Daily Comedy News podcast, which I just adore. And we haven’t talked in a while Johnny, and it was like, okay, so are we gonna do this off?
And we’ve been trading texts and emails and things like that, but let’s do this. Let’s do this with the cameras on the microphones on Holy smokes, is it a good time to be a fan of comedy right now? There’s so much going on aside from Colbert Gate, as I’ve started calling it, there’s just been so much that I’m trying to do, you know, fifteen minute ittpisodes like I usually do when they’re coming out at twenty something plus bonus episodes. It’s just been super busy, which, if you’re me, especially an August, great problem to have. Yeah, Oh, definitely, yes, especially this time of year, No doubt so.
Colbert Gate, so it’s getting a gate in your world, in the Daily Comedy News world, Colbert, it’s getting a gate status. That’s how big we are. I think the initial was it about the merger? Was it about the money I’ve landed on? I think it was about the money, but the merger sure was a factor in it, And my legal departments tell me that I misspoke there When I said sure, I meant to say possibly.
I think it’s a mix of both. Let’s start with the money, assuming who knows what’s true. CBS floated forty million dollar loss. Stephen Colbert might have pushed back on that a little, but I don’t think anybody is saying we’re not losing money at all. We made forty million dollars, so the show’s operating at a loss.
If you come at it at that standpoint, it’s not crazy to end the show. It might make us sad, but it’s not crazy. But there’s so many shades to this. One thing I’ve talked about, and it may apply more to to NBC. It’s the who are we?
Right Fox, We’re football and some animation and we don’t care. Yep. If we’re NBC, we are the Today Show and the Tonight Show and some stuff in between. That’s who we are as a company at NBC, and I think CBS as the transition ownership has decided, you know what, we’re the football and the NCIS network. In sitcoms for older people, do we need an eleven thirty show?
I’m not sure they do, but we also need to talk about the timeline. Is once against I hijack your show? Please? You know one thing that one thing that was brought up was Taylor Thomlinson at twelve thirty was renewed. I think Bill Carter is the one who brought this up.
Yep, it was renewed. Okay. So if she had said, great, I love hosting after midnight, what’s it called now? Yeah? After midnight?
Yet if she had stayed, would there have been no eleven to thirty show? Would they have moved her up to eleven thirty? Would they have hired either you or me to do an eleven thirty show on the cheap, so the story doesn’t quite add up. Although having worked in broadcasting, maybe Taylor’s decision started some conference room meetings of Oh, wow, should we replace twelve thirty? No?
All right, now that we landed on that, do we even need eleven thirty? So I just threw a lot at you. But there’s just so much to unpacked with Colbert Gate. It is a gate. I think you have certainly brought the case forward to say that, yes, Stephen Colbert is deserving of a gate.
I think he is too, for a variety of reasons. And yes, first off, I one hundred percent believe CBS when they say it was purely a financial decision. Eight billion dollars is a lot of money. It’s financial. Yeah, eight billion, yeat, we’ll put on We’ll put on the Zoo channel eleven thirty for eight billion dollars, which of course then brings in the idea of the business versus the heritage, and the entire medium is changing.
You can’t really blame people who don’t necessarily have this nostalgic. Maybe they do. Maybe some of the people who are making these decisions do have the nostalgic wherewithal to understand the legacy of the house that Dave built, the idea that CBS forever wanted a late night franchise, Letterman and Company built it for them, gave it to them. It had never happened before in the history. The medium was changing back then because extra television was the audience was being diluted as you went from your four major networks three and a half major networks until Fox really took the football from CBS and really upped their game and then diluted even more.
You had never had a competitor of the Tonight Show, and the Late Show or Late Show became that transferable. Not only were they able to take their signature star in David Letterman and transfer that franchise to another signature star. That signature star brought it to number one to number one status. This is a big deal that they are getting rid of this franchise and the idea that it is purely a financial decision, you hear. I loved listening to David Letterman and Barber Gains on The Barbara Gains Show talk about this, like the idea was it not floated that they could have cut the budget?
How many times in our run. Did they tell us to cut the budget and we just went and cut the budget. It like you say, a keystone could have been pulled with Taylor, But wasn’t Stephen involved in that show too, like the way that Dave was involved. Worldwide Pants owned that block of television, so it was a little bit different. But the fact that they created Late Show and Dave had his fingers in that, Stephen Colbert had his fingers in the property that was after his show as well, and it didn’t go as well when they changed it from Late Show too after Midnight.
So yeah, there’s a lot, like you say, a lot of stuff to unpack here, a lot more than just what we’re seeing on the surface. And the idea that people talking about free speech is free speech under attack, all that kind of stuff. Latenighter dot Com, about two weeks before this announcement was made, I think it was two weeks put up an article saying talking about the sky Dance Media merger, saying are Stephen Colbert and John Stewart in trouble? Two weeks before and the announcement comes out They’re ending not just Colbert but the entire franchise. You gotta wonder is John Stewart next, and what comes next for these guys here you were involved in as an enthusiast of this stuff in ninety two to ninety three when Carson left and Letterman moved over to NBC.
That’s why I call that circus time. Anytime that there’s an opportunity for Bill Carter to write a book, it’s a good time to watch Late Night. I think we’re there right now, and I think we’re gonna get ten months of it, and I think it’s gonna be a lot of fun. I call it circus time. I don’t know what you call it, but yeah, So that’s my initial thoughts and we can go from there.
So yeah, like you said, lots of unpack. Again, as somebody who has spent to both of my career as a media executive, especially with a number one show, you would think, and others have pointed this out, a conversation would start along the lines of, Hey, Steven, this thing’s losing a lot of money. We would love to have you back. We got to renew you for less that has been done before. I think that’s even been done with the current generation of hosts.
So we have to knew you for less. We need some added value. Look, dude, Kimmel, look what he does for ABC. We have this idea. Can you host the night time Prices right or something like that?
Just get more out of Colbert. Somebody else had floated, Hey, we’re not going to do a show at all. On Friday, We’ll show you know, Friday Night cartoons and on Wednesday we’ll double tape. So we only need people there three days a week. Do we need two hundred people?
Can you do this with one hundred and eighty? Yes, we can get a ton of money for the Ed Sullivan Theater. So it’s going to suck, but look, look at how Late Night with David Letteran was in a tiny studio. So we’re going to move you to a CBS studio seven Z and you’re going to do the show out of there, and maybe we can make this thing work. Like why wasn’t that conversation had at all?
Exactly? And he, like you said, he’s number one, Write your way out of it. Here’s your predicament. Write your way out of it. And to me, late night writers when they are given like the good ones, the really good ones, and the good franchises, when they’re given a piece of adversity, that’s what they do.
They write their way out of it. That’s what they do. And to be not given that opportunity to do that certainly points the finger at the executive saying that, you know what, maybe they just want it to go away. Yeah, and there’s probably you just listed four or five things, and there’s probably twenty other things that started to cut you off. Because my brain is going now in executive mode, I’ll give you a couple more.
Yeah, Steven Lovea, we’re going to cut the salary instead of hosting I don’t know it does forty weeks. Why don’t you do twenty four Kimmel’s off all summer? The world doesn’t end, so you have the entire summer off. I can’t pay you for it, but you have the entire summer off, and then we can look at it and go all right, so we get just some comedians and pay them a lot less to guest host the show all summer. You want to get super radical, Let’s not even air the show.
Let’s just have the season finale in May, and let’s run CSI reruns all summer long, and then bring the show back in September. Hey, it’s an all new season of the Late Show. Isn’t this exciting? It’s back. It’s back is exciting rather than it’s just on.
If you’re on the crew and you don’t get paid all summer, that sucks, but it sucks less than not having a gig at all. I feel like there were things that could have been done here. Yes those by the way, I’m glad you mentioned the crew, because if it is circus time and guys like us are gonna have a lot of fun talking about this stuff and watching it, watching the implosion that it seems to be happening, happen, and we’re gonna make popcorn and talk about it.
Let’s talk about these people that work for this show.
Many of these people who have made entire career sacrifices to get to the place to work on a show like this. It is the dream gig for a lot of the people that work in that building. I’ve talked to some of these people. That’s where my heart goes out too. I don’t make no mistake, I’m gonna have a lot of fun making fun of CBS this next ten months.
I’m going to I’m stricken, I’m heartbroken, I’m like a spurned lover in the fact that they’re ending this franchise, that the house that they’ve built, and I’m going to make fun of that. I am so sad for the people who work for that show. And it’s really a shame because, like we’re talking about here, we’re making the case for the idea that it could continue, and many would say should continue, and yet so callously a line on a ledger being crossed off. That’s what this sort of feels like. Yeah, but the people who work for this show, Like, my heart goes out to these people.
You’ve seen that happen where mediums change and it’s like a game of musical chairs and suddenly the music stops and a lot of these people won’t have a chair or at least a similar place to sit that they have had in this show. So we think about them a lot as we talk about this. Not to be a downer, but our heart does go out to the people who work for this show. And this is happening too. It’s interesting as times change, technology changes.
I’ll tell you a story from my own career. I started thinking about this more. I worked at WOR Radio in the nineties and into the outs and the morning show was the world’s longest running radio show, Rambling with Gambling. It was started by John B. Gambling.
He passed the show off to his son, John A. Gambling, and then I worked with John R. Gambling. This thing ran for seventy five years. I was John’s producer for a while, and I remember at one point, being a punk kid in the twenties, being like, we should do this, we should do this, and John said the smartest thing.
He said, We’ve been doing this a long time. It works, just keep doing that. And he was right.
And then, for reasons that I won’t bog down in here wor management decided to…
And then what happened post Rambling with Gambling was the station lost its identity because we were the Rambling with Gambling station, an AM radio station. So AM was dying, and AM was going to die no matter what you did. But it died more quickly. The station became less relevant more quickly without that anchor show, to the point where about ten years later they brought John Gambling back, who tagged his career with a few years back as the morning host. But you had broken the continuity.
It wasn’t rambling with Gambling was the John Gambling Show. Ten years had passed. Anybody who remembered the old thing was gone or ten years older, or perhaps even dead at sayam radio. So I come back to CBS. If you don’t want to be in the eleven thirty game, fine, but who are we?
So we’re just football and CSIG and maybe that’s okay. I don’t know. Yeah, I don’t know either. It’s funny. One of the things on I Love Your Show again.
Everybody out there in our world subscribed to the Day Comedy News podcast. It’s so good because it is so short. Despite the content challenges you’re having because there’s just too much these days, it’s so good. The sum ups and one of the of Comedy of the Day Comedy News of the Day. A few episodes ago, you talked about before Dave went on the Barbaragain show and officially commented.
You talked about how telling the super cut was of Dave making fun of CBS the Tivity Network, and they released that Dave’s what does Letterman Think? They released this thing on their YouTube channel, which is a compilation of Dave talking about CBS and the ups and downs over the years and making fun of that network. Obviously, he didn’t make fun of CBS the way he made fun of NBC back in the day. And when it came to gigantic mess ups in late night, NBC certainly is the reigning champion when it comes to these things. But CBS now is joining them, and they’re looking to say, oh, yeah, hold my beer, We’ll show you what a real late night debacle looks like.
Just the fact that we’re watching this happen is I think you just nailed you hit the nail on the head. Rather in saying what is their identity? Because if they were the Tiffany network, I certainly see no resemblance of that now, although perhaps the cop shows the CSI shows now are the murder she wrote when Letterman came over, it was murder, she wrote, used to be the punchline back in the day. And is CBS the network for the older crowd whatever that is? This week they announced no joke murder she wrotes coming back with Jamie Lee Curtis.
Okay, it’s an actual adline. Yeah, So are you nostalgic? Are you? And why? My question is why wouldn’t you want a late night show?
Still? Back in the day, and again everything has changed, and I get it if we’re watching it change, great. I’m glad Netflix is starting to figure trying to figure out, like Everybody’s Live, everyone’s talking about the we can talk about Everybody’s Live. Actually that’s something that we probably should talk about a little bit. But Netflix is trying to figure this out because clearly there is still an audience for this.
They’re just watching things differently than they did before. So the metrics, if we change the metrics, you’re going to see that people still. People are up in arms about this Colbert thing. Two hundred and fifty thousand signatures on that on that petition in a very short period of time. There are people who still love this stuff.
We’re just watching things differently, and I hope the television networks can figure out a way to stay in existence, never mind relevant, to figure out a way to stay in existence and these types of shows. To me, there are still sitcoms out there that do well. They’re nuanced. I think we need to do that with Late Night as well. We’re coming up with Mike Chisholm from The Letterman Podcast Fantastic podcast.
Listen to the one that came out doing math here August first July thirty first August first around. Then he had on Morty, who was Letterman’s old producer. That was a great episode of the Letterman Podcast. They’re all pretty good, but that one was particularly good. And more with Mike in about two minutes.
I continue to think about why didn’t they try and reinvent the wheel? Now? I don’t know how long it takes to edit one of these things they tape around five thirty pm Eastern. Could you have thrown this up on Paramount Plus at eight o’clock? One of the cases on why Gutfeld is doing well?
I see pointed out on threads. It’s live at eight pm in Pacific time. It’s not a late night show. It’s a primetime show. Yeah, so what if you had kept the late show and don’t worry about the name, It’s just a name.
But what if you had done Colbert at eight pm e on Paramount Plus, put something shiny on Paramount Plus and gotten the clips out there and then let’s be real. Fox News loves to pull clips of the opposition and make fun of it. Oh you do the show quote unquote live at eight and then Sean Hannity can make fun of it at nine, maybe that was a situation you could have done. Why didn’t they take a look at that?
And then you run it at eleven thirty for the old people.
Yeah, and again we’re just all we’re doing is just throwing potshots showing that the network made this decision half cocked, spur the moment, whatever you want to call it. Clearly, if they wanted to fight for the show, they could have fought for the show. That’s got to be smarting on the egos or the feelings of the people who run this show. Really, at the end of the day, I don’t know that Stephen Colbert when he started this show wanted to be the guy who opposed Donald Trump. I watched the first year and a half as they tried to find their identity.
We got to remember when he slipped. He was number one, and then he slipped, and he slipped, and people were criticizing and then say, oh, maybe they should swap with Cordon and swap them. And there was all that stuff going on, and then Trump, and then I should say Stephen Colbert started pushing the pedal down towards Trump, and that’s when he surged back up. Now, you’ve got a winning formula. Okay, so you’ve got a winning formula.
Do we change that formula or not? Now it’s turned into a typecast thing. It’s like John Ritter walking around ar rest his soul and everyone calling him Jack Tripper because that’s just who he is, or Michael Richards. He’s now Kramer. Colbert is the leader of the Trump opposition in late night and he does it so well.
That’s the identity that he’s created. I’m curious if he can create another identity and what’s next for him. I think about Conan O’Brien back Circus time in nine oh ten and what that I would say three weeks did for Conan O’Brien. It was probably about three weeks total, maybe a month or two with the rumblings and then all that, but it was like three hardcore weeks of him getting a show taken away and then producing phenomenal Tonight show, him going on a live tour, becoming one of the biggest podcasters in the world. Never mind the fact that he’s still got a late night show where he could do whatever he wanted afterwards, because he hadn’t quite scratched that itch yet.
What do you think. Do you have any thoughts as to what Colbert might do? Are have you thought about that at all? I tell you what I think the move is. I don’t think he’ll do it.
I think if the Democrats aren’t on the phone with him right now, I think they’re making a mistake. Wow, he’s sixty one years old, so he’d be sixty three sixty four at the time of the next election. Yep. He’s well spoken, he’s telegenic, he looks nice on camera, he can debate, he can speak. I feel like he could give an old style reagan esque and Reagan was a Republican, but a reagan Esque As a country, who do we want to be the shining city on the hill?
This country can be great. And here’s why. He’s not a yeller. He’s not a screamer. I think if the Democrats are not on the phone with him right now, I think, if the Democrats are not on the phone with my I used to produce David Plus’s podcast pluf Friend the first Obama campaign.
Yep, and tell Pluff, Hey, you can’t sit on TV anymore taking shots. You got to work this time. I think, if the Democrats are on the phone with the pods have of America. Guys, go and get behind this, bros. I think Colbert would be a very interesting candidate.
The people who don’t like him already don’t like him, so there’s no loss there. I think he would appeal to the middle as just a decent human being who can speak and be calm. That’s what I think he should do. What he will do on a podcast, I guess is that interesting though? It would be interesting.
There’s no question it would be interesting. You listen to them on Strikeforce. The Strikeforce five guys should all quit their shows and do something. One of our listeners suggested that to me, Yeah, that’s the idea that he and Johnson. I imagine Stephen Colbert untethered again, because the one thing about Stephen Colbert that we’ve seen in the last ten years is he’s been the statesman guy.
He’s been the guy who has looked at this as the Tiffany Network. I’m their late night signal, your host, and I have this all on my shoulders. I think that is the reason that he went with the winning formula. But really, at the end of the day, his mischief muscle has certainly it’s not atrophied, but it hasn’t been given the chance to flex the way that it can. I believe that this man is a very mischievous.
He’s got a lot of mischief in him. And like when you think back to his time when he was a correspondent on The Daily Show and some of the things that he would do, and then creating the Colbert Rapport, that guy went hard in the paint, created a character that who cares if half of the country thinks I’m actually this guy, which was the case. It’s almost like pro wrestling, the footage showing of the good guy wrestler and the bad guy wrestler emerging. There’s a video online showing where Colbert is behind the scenes of the Colbert Report saying, oh no, it’s just a character. It’s just a character, and he’s talking like that, and people were dismayed.
It was controversial. The guy commits to a bit and to the idea that he could untethered and can do something that is exciting to me. We just had at the time we’re recording this, actually the episode dropped. We just had Uber producer Robert Morton, one of my favorite people on the planet. On a former executive producer of both Late Night and Late Show with David Letterman, and he’s gone a different way.
He thinks Colbert is gonna pivot. He thinks Colbert is gonna do Broadway and do at least a run or two on a Broadway show of some sort, because he’s got those itches that he likes to scratch as well. I thought that was a very interesting idea that makes sense. Yep, it does. I think a lot of people would pay pay money to go see Stephen Colbert on Broadway.
I certainly would. Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense, especially he’s got the money, so the next gig, everything’s always about the money, but it doesn’t have to be about the money. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I think that. Yeah.
And then the idea that I don’t know.
I don’t know if John Stewart’s days are numbered over there or not, and if they’re just waiting to reload the gun before they start firing again. But the idea of Colbert Stewart doing something together, those two are a tour to force. And when they when they decide to do things together, the possibilities are endless. And again, when you take the shackles of network TV off somebody and give them the freedom to do that. So there’s a part of me that wonders if I could ask Steven.
I wonder if there’s a part of him that’s looking forward to this, and it’s I think he the staff obviously is one of those things where you know, I think Stephen Colbert has shown that how much of a giving person he is. I’ve talked to people who are on the staff and they talk about how he is as a boss, and the idea that it’s out of his hands and all of this responsibility that is on his shoulders is suddenly going to be gone. It’s going to be very interesting to see what happens. I’m curious if this is going to fatigue. I was I’ve been watching every night again and I haven’t watched every night for a long time.
A DV are them all but and I do all of them like I and in case something happens, I have it that way, I have it. But I’ve been watching all week and yes, he’s still he’s still dancing, He’s but he’s not throwing a lot of haymakers. And it’s gonna be interesting to see if there’s a fatigue over this next ten months with that, or if it can get to a fever pitch and it just crescendos, It’s gonna be very interesting to see what the momentum of this looks like. Now, not to give you a hard time, but I think you just illustrated the problem. Mister, host of the Letterman podcast, Letterman the former host of Late Show.
You weren’t watching, Yeah, so why are we making this thing? Yeah, it’s a great point, and that I was talking to the founder of latenighter dot com not too long ago about this, and it’s funny. We the episode dropped the day of the Colbert announcement, and when we were talking, we were bullish about it. We were bullish about Late Night because SNL in SNL fifties season, it was the most profitable year they ever had, and it was because they put a lot of thought into how they can be profitable, and it was partnerships with advertisers, and it was different ways of being creatively profitable in all the positive ways, not the way the Mafia is creatively profitable. It was that thought could be put to Late Night, where you are doing what Seth Myers is doing.
Yes, you’re cutting the band, but you’re also integrating products within the show. You’re doing other ways kind of like what you’re talking about, what you talked about earlier. But yeah, is the medium changing and this is where we look at Netflix and what they’re doing. Did you liked Everybody’s Live? Right?
You enjoyed it. I liked Everybody’s in LA. I did not like Everybody’s Live. There was something wrong with that second series. I honestly feel like it was misproduced, underproduced.
Going to the callers, and that’s the thing I know from doing talk radio. Don’t let the inmates run the asylum. Don’t let the civilians steer the show. I get the idea of the controlled chaos of let’s just throw on. You know.
Part of this is if if you ever booked David Letterman, here’s what you should do. Hi, Dave, thanks for doing the show, and then stop talking. You have David Letterman. Don’t go Hey Dave. Frank from Chicago wants to say Hi, don’t do that.
Don’t say This week, my I guests here on the Letterman Podcast are David Letterman and a guy who owns a florist in Tampa. What are you doing? And so I think the show was all over the place. I said, at the time, I didn’t think it was working. I quickly noticed, just because of what I do for a living.
There wasn’t really buzz on it. Outside of the trades were writing about it, and the cool kid sites were writing about it, but the civilians weren’t talking about it. And apparently it was getting five hundred thousand an episode. That’s not a lot. No, this is the other part, the unfortunate part I was on.
I was just on the Greetings from the Idiot Box podcast and we talked about this earlier. Conan was given two years at NBC. He really was, and don’t get me wrong, they were looking for the escape pods along the way. They were renewing him for thirteen weeks at a time and all that, and that two years could have easily been truncated and cut short. But he was given two years, and then he became Conan O’Brien like he was given that time to do that.
Now Netflix does have the time, patient’s money to give somebody time to find their footing. The thing about the second season, and you and I are in disagreement about that, Like I loved the second season of Everybody’s Life, every single time there was a cringe worthy moment. Everything you’re just talking about was some of the stuff that I loved. You have this person call in and they’re trying to turn they’re trying to turn it into something, and if they can’t turn it into something, they’re just kind of looking around and it’s awkward, and it’s I don’t think that there’s enough of that these days, I think. And it’s because I was raised on it.
I loved The Office because it gave me the same vibes that early lettermen did when they had some of these awkward moments. The show. The thing about it was clearly a lot of time, effort, thought was put into it. Compared to Everybody’s in La, which was during the Netflix as a Joke Comedy Festival, and there was a lot of spontaneity to it. This one here had running jokes throughout the whole season, like building up to the kids fighting in the bone thugs and harm anything was to me was very funny, the through line of that through running through it.
But and then also some of the produced pieces. Some of the produced pieces I thought were missus, no question about that. But the awkwardness on the show, the chaos of the multiple guests, and yes, you’re throwing enough to me. We’ve got alchemy here that could be mixed into a pretty good potion if given the time space allowance to do that. My question is, is everything I’ve heard of how hard everybody worked on this second season to do this.
I’m curious if mulaney is a guy who has the Letterman Leno Colbert gene or if he has the Chevy Chase Pat Sajack gene and he now knows that, he now knows the work ethic that it takes to make a show like this work. Does he want to do that or did he scratch an edge? And that’s the question I more want to ask, And if he still wants to do it and commit to it, I hope Netflix gives him the opportunity to retool it how it needs to be so it can have that cone and effect. Next year, Netflix will do the Comedy of All again. They’ve been doing it every two years.
Yep, so you do it in la and again. Hey, welcome to everybody’s whatever we’re calling at this time. And my guests tonight are Nikki Glaser, Shane Gillis and the earthquake expert and Again, I’m not saying I’m talented, but if you spot me Shane Gillis and Nikki Glaser, all I really have to do is go hey, Shane and shut up and let him do a Trump impression, and we’re halfway there. Yeah. True.
The other thing I want to note about that show is there was clearly somebody, whether it was the EP or whether it was John himself, clearly had a nostalgic value for music. And that’s one the other thing I love about the show, and the thing about network late night television shows, is music was becoming the bane of the existence. They put them at the very end of the show. Many times they weren’t even including when they were looking at the ratings. They weren’t even inclusing the musical act and whatnot, because of the business of television and how that works.
But at the same time, you have a host here, clearly who has a very having a lot us more set on there. As an example, that’s one of the examples that I have there. A lot of the millennials, gen Z’s millennials maybe, but gen Z certainly they don’t realize that when that album came out, it crushed the continent. For the entire song the world in fact, for the entire summer, and the idea that they’re having some of these people on there, to me is a bit of a flashback to some of the musical acts Late Night with David Letterman would have on old acts that were really big but hadn’t been around for a long time. And let’s celebrate with these people and let’s see what’s going on, and sometimes we can shine up that penny again where it’s glistening and blinding you in the sun.
I love that they did that. Like I said, they had a lot of cool ingredients that they used, and you’re right if the puck is going in that direction. Anyway, Netflix is moving towards so much comedy. Morty and I talked about this on the episode of the show. He thinks that they should buy the Ed Sullivan Theater.
They could use it for comedy specials. They can use it for all sorts of stuff. Maybe you put John Malady in there when he’s going to do a run of shows. Maybe you bring Stephen Colbert on special every now and then, that kind of a thing. It certainly seems that Netflix is embracing this type of stuff where the network television.
Just because the medium is changing, they’re losing out on these things. That’s what it appears to be. So what you’re getting at And when I was at Sirius XM, we really played this card. And I’ll also tied into what I brought up earlier about as CBS, who do we want to be? As Fox?
Who do we want to be? You’re talking about the cool party to be at? So if we’re in Netflix, hey we have this cool John Mulaney show. You don’t need to know the viewing figures. It’s cool.
Yeah, it’s cool. We have football, we have wrestling, we have cool movies. We have Happy Gilmore too, even though Johnny Mac thinks it’s terrible. We have all these things that people like. It’s a cool party to be at.
Now what and we ran this playbook at serious. What that allows you to do is you get to go to the other cool kids who are going to be like, who else is at the party? Oh? Yeah, no, we do the Millenni show. We let him do whatever he wants.
We’d love to be in business with you. Mike. Talk to John He’ll tell you we don’t interfere. It’s just we’re creatives and we get it and we want you to do your thing. Mike’s I want you sign up with us.
And now another cool person is at the cool party. And so there is value to doing that mulleni show. And again in twenty six, just go to the comedy festival, book eight Listers and do seven days like you did two years ago, and yep, that show will suddenly seem like it’s found its footing. That’s where I see it going. And just we talk about the idea that CBS could have gotten creative with solutions for Colbert if they truly wanted him.
This is where it feels like they truly didn’t want him. I believe that Netflix truly wants John Mulaney and his immense talent all over the place. My gosh, we just watched season four of The Bear and his acting ability. He made a cameo again in one of those episodes. Insanely talented guy, And I believe you look at the way that Dave talks about how he’s treated at Netflix, and he can do whatever he wants.
I feel like, if you wanted to do twenty my Next Guests in a year, they would let him do it. But he wants to do a handful of them, so they let him do it. And like you just said, nurturing the creative muscles, that that’s what creative dream. That they can have a scenario, a sandbox that they can play in where they can just make whatever they want in there. And I think Netflix is extremely intelligent in how they’re doing that.
The playbook that they’ve created is it’s astounding, it really is. And I hope it comes back whatever it looks like. I do hope it comes back because of exactly what you just said. The alternative music section may have been the smallest in the music store, but that was the section I went to and that’s what kept me coming back to the store back in the day. Yeah, I think you’re probably right.
Also, as Millennia ages and his children age, I don’t think he’s tired of the road yet. But a mini artists reach the point of whether it’s a Las Vegas residency or just taking a break. Hey, John, here’s thirty weeks of steady work at a good paycheck and you can just show up on Wednesdays in Los Angeles. And no, they don’t just put the show together in an hour. But no, but he could be home every night with the wife and kids and not have to tour and make a good living.
That could appeal to him. I totally agree with that, and I think it also the sensibility of the fact that you look at the British television model for a long time. The original Office had what eleven episodes, twelve episodes with a special something like that, right they had. They didn’t call them seasons, they were series and I think that there’s appeal to that as opposed to the daunting twenty one to twenty five episode sitcom season where it’s grueling. I do think that you’re exactly right, that is where the puck is going and if that’s what they’re going to cater to, Mulany is a great guy to do that with, and they’re doing that with so many different people.
And again, comedy like is Netflix, you would be a better you’d have a good knowledge on this is Netflix. The place that has the most specials is that the platform right now that has the most stand up comedy is Hulu. Even in the picture where are we. From, Wholu’s doing one a month? Who?
Okay, they’re positioned as a curated one a month. Netflix has most often a new special on Tuesday, but not every Tuesday. Usually there’s a new one. Amazon’s somewhere in between. We’ll talk about this some other day.
To find special. Because everybody’s recording a set at the Chuckle Hut and putting it up on youtub. You’ve been saying, Hey, check out my new special. It’s not a special, it’s an hour and whatever. Yeah.
But in terms of things that us oldies would consider sons of whatever HBO used to do thirty years ago, Netflix has the most there. The paychecks are not what they were ten years ago. There was crazy money for a while, but the exposure’s good. And this was another thing we saw at Sirius. At first the comedians were like, eh, I don’t know, and then they realized their name was getting out there and they were selling a ton of tickets.
If you are a known commodity because you had a Netflix special, that’s good for your career. And wreth Mike at about two minutes we get into live comedy on Netflix and how Deeve might react to all of this. It’s funny. Then I can tell that I’m becoming an old man more and more every single day because I think about the things that my father and his friends. There was an autobody shop like sitcom could have been shot.
And what I’m about to say, my father would hang out with this autobody shop and at ten fifteen in the morning every day it would be coffee time and they’d go into the coffee room inside this autobody shop and you’d listen to these characters talk about the old days when it came to music, when it came to movies, when it came to all of these things and how. And I’m becoming that now, sure, But I feel like I’m becoming that because I’m the thing that I had as a backbone. Almost network television is a backbone to me, and it’s going away. It’s clearly going away. I don’t believe CBS is, by the way, going to give eleven thirty back to the affiliates.
Let’s face it, they’re gonna They’re gonna land on their feet. It is gonna be profitable for them. I don’t think it’s dead yet. But you just brought up the HBO comedy special or special on HBO that was almost a sacred thing back in the day when a comic would be able to go up like I think about Chris Rock special on HBO that was such a major thing, and now it’s become pop music and there are these specials all over the place. I do believe Netflix is handling it well.
I’m curious what you think about the idea of Okay, if a special is no longer a special, it’s now a featured hour or whatever you want to call it, is the next frontier, And it seems like Netflix is starting to master this. Now is the next frontier? A stand up going up and doing a live special. Rogan did it, which I give him all the credit in the world for doing. Is that gonna be the next jump up and the next echelon of comic?
Oh yeah, okay, yeah, you think you could do? That? Was an hour shot over three days, wearing the same clothes and three shots whatnot edited. Let’s do it live? Is that?
Do you think that’s where the puck. Might be going when it comes to cost because live is an event. Here, let me give you a premise. Stephen Colbert is going live on Netflix Saturday night at ten pm. You’re gonna watch Now, you could watch Stephen Colbert five nights a week.
Whatever he’s gonna say but oh, Saturday night at ten live. Yep, it’s somehow more dangerous, right, what’s he gonna say? Yep? I totally agree with that. I liked Rogan’s live special.
I think a couple of his previous specials were probably tighter and better and went up, but they weren’t live. And the fact that he walked that high wire. Act that walked that high wire, I should say and did it. Anytime Colbert did The Late Show live, I always thought it was a better it was a better presentation. There’s an electricity that’s there, and the event is that’s the only thing that’s getting people to get organized is when things are an event.
Yeah, yeah, I’m with you on that. I want to talk about the Letterman of this all. Dave. Dave is not Johnny. Johnny went quietly into the night.
Dave is still around. I could see if I’m Jimmy Kimmel, I’m asking Dave to do a guest spot, and I know what that conversation would be like, and it will be feistying, and it will get news pickup and I won’t be surprised at all if it happens. I imagine David Letterman will be one of the final if not the final guests on the Colbert era Late Show. And again Johnny was happy to just be like, Okay, that happened, and I’m not really going to talk about it. But Dave will throw a rock.
He doesn’t throw a ton of rocks, but he’ll throw one really good rock. I think that’s a good, really good analogy. Like it’s summertime and Dave’s in vacation mode, but yet he still did take the time to shoot an episode of The Barber Game Show, which I don’t believe he’s ever done, and in the summertime like this before to talk about it, he in that interview or that that conversation he talked about going and kissing the ring he talked about he alluded to it already. Every time he opens its mouth. It’s going to be really interesting.
I would love to ask him. I don’t think Dave’s particularly nostalgic about the franchise that he created, but at the same time, I know other people are. There are a lot of people in the Letterman world who worked for Late Show that the idea this franchise is going away, this franchise that they busted their ass to build to compete against the Tonight show is going away is extremely emotional for a lot of these people. And I say a lot, a handful. I’ve talked to a handful of them between five and ten at length about it.
And Dave is a cat. He’s an interesting cat, a different one. I do believe that he also doesn’t like injustice. You think about Dave when he talked about during the Conan again the last Circus time oh nine oh ten and some of the most interesting Letterman to watch was that era, and just every single night just commenting on the events of the day of what NBC was doing with Conan and Leno and all of that stuff. You know that muscle is sitting there with him.
So if it’s a one rock, okay, it’s gonna be a hell of a rock. But then there’s that part of him that you wonder if CBS flips that switch in Dave and he’s just gonna want to talk more and more about it. I believe that he will have many venues to do that because all the talk show hosts are happy there’s Strikeforce five now. He will have many places to do that whenever he wants, including on his YouTube channel. It’s gonna be very interesting to see this fall when they get to a more regular recording schedule of the Barbara Gains Show on the Letterman YouTube channel.
It’s going to be very interesting to see how often he comments on it. And my flat out say this, I hope it’s gonna be like it was with Conan and Leno. If every week we get Letterman going off with Mary and Barbara about this and just throwing throwing these rocks, like you say, oh, that would be so much fun. And there’s a part of me that thinks that’s exactly what’s gonna happen and is hoping for it. I find myself this week feeling bad for Jay Leno.
I know, Jay Leno is the worst person who ever lived in the history of human kind, because somebody offered him his job back and he said yes. I understand that he’s just a terrible human being. But he is catching so much grief this week for the comments he made. Before before the announcement. Yes, yes they surfaced after, but he made us before tie this into Jimmy Fallon.
Jimmy Fallon catches a lot of grief. Jimmy Fallon can do a lot more than Jimmy Fallon currently does. But Jimmy Fallon understands the gig. You’re hosting the Tonight Show. That’s what the gig is.
You’re not guest hosting the Howard Stern Show. You’re hosting the Tonight Show. That’s right. Jimmy Fallon runs the formula. Jay Leno ran the formula very successfully.
Apparently America found Conan O’Brien a little too weird for the Tonight Show. They like him as Conan O’Brien, they liked him as the son of David Letterman, but they didn’t like him at eleven thirty Well discussed was NBC too quick all that whatever? Yep, but Jay Leno understood the formula. So his comments about not splitting the audience, there’s some merit to that, we can debate it. But the amount of grief he’s catching for those comments, I just think is just crazy.
I’ll let you go and then I have a notion that’s going to make me unpopular, but I’ll let you address the one I’ll think that i’ve hijacked. Yeah this is good, and yeah it’s not like it wasn’t consistent. I can point to many interviews and conversations that Jay Leno has had with many different people. Rogan, his appearents on Rogan, is one of them. For sure, that’s the one that comes out, I believe when he talked with Bill Maher.
Also there’s I believe a conversation with Howie Mandel where these are recent, more recent ones, but he’s talked about it for years. It was a Carson formed. You didn’t know Johnny’s politics. It was a reason why Carson was differentiated from and some would say why maybe perhaps a guy like Dick Cavett didn’t make the inroads that he could have made because you knew Dick Cavit’s politics in many respects, right, Leno firmly believe you don’t want to isolate half the audience. You don’t want to piss him off.
If you’re going to make fun of a politician, you do it equally, and the goal is to not know what their politics are. Leno has said this forever. It was his it was his mo It’s the reason he was pop music. It’s the reason why the Tonight Show, in my opinion, with Leno, Helmingtt beat David Letterman mostly in the run in the in the ratings was because of that. That’s his and now he’s in his seventies and he’s just saying the same thing that he’s always said.
But for whatever reason, in this time and place, he’s being as far as i’m concerned, unfairly unfairly judged about that, because he’s got a point. If you’re talking about if you’re Jerry Seinfeld and you’re talking about ovaltine or you’re talking about chocolate covered raisins and that’s what you’re talking about, you’re not really pissing anybody off. And if that’s the goal, you want to stay away from politics and you don’t want people to know what they are. So the part that is ridiculous to me is he’s being consistent and now being raked over the calls for consistency. Yeah, Jay played to Middle America, I’ll call it, and cranky Dave played on the edges and some of us I’m cranky and I’m from New York City, so I’m over here with Dave calling hogwash to things we see as hogwash.
And Jay played to the middle and did the hey just see this thing? But that was the gig. Yes. I saw an article this week claiming Jay was clearly right wing because of who he made fun of or not. I reacted to that.
So if we look at the presidents, if we just head backwards, whatever your politics are, Trump is a character. There are clearly things you can have fun with as a comedian. There are things you can have fun with. Biden not so much. He wasn’t a fun character to take out for a drive on SNL.
What are you gonna do? We wear sunglasses and maybe you make old jokes. It’s not that much fun. Obama there wasn’t that much to make fun of. Nobody really ever nailed a definitive Obama impression because, again, whatever your politics were, he was from a presidential standpoint cool because he just wasn’t an eighty year old guy.
So there wasn’t much to make fun of. Yep, George w he would misspeak, there was something to grab onto. Dana Carvey figured out how to do George H. Bill Clinton fun character, and Jay is catching. I think some revisionist history grief about Lewinsky jokes, and we should feel bad for an intern who has taken advantage of absolutely, I just want to put that out there totally.
But the Bill Clinton jokes were about this guy that’s clearly cheating on his wife and pretending he’s not and Hillary’s gonna kill him, and that it was the married husband got caught, Yes, humor not the preying on the innocent intern part of it. And I think that has gotten conflated over the years that I’ve seen a lot of this week of Jay Leno made Lewinsky jokes. Jay Leno made Bill Clinton jokes, if that makes sense. Yeah, and like Letterman called Clinton Bubba like, it wasn’t just Lewinsky jokes either, it was also McDonald’s jokes and other Yeah, it was because, yeah, Clinton was a character. The Phil Hartman impression of him on Saturday Night Live accentuated all of all everything that you’re talking about.
And this is what the late night guys we’re talking about. Yeah, it’s so funny. The idea of trying to as you were talking about that, I’m going back in the way back machine of my mind and going, okay, yeah, what were what do you think Leonard’s politics were? I could have seen he made fun of everybody equally. There’s no question about that.
Back then, if there was a scandal of any sort, you could make fun of them. And the collateral damage was not taken in consideration in the same way that it is today. The idea that people are saying, oh, he was clearly right wing because of Lewinsky jokes, in my mind clearly weren’t there at the time and place. And they’re taking things completely out of context, which is the mo for in my mind, a very vocal but silly minority out you give the megaphone to some, if you give the megaphone to ignorance, a lot of silly things are going to be said. And to me, that’s just ignorance, and not even in a malicious way.
It’s a lack of knowledge. It’s taking today’s standards and putting them back into a time and place where those standards weren’t even a consideration at that time. And I love the fact, by the way that you have people who have made apologetic remarks or shown regret for making jokes, particularly about Monica Lewinsky. I’ve heard many people comedians and talk about the idea that you know what, yeah, we used her as a pinata because it was an easy joke, but really time place, if it was today, we wouldn’t do that. So I love that there is thoughtfulness about that, but to say that was Leno’s politics because of that, you know, everybody was making fun of Clinton at the time.
In fact, it shows to me that that pop culture and entertainment is able to make fun of both a Democrat and a Republican. Okay, you think they’re making fun of Trump right now, they made Everybody was making fun of Clinton back then. He was a punchline all the time. And I think that’s a great point. Like it’s I don’t think the comparison is there because Trump is more of a gregarious character than Clinton was and he and Trump welcomes it.
Talk about the pro wrestling things. He’s trying to get heat. I don’t think Clinton was trying to get heat. But the media was not afraid to make fun of Bill Clinton back in the day. So it’s a great discussion point to compare the two.
Actually, and they’ll make fun of the next president, And if the president’s persona has more room for comedic fodder, they’ll make more fun of them. And if it’s not a good target or whatever the news of the day on that day is, they’ll make fun of that. At some point. There’s a rhythm to comedy and I’ll get back to just understanding what the gig is. So if you’re hosting an eleven thirty show, you’re commenting on the news of the day, and you’re playing to the water cooler, and the joke has to go down the middle.
You can’t set up like, hey, my guad, so this thing happened in the news, let me explain it to you, and here’s a joke. Can’t do that. You just have to go right down the middle with Hey, just see the tsunami warning the other day. Punchline right, yep, straight forward. The Great Bob Hope.
Now Bob Hope aligned himself in real life with Republican presidents. Bob Hope, if you go back and look at the body of work made fun of all the presidents, whoever the president was, the jester made fun of you. Hope had a rhythm to I like listening to his old material. And because the structure of the joke is solid, you can follow along even if you don’t know the particular to do a poor man’s Bob Hope style joke. It’s great to be here at a Bigillicutti Air Force base, and I saw General Johnson just went for one of the free hot dogs.
Now, I don’t know why that’s funny, but Hope would make it funny and you’d be like, oh, I guess General Johnson likes his hot dogs or whatever the joke was. But the soldiers would laugh at it, and it was a rhythm to it. And if you go back and listen, he tells a variation of that joke over and over. Just replace the details. He it’s great to be here in Ohio, Governor Smith a punchline.
And if you’re hosting eleven thirty, the news is Bill Clinton’s affairs. If the joke the same article I had a problem with was giving Leno grief from making fun of the woman in the McDonald’s hot coffee lawsuit. Yep, no one wants an old woman to be burned. Of course, not Jay Leno didn’t want a woman to be injured. But the joke is I just say this, did you not know coffee’s hot?
That’s the joke, Yes, exactly, exactly. It’s the foibles of human nature, and that’s exactly right. I do like that we have a thoughtfulness in our culture now that perhaps didn’t exist back then. I do believe the has been thrown out with the bathwater when it comes to this stuff. Many times, there are so many things that we can make fun of Jay Leno about.
This is one thing that, in my opinion, is not worth making fun about when there’s so many other things that we can make fun about him for. And we’ll take one more break here. Yeah, a lot of Briggs today, I get it. We’ll come back and we’ll talk a little about Seth Myers. Is there anything else that we need to do?
We miss anything before we? Uh know? I sort of want to talk about Seth Myers, but I don’t really have anything to say about it, and I think that’s my point. I like his comedy special, seems like a cool dude to hang out with. Whereas I feel like Jimmy Fallon is hosting Jack Parr’s show.
I don’t feel like Seth Myers is hosting David Letterman show. Conan did Fallon might have, but I just feel it has the same name and it’s on twelve thirty, and I don’t feel like it has any cultural impact. Again, I don’t dislike Seth Myers, but I have said that phrase cultural impact on my program many times. It’s just this weird thing that exists to me that I don’t know why it exists. It exists to give us Wally Ferrostine.
That’s why. That’s why, to unleash Wally to us and introduce the gift that is Wally Feriston to all of us. That’s why Seth Myers exists. I could not agree with you more. Where it has gotten to the point where like originally Fred Armiston was in the band and there’s a there’s pop there and it’s different and it’s got a personality and all that, and it feels okay, now Fred’s not in the band anymore because they’re just gonna and now we’re gonna get rid of the band and now we’re gonna there is no monologue.
He’s at the desk now and it’s is it weekend Update, except it’s just Update daily. No, it’s not quite that either. And don’t get me wrong, some of the bits on that show the stuff Seth can’t say. I that that is a tremendous bit. I love that where you bring up writers and they can make certain jokes because of their the cultural appro the appropriateness of the joke.
Seth can’t make that joke, but they can love that clever And I do. I actually am really starting to enjoy Seth more as a conversationalist, but I am curious what long form would look like in that regard, as opposed to his podcast and things which are more specific. The idea of what his conversations would look like more in a long form sort of Tom snyderish type situation, I don’t know, it’d be interesting. But to your point, I don’t think the show has an identity so much other than him being at the desk and being kind of like he’s Weekend Update set, which I loved. I loved him at Weekend Update, by the way.
Yeah, I don’t know. And maybe perhaps he’s a little bit maybe he’s in limbo a little bit too, because maybe there are Saturday Night live conversations going on in the background. I don’t know, but it does certainly feel of all of the shows you brought up fallent. You look at Kimmel, right. The one thing with Kimmel, everyone says he’s the most like Dave, and maybe that is true in some respects, but there is one massive difference with Kimmel and Dave, and that is, whereas Dave, the network with NBC, especially even with CBS, is that super Cut on his YouTube channel has shown was a rival Kimmel.
That’s not the case. Kimmel is into star Wars and comic books and all of these sorts of things, and Disney owns his thing, and he is the promotion machine for the network that owns his or for the company that owns his network and his show and all that stuff. And to me, it seems like he has happily accepted that role. So would I, by the way, because all these franchises and things. I would totally be interested in talking to Robert Downey Junr about the differences between playing Tony Stark and Doctor Doom.
Let’s do it. This sounds like fun. Yeah. Plus I got a team of ninja like writers where I can skewer whoever I want to skewer it. Yeah, let’s do that too.
And I can use my rapier wit and exercise these things as well and have some mischievous fun the way Dave did. And I get to do that to me, and I get to bring guest hosts in and I get to the point where I don’t care and I can work on the schedule that I want. Man, Kim’s got it. Kim’s got a good gig right now, and it feels he’s the happiest guy in Late night right now now to me, Seth. Yeah, if we could find more of an identity for him the way that Kimmel’s got it, that might save that show.
But it is not Late Night. Connor Bryant mosted Late Night. In my opinion, if that show ends in twenty twenty eight when his contract is up, and that wouldn’t be shocking. I don’t think we’d be like, oh, I can’t believe they got rid of Letterman’s franchise. It just doesn’t feel like the same thing.
Yes, maybe he’d be smart to grab the Lorne Michael’s gig. And you can make your own rules. No one’s saying as the show runner, you could put yourself on your own show that you run because no one can say no to you. You could do three minutes on weekend update every week if you wanted, and turn that into a thing. As for Kimmel, I think he will benefit from there being one fewer eleven thirty show because people have to tune into something and just from a psychograph, all right, where should we go?
I think they’re more likely to go to Kimmel than Jimmy Fallon. Kimmel loves floating that. I think this is it. You’re in your fifties, you got plenty of time left. Yeah.
You clearly can say to ABC, hey I want Summers off, and they go, yeah, maybe you want a longer Christmas break. They’ll say, yeah, hey, Carson had a guest host every Monday for the last fifteen years. I don’t want to do Mondays anymore. Let’s let Anthony Anderson do Mondays and I’ll do Tuesday to Thursday and Friday’s a rerun. Sure, whatever you want.
Jimmy and I think he should and will stick around. I agree fully, and I’m glad about that too, because I enjoy his show the most. Don’t get me wrong, Colbert. I really do Colbert, and I appreciate them all. I actually really Falento, how talented he is.
Every once in a while, he’s so talented. He’s so talented. He catches so much grief. We’ve beaten this horse already, but he’s running the Tonight show. Don’t judge him by that.
That’s right, That’s exactly right. It’s a lot and again, like we said, with Colbert, it’s gonna be interesting to see what he does when these shackles are off. Those shackles are massive and heavy, and you’ve got to you’ve got to toe the line. You’ve got to be you’re hooked up to this machine, and you’ve got to be a whole bunch of things that your personality and your talent get left behind in that. And yes, and so fell and he catches a lot of crap, But I really appreciate his talent a lot.
I certainly hope out of this whole thing, I certainly hope we get to see more Strikeforce fives here soon. It would be a great time to start seeing that and to bring on When they did their first run, they brought on John Stewart, they brought on David Letterman his guests. That would be really cool to see more of that happen in this next ten months. It’s certainly going to be fun. And in this next ten months you and I’m certain are going to be talking both in front of the camera and behind the scenes as well.
During one of the most exciting times that we’ve seen in recent memory in comedy in late night. Thank you for doing what you do, Johnny Mac. Everybody out there subscribe, get a second email account, and then subscribe a second time to the Daily Comedy News podcast. Please do that, Johnny Mac, you are amazing. Thank you so much for showing up in this mashup of your show and my show, and it’s just this beautiful delight.
Thank you for showing up today now. I always love doing your program. You do a great job as well. I have. It’ll be a week later or so by the time people hear this, but I grab them morty episodes who listen to later today while walking the dog and looking forward to it.
Oh that’s awesome. Thank you so much, John, I appreciate that very much. This has been another episode of The Letterman podcast and a special episode of the Daily Comedy News podcast. This is Johnny Mac. I am Mike Chisholm.
Thank you, and good night.