Featured: Mike Chisholm, David Letterman, Chris Rock, Joe Coy, Taylor Swift, William Shatner, Jay Leno
What’s in This Episode
- Crossover episode with The Letterman Podcast
- Daily Comedy News production and format
- Letterman’s YouTube channel and digital strategy
- Recurring comedy bits and inside jokes
- Joe Coy’s Taylor Swift joke from Gold Globes
- Letterman’s influence on late night comedy
- Jay Leno eye patch incident
Questions Answered in This Episode
Why does this Daily Comedy News episode have so many commercials?
Johnny Mac’s hosting company requires a commercial break every 20 minutes or will automatically insert one. This crossover episode with The Letterman Podcast is about 1 hour 20 minutes long, resulting in more commercial breaks than typical episodes.
What is the Joe Coy Taylor Swift joke that keeps coming up on Daily Comedy News?
Joe Coy made a joke about Taylor Swift at the Gold Globes that Johnny Mac has turned into a recurring gag on his show, playing the same 4-second clip repeatedly over the past year.
How often does Johnny Mac release Daily Comedy News episodes?
Johnny Mac produces the show 4 days a week, often pre-recording on weekends in advance and releasing bonus episodes when notable figures pass away.
What did David Letterman recently launch?
David Letterman launched a Fast channel this week, expanding his digital presence beyond his existing YouTube channel.
What is the drum joke that appears on David Letterman’s show?
At the end of the Late Show’s run, Letterman had a recurring bit where he would thank the band and look at the drummer saying ‘these are your drums’ after nearly every musical performance.
Full Transcript
This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.
Caloroga Shark Media. Happy to hear. I’m Johnny Mac with your Daily Comedy News. Recently, I was a guest on The Letterman podcast with Mike Chisholm. We talked about all kinds of things comedy and asked Mike, hey, can I repurpose the interview for my show so I can take January first off?
And Mike said sure. So today is a long one. I just want to get in front of something. The hosting company I use, I have to place a commercial break every twenty minutes or one will be automatically inserted, all right, And this entire thing raw was about an hour and twenty minute, so this is probably the longest episode of Daily Comedy News ever. But when you get around all the fourth commercial break and you’re like, John, what the heck?
Man? If I don’t put a marker, it’s going to get dropped in mid sentence. So at least I’m placing the commercials an hour and twenty of stuff today, with more commercials than you get in a ten minute episode, So I hope you can understand all that. Anyway, here’s my wonderful conversation with Mike Chisholm. John when I’m so glad that every once in a while, when something happens in comedy, you’ll just throw an email out to me and it’s, oh, yes, John and I got to connect, and it feels like two comic books doing the crossover thing when we do this.
I’m so glad that you’re back on the show. So much to talk about in the world of comedy, in the world of Late Night, in the world of Letterman. Lots of stuff this week, even when it comes to David Letterman, Thank you so much for coming back on the show. I really appreciate this, and I’m just looking forward to just conversing with you, my friend. Now, happy to be here.
I’ll tell you when you just sent me the link. My podcast, Daily Company News is just audio, so you’ve got the high pressure of video. So I’m like, oh, let me check my hair now. I’ve got the David Letterman Gulf of Mexico thing that he had in the eighties, so I got to make sure I moose it up otherwise I have that thing going. So I have that in common with Dave, but it hit him about twenty years earlier that it’s hit me.
The hair piece is securely in place. It looks fantastic. You’re doing very well, sir. There are days William Shatner and I have the same hair minus natural, but his current piece looks pretty good. Good Canadian boy, William Shatner.
One of the secrets that he said to life. People always ask him because he’s like freakishly elderly compared to how he looks. And don’t get me wrong, I want to I don’t want to be an ageist or anything like that. But he looks fantastic for his age, and somebody frequently has that. He’s been asked how he looks so good, and he says, every single year he puts five pounds on and that was his because I think the five pounds smooth out some of the things that would be wrinkles otherwise.
But now this is great. How’s Daily Comedy News Go? I love your podcast. I cannot endorse it enough for those of us out there who love this thing called comedy. The Daily Comedy News podcast is fantastic.
It’s a nice little bite where every day you get caught up with what’s going on in the world. There’s lots of little inside jokes if you listen to it along the way, like Letterman, there’s ongoing little jokes that that you put into this thing. It is such a great show. How’s it going for you have fourteen hundred episodes in something like that. Yeah, it probably five years or so.
I feel like it’s really in a groove that I have my creative voice and where I want the show to be. The show comes out to the same length every day without me checking the clock. It’s got a rhythm. In the A block, I do people you’ve heard of Chris Rock, and then then take a break and in the back end do a little more esoteric stuff. Like you said, there’s in jokes.
We have a joke that’s a year old now about Joe Coy, which my tailor’s hired. Yeah, the Taylor Swift joke. So, just to catch everybody up, if you saw the Gold Globes last year, Joe Coy made a joke about Taylor Swift, and I’ve just turned it into a recurring gag. I’ll set it up and the audience knows it’s coming, and I’ll be like, you know, I don’t know if you remember this one time Joe Coy made this joke about Taylor Swift. Yeah, let’s listen.
To it, and I had some audience members are like, will you stop, and other people areud on the joke. I actually have the jokes shaved down to it’s four seconds, but the four seconds sounds like an eternity because I’ve played it ninety times out of the last three sixty five. But it’s a good recurring bit. I like that kind of stuff. It’s silly, very much a Letterman.
From the beginning. He always had these sort of things, and even up to the very end. Somebody was I saw somebody commenting on one of Dave’s most recent it was either the YouTube, I think it was the on the YouTube, and he was talking about Letterman and drummers. And when you watch the end of Late Show, the run of the Late Sha the last few years, every other musical performance, as he would come out and thank the band after they were done, he would look at the drummer and say, hey, a, these are your drums. And it was just this thing that just kept going on and on, and people who I get people who ask me, hey, what’s up with the drum thing?
And it’s like that, And there’s so much of his humor that has permeated everything that gets done right now, And a lot of people have talked about the idea that, oh, it’s going to be lost, it won’t be credited back to Letterman. Maybe not so fast? See what I did there? See what I did there? With the not so fast, I almost missed it.
I’m glad you said did you see what I did there? That’s, by the way, should be stricken from the record completely. Did you see what I did there? Is one of those phrases that I think has been used enough that probably needs to be strict from the English language. Letterman launched a fast channel this week, and I thought that was really exciting news for me.
I don’t know, what did you have? You covered that on the show already? I heard it there yet it depends when we air this. Ah as we record this, No, but by the time people hear this, probably yes, travel So I’ll just explain that. Production wise, I tend to record the weekends in advance, and I think this story appears on a Sunday episode.
Gotcha. Look, I deal the audience straight. I don’t do this seven days a week. I do it four days a week. And it’s pretty predictable, and there are predictable events in comedy like Netflix specials come out every Tuesday or when he is New Year’s Eve this year, so you can pre tape some of these.
And as as a creator, if something I don’t want to jinx anybody, but if somebody of note passes away, I run down to the basement, I put out a bonus episode. And it’s appreciated. How you do it, I love it. And it’s a predictably unpredictable when it comes to that, because it does stay spontaneous with the time. It’s just like Letterman’s YouTube channel.
You can expect a clip every day. Sometimes those clips will be timed perfectly, like for example, when Wicked opened. Here’s the clip from when the cast of Wicked showed up and did a number at the Ed Sullivant Theater.
And then sometimes it’s just something that’s funny from the show, and someti…
And it’s interesting how the folks who run Letterman’s digital wing of Worldwide Pants really at the end of the day part of their job Walter and his team is obituaries. And you have that mantle as well, where the guard is changing. I think we talked about maybe we talked about this last time with Newhart. I know we did off camera. Anyway, when some of these people are passing away, it’s up to you to comment on it based on the brand that you’re building.
I’m talking about the changing of the guard, and this tees me up perfectly because I did want to talk about Jay Leno. So when Jay had his eepatch incidents. Yeah, I teach college class and I was asking the students and just talking about Jay Leno and one of my favorite students he sits in the front row. He asks who’s Jay Leno? And I looked at him and I said, you just murdered me.
And I stopped and I’m like, how do I explain to Jay Leno? Is he hosted the Tonight show before Jimmy Fallon? Was my best answer, So that brings me to it was just in the news, Lena was talking about why he stays in Hampton Inns and what went down, and he was pretty funny about it, explaining this was on Spike Thurston’s podcast, and Jay was explaining that no, the mafia didn’t come to Pennsylvania to find him and throw him down a hill, which once he pointed it out. I’m like, yeah, you probably if they wanted to get to him, they could get to him in LA he’s around. But I was thinking about this, so here you have a college student.
It was no idea who Jay Leno is. Now. Jay doesn’t have the most generic face the way say is Steve. If Stephen Colbert took off his glasses and passed me in the airport, I might not recognize him. Jay has more of a character’s face, definitely.
But that said, if he checks into a Hampton in at one am in nowhere, Pennsylvania, there’s a pretty decent chance that the person working is young and just goes, mister Lenno, you’re in room three thirty two, and he could probably check in as Jay Leno. Yep, absolutely, it’s We just did an episode. Actually, I still got it on the desk here. We just did a review episode. A couple we talk about Carson the Magnificent because the Zemi book just came out after all that time, and we’ve been talking about Johnny Carson, and it’s funny.
It’s almost like there’s not a day that goes by where I’m like, you know what, why we do this show. One of the reasons we do the show is because people are forgeting who Johnny Carson was and he was the biggest star in the world, and people look at me so quizzically. And even two years later after starting Letterman podcast, people will say to me sometimes they know I’m a financial planner by trade, and they’ll be, oh, yeah, but he’s got two podcasts too, and they’ll be like, oh, what kind of podcast do you host? And I’m like, yeah, I host Amend’s mental wellness podcast and the other one. And I ask this question now, I never used to do you know who David Letterman is?
Wow? And to me, that is absolutely baffling that I have to ask that question. And even more baffling are the answers I get back, because even it happened to me yesterday. Yeah, that’s I’m like, you know who? And I do the exact same thing that you do.
And I don’t even lead with Colbert. I say, do you know who Jimmy Fallon is? Because I feel that he’s the one that that of all the late night hosts, I believe he’s the one that speaks to the youngest demo at this point than any of them, even more than Taylor. I think even and oh yeah, I know Fallon Is. I said, okay, he has the Tonight Show, right, Letterman’s one of those guys.
Oh yeah, that’s what that is baffling to me. But at the same time, I believe that the Worldwide Pants they’re in a they’re in legacy mode in some respects. They’re combating that by creating this fast channel. I’m really excited about the fact if you’re a Samsung TV owner you can go to Samsung TV Plus and I think it’s channel one thousand. Yep is all Letterman all the time.
It seems to be curated. I’m trying to get some answers to see exactly what the hunks are going to look like when the hunks are going to change. It seems like most of the stuff on there right now is holidays, and I don’t know how that’s going to go. But it’s very cool that we have an opportunity, probably for the first time because Cavot and Carson and what Memurve Griffin, which has been focused on Murk Griffin the last couple of weeks here, a lot of their catalogs are inaccessible or completely erase. They’re gone.
Here, we have Letterman who owns all of his own stuff, and they’re gonna put it out there. It’s going to be very interesting to see how much of this new generation, who is a throwback generation, attach themselves and rediscovered Dave’s comedy. Yeah, I put it on during halftime of Thursday Night Football and they were doing chunks of either petricks or human tricks, and that they seem to be programmed in on a half hour blocks of compilations of that. And I have a Samsung TV. I rarely use the fast channels, and I’m sure I will now more, both because my provider just raised their hikes, their hike their prices, and a Letterman channel.
But as I was looking at it, same thing I talked about last time I was on. Some of the clips were nineteen eighty for my Dave and some were older Late Show Dave, and some spoke to me and some didn’t. But it’s interesting how do you curate that thirty year career and are things like Netflix part of it? And there’s the Late Night said stability and other than the first year and a half, the Late Show, grown up mature Dave sensibility, and they don’t always mix too well. No, and it’s funny.
Let’s throw Don Giller’s channel into this as a because he, in my opinion, has a very unique voice, and how he decided to take his massive collection and assemble it and give it to us, and the idea again, I went through MERV Griffin’s compilation not too long ago because it was boning up for the episode will be focused on him, and you look at Don Giller and how he would take chunks of one particular topic or guest and then go from the entire run, some of which being like mervh for example, that David Letterman show. The Morning Show was Mrv’s first appearance all the way up to irv’s last appearance on Late Show shortly fairly close to his passing. And you got to see if you watch the whole thing, you get to see the evolution of things, and that is a to me, that’s a beautiful progression. And there’s links there, but yeah, you’re right, it’s jarring when you see one clip from eighty four. Maybe something isoteric versus something that is created more for the masses, more pop music for the masses.
And Late Show certainly didn’t go as far as Leno did when it came to that, but he really did change the sensibility. Yeah, it’s gonna be interesting mixing it that way. I’m excited for the channel. I’m sure you recall there was it used to be a cable channel called Trio, and Trio at some point, was this the nineties or early aughts dusted off the late night shows and I think they were running them at ten pm Eastern And yeah, I would have had a tvo that now I’m dusting it off so early o its probably And I was like, wait, I can just watch nineteen eighty three Letterman episodes. This was amazing and I took them all in So I like that.
It’s there the random factor of if I tune in and I’m not into this, guest, it’s a little throwback. We’re here in the age of on demand and streaming so af fast channels, a little bit retro. But how great that all this content will be surfacing again. Yeah, I’m really excited for it, and I hope that I hope that the people who love this thing that we love so much, which is comedy, I hope that a lot of these people will dive into this and take a look at some of the architects of what we have that is mainstay right now, Dave being and the writers of course, and all the producers like it. Dave is the first to say that it wasn’t just him.
He was a tip of the spear, but the support system and the team that he assembled behind him, how they changed comedy. They really did. And yeah, so it’s great to see that love. I hope that we can see more of some of this old content that we might not have seen before and it gets utilized. But it’s so difficult because of the red tape that exists.
Right How many of these things that we loved so much have changed hands from a rights perspective because this conglomerate has swallowed up this conglomerate and now it becomes really difficult worldwide. Pants is in such a unique spot because Dave owned his show, he owned his content, and that that’s a Yeah, it’s a very unique spot that Dave has given himself. In the industry, a lot of this estate stuff gets tied up in an absence of rules. So, for example, if you wanted to license a clip of Steve Allen for use on a video podcast that you’re going to stream on YouTube, is there even a rule. Yeah, great point, great point, especially if you’re talking over it and you’re now repurposing it a little bit.
Is there a rule? Is there not a rule? And are they gonna Yeah, that’s and who gets paid? Yep, yep. That’s very complicated.
And as I talked about at the top, let me drop a commercial break in here so one doesn’t get dropped in on you be right back with more than Mike on Letterman Podcast. By the way, Dave won an Emmy. We haven’t talked about that. Isn’t that a neat thing? How his my next guest with John Mulaney won on Emmy.
His current offerings are still current enough that they’re being awarded things. I was very happy to see that. Yeah, it’s funny. It happens to everybody. You start out as the counterculture, and if you put in your thirty years, you’re the culture and there’s some new guy looking to take you down.
Yeah, it’s it was neat to see that. And it’s interesting because my next guest on Netflix and I wonder about the strategic value I was talking I had a conversation with Morning not too long ago, and we were talking about the strategic value of Okay, we’re gonna put out a season which is gonna have a few different episodes in it, but then we’ll put out a special one that is outside of the season, and it’s titled Differently even and the Millenney episode was specifically titled different It wasn’t in with the season with Miley and and the other one which it’s escaping me right now, but it was its own, like it was a special my next Guest with d because John Mulaney’s name was actually in the title of it as well, and that’s the one that won the Emmy. It was a powerful episode, really cool. He’s doing the thom Snyder thing and getting this stuff out of John, the dinner with his dad. It was just such a powerful episode.
I’m glad it was recognized. But then you got Dave on Neil Brennan giving an interview that one of the best interviews I’ve ever seen.
And then recently, have you had a chance to watch the GQ story of David Lette…
It was a phenomenal outing. I thought, I read the article and I don’t want to take over your show and start dragging you around, but I do want to discuss the part where Letterman talked about not being able to live up to Carson and then talked about Today’s hosts and threw them a bone, as if I think he may have caught himself on the fly realizing like, oh, I’m going to say it sound like a jerk saying these Today’s hosts aren’t as good as Carson, which they’re not. Let’s all be real, No one is. Absolutely that was Letterman’s original part point, yes, but then he started talking about maybe some of them are as good as Carson. And I’m not here to be negative, but who could that even mean?
Like, clearly, Jimmy Fallon is not Johnny Carson. No, Colbert is doing something else and not trying to be Johnny Carson. So is Jimmy Kimmel Today’s Johnny Carson. I could maybe drag it up to Jimmy Kimmel’s Today’s David Letterman, but I don’t think Kimmel’s Today’s Johnny Carson. Yeah.
I heard that as well, and I think I don’t know he was talking about like when you think about somebody, because I listened to that as well, and I was thinking, Okay, that’s very interesting. Throwing them a bone is a fantastic way of putting it. But I thought about Johnny’s skillset, and I’ve been down that rabbit hole for the last month probably I’ve been watching a lot of Carson clips again with the Zemi book and talking about that. Carson had a skill set that Letterman never ever even tried to emulate when he did his show, Number one, because he wanted Late Night to be very different, and Late Night had to be very different than the Tonight Show. But also because again they just celebrate, celebrated.
I don’t know if that’s a high lighted on Dave’s YouTube channel on the Barber Games Show, just highlighted when Dave was on Mary’s Variety Show and how how much he hated the dance number and to the point where he didn’t only had to do it a couple of times and then they said, Okay, you don’t have to do this. Being on that variety show, Johnny Carson had a skill set that very few people had at that time, from the magician, the singer, a little bit of actor sketch, the sketch stuff he would do as well as the host game show stuff, and then broadcaster. All of these things won And as I heard that Dave talk about that, to me, I thought he was talking about Fallon from that perspective, because I look at Jimmy Fallon, like him, don’t like him. That dude can do a lot of stuff. He can get.
He is very I hear him sing Neil Young imitating other things, and I the fresh Prince of bel Air theme is the one that comes to mind. But he does these very interesting things. Whether you like him or don’t like you cannot dispute the talent that guy has and the enthusiasm he has, the little sparkle in his eye the way Johnny did. And when I heard that, I thought, oh, he’s talking about Fallon and his skill set. But it was interesting hearing Dave talk about that on that interview.
Also, his dad and Paul shaff are both organists. That’s one thing I took from that. That was an interesting story about his dad with the Organs. That was really compelling to me. Whenever Dave goes into his past and pulls out these little nuggets, there’s a story that Zach.
I don’t even know why it came up or how it came up, but Dave revealing a story about his dad, and maybe some comparison there, but it was a very good interview. I thought, let us be fair to Jimmy Fallon. Jimmy Fallon’s job is to host the Tonight Show at eleven thirty on NBC. That’s a specific job. We are playing to Middle America.
For example, David Letterman at twelve thirty was I’ll just use the word weird. He goes to eleven thirty, puts on on Armani suit, and after a year, goes towards Middle America. You have Conan O’Brien being weird at twelve thirty. He comes to eleven thirty and tries to be weird, and we know what happened there. So you bring Jay Leno back and you play back to Middle America.
Now, you and I and fans of this podcast remember the young Jay Leno and a leather jacket that would show up on late night and be edgy. I would describe Jay Leno as edgy. Now some people might be like, Jay Leno edgy, You’re crazy. I’m telling you go back and watch the clips. They’re on the Fast Channel.
He’s there, he’s edgy. So Fallin he’s executing the tonight show. He has a lot more to his game, but that’s not what the job is. That is exactly right. I’m glad that you said it that way, because even people who sometimes sometimes watch this show, the dozens of fans that we have of the Letterman Podcast, a lot of them are still in that Team Day versus Team J camp.
But when you watch the two of them together and again on Don Giller’s channel, you can go and you can see the entire compilation, the entire evolution and run of when Dave and j used to play off each other and it You’re right, that’s exactly right. I wouldn’t necessarily compare him to Burr, but he might be that generation’s kind of comparison. There’s there’s some observance that was there that had bite to it. It had real bite to it compared to what we saw. And yeah, it’s just it’s a fascinating evolution watching this stuff, watching how there are so many late night hosts, and because of that, it’s had to be I hate to use the word homogenized.
I don’t know if that’s the right word, but it’s diluted. It certainly is diluted compared to what it was. Now, let me ask you a question. I’ve mental exercise. I’ve never actually done that, and I haven’t done it as I just thought of it thirty seconds ago.
It’s nineteen ninety two. Is that the year? Yeah, David Letterman takes over the Tonight Show, Jay Leno. Maybe he doesn’t get a show at all, maybe he gets CBS, maybe he gets Fox. But David Letterman is hosting the Tonight Show.
Yep, what do we actually get? Do we get the CBS version? Do we get a guy throwing pencils through a window? What do we get? And do you and I like it?
Yeah? And like I have, I said this to Bill Carter, I’ve said this to I think I said it to Zennaman and some of these other people too. I am so grateful that he didn’t get the Tonight Show. Obviously at the time, sometimes it’s one of those things, sometimes a blessing comes like a kick in the teeth. But I’m so glad that he didn’t get it, because again we’re talking about Carson here.
Carson was so powerful and he had evolved his place. He had worked the way into the seat that he was sitting and in the groove was so uniquely suited to him. He was so powerful that was his chair to the point where he had ownership, and Letterman walked literally into being able to leverage himself to move over to CBS. Got to take basically the blueprint of what Johnny had, the idea of owning his show, the idea of the next time slot, and his company being able to do that and continue it on for twenty some odd years. If he would have gotten the Tonight Show suddenly, ownership for the first time in well over a decade would have come back to NBC, which they were very excited to have.
And you think about the network executives and Dave’s relationship from Late Night at that point, how can Tate cantankerous? It was? Imagine what would have happened if he would have then moved into the big chair, with all these networks now trying to poke in prod that would have been I don’t know that we would have liked. I think personally if he would have been awarded the Tonight Show. From everything I’ve looked at and read, I don’t know that NBC was ready to bring the Tonight Show back to New York.
I feel like the way the Tea leaves have been written. I feel like Dave would have moved to Burbank. I feel like that’s what the what would have had to happen to me? New York City is a character in Dave’s show. I just I really think that that even.
The same factor the late show set is son of the late night set, And if you’re in Burdbank, you probably wind up with something that looks more like maybe not the purple j Leno set, but something more like that. Certainly lots of plants. Yeah, yeah, but all that stuff plays into it. I’ll just repeat myself. A guy in sneakers versus guy in an Armani suit, a guy sitting in front of a bridge silhouette versus a guy sitting on a set with a bunch of plants.
These things do matter, Yeah, they really do. And tone is everything. And Dave is interesting in that GQ interview too. Zach again, Zach is just incredible. I live vicariously.
I don’t know that I’m ever going to have the chance to have a conversation on camera with Dave, and I live vicariously through the people who do I know the questions I want to ask him, and the questions that these guys ask him that Neil Brennan and Zach just did. They’re asking him questions that I wouldn’t ask him, just out of respect. If I talked to him today, I’d want to talk about just current things that he sees. I wouldn’t want to go into the past because of the reputation of how he doesn’t like talking about that stuff. These guys of the Plum and the esteem that they’re able to talk about this stuff, And to me, Dave is a New Yorker, but he was talking about, Hey, Indianapolis, we’re here.
This is your hometown, right, And it’s interesting. One of the things I want to ask Dave is are you a New Yorker or are you a Hoser, a Hooser or is it a combination of both. Are you a new Hooser? It’s interesting to me that he’s doing press at all. Was the GQ to promote the Fast Channel or is that a coincidence?
No, they talked about it, and it was in November that they shot it, and they did talk about it near the end they did, so I assume it was to promote it. But also it feels like to me where they positioned Dave are in very specific spots. You think about Dax’s podcast that he was on, you think about Neil Brennan’s podcast The GQ. That’s a great to me. If Rolling Stone hadn’t gone through some of the I don’t know.
In my opinion, I don’t know, and maybe I’m way off on this. Rolling Stone isn’t what it was back in the day when Dave was gracing covers and doing a lot of these stories. With Rolling Stone, it’s a different it’s a different beast now, but GQ seems to still have that same I would say the same thing with Vanity Fair still seems to have that kind of tone and prestige. To me, that’s those are the spots that they’re putting Dave into to do press with occasional lighthearted appearances here and there. But to me, it was very classy the piece that they did.
There’s also with the legacy media, there’s a way you roll. So I’ve played in I’m doing I do a podcast in my basement. I’ve worked for Serier six M, I’ve been entertainment adjacent for thirty years. So if you do Rolling Stone GQ sixty minutes unless Mike Wallace is sitting around for you. You’re not going to get Dave, have you ever done crack?
That question is not going to happen. Letterman’s not going to do a random podcast because he doesn’t know that. I’m not going to say, Dave you ever do crack? Because what does he do with that question? He says no, and then the headline is David Letterman comments on whether he did crack, right, So they don’t want They don’t want to do that at all.
And I’m not at all suggesting Dave did crack. Let me be very clear, David Letton has never done crack. Point is he doesn’t know that. I’m not going to ask him that and an awkward question. Whereas the bigger brands, the legacy media, are more known, and it’s both sides.
You don’t even have to say, You’re not gonnask Dave about crack, right like you just know you invite somebody on your show. It’s a friendly environment. My point being a basement podcasters, we’re lesser known, so it’s just not going to happen. Now. I would imagine in your case, you probably do have enough Letterman whisperers who could tell him.
This guy’s are right. He’s not going to ask you if you let me change it up, eat Peter Butter and jelly for lunch. That’s why they haven’t had me killed up to this point. That’s exactly right. But celebrities have brands, and you control your brand, and you don’t want to overexpose if we look at this.
I reached out to you and went, oh my goodness, David Letterman actually did an interview. That’s why I reached out to you. And if he were on a podcast every third day, I wouldn’t have shot you a note. That’s right, And I don’t know that I’ve said this publicly. I’ve certainly talked about it with a few of my guests and a few people that are close to Dave, and it doesn’t seem to be It seems to be the shit.
Say the last person I talked to about this definitely inside but adjacent, but also very high up and inside, and he said, if you were in Dave’s camp, what would you have him do? He asked me that question. It was like literally throwing a softball down the plate to me, and it wasn’t recorded. But I’ll say this to you because I just to me, I know that you are certainly when you Joe Rogan is so big now we talk about Carson and who’s our current Carson. To me, there is no other answer than Joe Rogan.
The Rogan bump is crazy. You talk about Nikki Glaser a lot on your show. I believe a huge part of her ascension and people observing her talent cannot be understated. I want to be very clear about that. But the spotlight was certainly put on to her over the years by Rogan.
She has definitely been a recipient of the Rogan bump in many ways. Tony Hinchcliffe, same thing to me, the softball going down the plate. I’m like, if it’s me as a fan, and this is exactly how the person said to me, he goes, boy, you are answering that question as a fan. But to me, fan service in this day and age is not a bad thing. To me.
If you want to have a compelling, tying it up with a bow kind of a scenario, you have Dave go down to the Mothership. You have a Night at the Mothership in Austin, Texas, which is based on the Comedy Store, except let’s fix the comedy store and make it even better. If you look at the blueprint that Rogan has created at Mothership, the bar is called Mitzi’s and the dorm. They’ve taken that blueprint. Adam Egitt is there.
You take the you take Letterman there with guys like Drecent, guys like Altman, you get you bring out some of the people who are not doing as well health wise maybe and have one last little hurrah there a tribute to these things. You have Dave show up on Rogan’s podcast and then you do a my next guest on the stage of the Mothership with Joe Rogan, who like it or not, he is the And to me, that is, oh my gosh, what I love to see that. But I just don’t know if Rogan’s too polarizing because of exactly what you just said, how well Letterman’s positioned himself. I don’t know that whatever happened from a fan perspective, my god, that would be compelling. But so I love the idea of Dave going on Rogan.
I like listening to Rogan’s podcast for many reasons. I’d like to listen to podcasts as I’d drift off on Rogan’s audio. He doesn’t start screaming or get hyper. These are very deep conversations. Yep.
I am able, like I can with any conversation. I can take some of it and go I agree. I could take some and say I don’t agree. For example, if you said to me Patricks is better than a five story tower, I would vehemently disagree, but I wouldn’t like dislike you. I would just be like, oh, he’s wrong about that, and I would just move on with my day.
Yes, if you told me Dave went down there for three hours and twenty minutes and we got a long conversation that wasn’t so what was it like when you didn’t get the Tonight Show asked an answer, and he’s talked about it exactly. Rogan would ask him about He might ask him about drones, and then that tease it up for Letterman and be funny. And again, let me be clear, David Letterman has never done crack. But if Rogan not a guy in his basement, if Joe Rogan said do you ever do crack? That would get comedian Dave Letterman to snap too and answer that with a witty remark, and that wouldn’t be like an accusatory thing.
You would get the comedy there because it’s two people with a body of work who would have the respect of the language of comedy, and they are both celebrities, and it would just be different that if I randomly throughout that question, I would love that.
And then the flip side of that, I think would make a lot of sense.
You also talked about what should Dave do these days? And I think doing hits on Mullaney’s thing is actually perfect. It allows him to be elder statesman, but it allows him to appear as the Dave that you and I fell in love with. So for seven minutes he can be goofy eighties Dave and let Mulaney be goofy eighties Dave turned Mulaney and do the weird o late night show, and Dave can show in, show up and do seven minutes and be fun and then go back to hanging out. Yeah, that’s exactly I think mullany show and twelve more.
He’s got twelve more coming? Is that the Yeah, we don’t know when or where or what it’s going to be called, but yes, twelve more at some point, and that’s going to be an event, right because the first six six ‘ eight whatever it was, we’re very well received. So that raises the bar. So Netflix has to book a little harder because all eyes are going to be it on this time. Now it’s not an experiment.
Now it’s John Mulaney’s a late night show. Have Dave back, because you know what Dave’s gonna do, and he’ll do it well for eight minutes, and then he can hang out further down the couch, which is just a wonderful phrase to say. Right, that’s very Carson moved down the couch and it’s great. We’re all gonna watch it. Yeah, and I think, okay, so Dave was on the first hunk, why put him on the second hunt?
No, because the idea of Friends of the Show, like, we’ve got a little segment called Friends of that you are one. You’re gonna be invited him one day. We’ll bring in a couple of letterman writers or people or whatever, and then a couple of friends of the show and we all just have a We did our first one a couple of weeks ago, and it was fantastic. The idea that mulany is building friends of the show. And one of the friends of the show happens to be the best of the guy who is the best ever at it.
I think you know again, I don’t. I don’t go the King, I go the Godfather. Okay, fine, Johnny was don Vito, Dave is Michael. But to have him have these friends of the show come back on and have some fun again, that’s old Carson, like you just said, like when Frank and Dean would come on and they would do this, or Rickles would come on. That I believe is something that John would certainly want to add as an ingredient to what he’s doing.
In my mind anyway, Yeah, you’re handing in an entertainment show. So whether it’s me booking you, you booking me, we know what each other is going to do. We didn’t prep it all for this. You just said, do you want to come on? I said, yeah.
We didn’t talk at all. I didn’t ask you what we’re going to talk about. Obviously, David Letterman is a subject on your podcast. I knew would be all over the place, like I’m dragging you all over the place. Good, but thank you.
Please, do you know what I’m going to do? I know what you’re gonna do if we go in the other direction. So if you book David Letterman, you know what he’s going to do. If I ever had John Mulaney on my podcast, I’d ask him a question like what are you up to, and then shut up while he told a six minute story, because I know m’laney tells six minute stories, and you don’t step on them and ruin the flow. You let him get to the punchline.
And that’s back too. And I teach this at my podcasting companies. I teach this to host and it’s called Johnny Carson theory. And when you have a good guest, shut up and let them tell their story. My o mind.
We’re having some fun now and we’re making money today when all these commercial breaks. Look, it’s a long episode. And as I told you the top, if I don’t do a break every twenty minutes, one gets dropped on your head mid sentence, and that’s worse than this. Hey, let me make a couple bucks and it’ll be right back. Carson was so perfect at letting somebody go on about something and then would come back with that razor sharp response that would take It was like a bow.
It was like that person was assembling a present for them, and Johnny just put the bow on it and made the present look so much better. He was so good at making his guests shine, whether they were at the pinnacle of entertainment, like a Frank Sinatra or the gal from nebra wherever it was Nebraska or the Midwest who had the potato chip collection. He was just so good at building these little moments with very little and listening being one of the paramount skills.
And then we see in the GQ article where they brought up the abrasive David Le…
You might go on there to promote your movie and get attacked by this contankerous host who doesn’t want to do guests and just wants to throw stuff of a five story tower. He did evolve into a really good interviewer, but the early Dave almost had no time for celebrities and would rather have the wacky guest that showed up at one point fifteen. Yeah, and he was nervous. You watched them of the Morning Show clips and he’s nervous. And I love watching his interactions with Tom Snyder.
I really got into that earlier in the year we had Tom’s daughter on and so I went down that rabbit hole big time, and I’ve been down it many times before. But one of the things that Tom Snyder and is he would call people kid. And he used to call that to Dave. He say, oh, it’s okay kid. Watching Dave and Tom tok during the Morning Show era was very interesting because you could just see reverence but also nervousness that he had.
And then we have been able to This is the wonderful thing about these legacy the very very few legacy entertainers that we have seen, we’ve been able to see their evolution. Whereas now he turned he completely switched the volume switches. It used to be that the right equalizer was turned up all the way, the goofiness, the isoteric stuff, the observational with the twist stuff, and now it’s still there, but it’s turned down, and the interview was down. But now the interview he’s what’s Dave doing? Now he’s doing the Tom Snyder thing.
He’s doing the long form and making someone like me, who’s forty eight at the time it’s recording, give a damn about Billie Eilish and I do and my gateway I really I get it. I’m a music guy. I’m a huge music guy, and about I don’t know. A year and a half ago, I was listening to one of Billy’s songs. It just come on and instead of it just being in the background, I actually I get it.
I’m a fan. Yeah, I’m a huge fan of Billie Eilish now the way I was with some of the bands that I loved growing up, and the gateway to that was Dave introducing me to her. And it’s interesting watching that happen, and I’m so grateful he’s still doing I’m so grateful he views retirement completely different. I loved when Zach talked to him about that. Al Franken right before Dave retired, he came on for his last Senator.
Franken came on and said, before you go off and become an eccentric recluse. And I think we all thought that was gonna happen, and he’s done anything but that. And the Beard kind of screamed eccentric recluse. Talk about Tom Snyder. There’s a guy that if we had an alternate timeline with technology, Yep, the headline in nineteen eighty two would be Tom Snyder starting a podcast, and he would have been really good at it.
Let him talk to somebody for three twenty. Yep, yeah, oh good. That is a fantastic point. Because he took he would be able to take long form anywhere. Again, like you said, makes it a little makes it a little dangerous.
He wasn’t afraid to talk about anything. He was a big man. He was not afraid to talk to people, ask them the hard questions. Wasn’t afraid to say, hey, buddy. I disagree.
He wasn’t like Rogan in the sense where Rogan doesn’t he shows interest, he’s engaged, he’s very well read, but he doesn’t show a ton of emotion, where Tom brought that to the table. And I love that about him. I love the emotion that he would bring when he was talking to people. I think Cavitt would have been a great podcaster. Bob Costas would have been a great podcaster.
And they’re all doing shades of the same thing, long form deep interviews without a clock. It’s what people want. I understand the algorithm and what the algorithm wants to make technology sticky, to keep people looking at it and whatever and have them tune out. I understand that, but I think the reason that the biggest podcast in the world and many of the other runners up are long form. And Dave during the press conference when they brought tom over, one of the ways he introduced him was he said, I was one of those people that probably watched eighty to eighty five percent of all of the first run of The Tomorrow Show no VCRs back then.
He was so long form and radio of course, so your backgrounds radio as well. So yeah, I’m really glad that long form is I think, and not to get political, because I don’t have a dog in the fight. I’m Canadian, so all of my tidings and opinions have maple syrup flavor attached to them. I believe the last election had to do with long form versus sound bites down on the States. I really do believe that long form will win the day because it’s what people are craving.
People want this exchange where we are present and the conversation will win the day. It’s why stand up is so big. Right now, you have somebody who’s up on stage for an hour not being interrupted, and the beginning, middle and end of these presentations as leading to bucks it’s leading to commerce. It’s been a big year this year. We’re at the end of the year.
While we’re recording this thing, I want to ask you. I don’t know if you’ve actually released the list yet and when you’re going to release the list, but you constantly talk about on the Daily Comedy News what’s going to be in the top twenty, and I’m super curious how your list is forming. Is the year? Is the list done? Are you ready to go?
Is it close? The list starts on so this is the list of top comedy specials of the year. It starts on January first. I open up a new note and as I watch comedy specials, I rank them. So I was joking, somebody’s got one coming out like January eighth, and I’m like, that’s going to be the number one special of the year at that point, and then the next one is either higher or lower.
And I work the specials and I’m going to record it after Ronnie Ching comes out, because Jason Zinnemann from The New York Times, he has that as the number one special of the year. So if he’s got it at number one, I’m pretty confident it’s got to be in my Top twenty. But back to Zinnaman. So I’ve been talking about this a little bit. Yeap.
Now before I get letters, everybody, listen to what I’m saying. Before I get letters. Our audience actually throw darts. They don’t send letters. Our audience throws darts.
So anyway, continue, all right, everybody, I’ll say something and I’ll ramble for a second to let you think about it. Who is the comedian of the year? Everybody, Okay, who’s the comedian of the year. Now, I’ll let everybody think about that on all ramble for a second. I could make a case for Joe Rogan.
Some people think he helped win the election. I can make a case for Tony Hingecliff. Some people thought he had cost someone the election and killed. Tony’s pretty popular. I can make a case for Nate Brigetzi, who has a Christmas special out and a Netflix special December twenty fourth, before the end of the year, and everybody loves him and he sells out arenas.
So Jason Zenneman named Nikki Glaser. And this is where I fear the letters that, oh, you just ate women, and I don’t have two daughters. NICKI killed at The Roast, But I don’t think her. I don’t think her HBO special. The critics seem to like it, but I don’t see that it had a big impact.
I didn’t see buzz on it. Even the week after her special came out, people were talking about her on The Roast and she had probably the set of the year at the Roast. Yeah, and The Roast is probably going to be number one on my list, and I’ve been open about that unless Chang knocks it off. I have things like a Tell or way up there. But The Roast was just an amazing television anyway.
So Zennyman, who has Rodnie Chang as number one, maybe I won’t agree with him because he gave Nikki Glaser Comedian of the Year. As I’ve said on my show, Jason Zinneman knows more about comedy than I do. I dip my head in bow. To the supremacy of Zinnemann. Absolutely one hundred, but I personally am not feeling it.
And I would personally put Nate as number one this year. Oh and Malany is definitely in the conversation as well. Malaysia should be in the conversation. Gaffigan should be in the conversation. Yep.
Anyway, that was three minutes of me saying that I may not agree with Ronny Chieng. Why this is why you are a friend of the show. This is this. I love hearing your opinion on this stuff and being able to like the one thing about Bergazi. Okay, So when you say the comedian of the year, it’s such a subjective.
It’s a subjective topic anyway, because if you’re picking Glazer, you’re picking Hinchcliff. You’ve got people who have polarized. They’ve done what some of the comedians in the past that would have been called controversial in the eighties and nineties, there are controversial comedians that kind of came along. Was Sam Kinnison in his at the zenith of his career? Was he the comedian of the year?
If he was, and he very well may have been. At the height of when Kinnison was doing what he was doing, he was dividing a lot of people. He was not the family comedian. He was not the person that the whole family would sit around and watch or listen to a record of. And Tony and Nicky would certainly be in that category.
Where’s he got a guy like Nate who is literally for the whole family, but can kill just as hard. It’s like Norm MacDonald going on Communitians and cars getting coffee, actually saying to Jerry, you know what, being clean is the harder discipline. Now, I personally I love Jerry, always have. Norm MacDonald has such a special place in my heart. Do I let my six year old granddaughter watch Norm?
No? Not unless he’s on Letterman then maybe. So. I like Nate. I can see why you would say Nate, oh my gosh.
I think the worldwide appeal that he has. I think the I watched him that week when the roast happened. I was in La and I saw David Letterman interview Nate Bergazzi at the Ricardo Montabon Theater, which was laced with rich Corinthian leather by the way, and Nate is just He’s one of these guys who you can tell is so dedicated to his craft, partially because of the things he could say but doesn’t say because he wants to stay in that lane. He’s an extremely talented and the heart that he has. I can totally see why you’d say, Nate, that is a That’s a great answer for me.
For me, it’s probably Neil Brennan. Neil Brennan Special this year. I absolutely loved that special and I love what Neil is doing. He’s probably my personal favorite. But when you’re gonna go and say, Okay, who’s the community of the Year, Nate Bergazzi, I think is a phenomenal answer, that’s it.
And like you say, this is all subjective, Like I’m not looking to arm wrestle Jason Zinnemanner, You’re wrong, Nate. Neil Brennan’s not the Comedia of the It’s all subjective. Whatever you found funny, whatever somebody found funny, it’s all good. It’s just a list. I’m just pre taped an episode because I don’t want to work Christmas Day.
That’s all. This is love that you have the roastes number one, because would people necessarily gravitate to that towards a comedy special? And here it is something that that gives Michael j and Colin Joe’s a shot at the title with the show that they’re doing highlighting other comedians, which I love that the throwback kind of a deal where they’re showcasing like Rodney used to do back in the day. It’s a good. But one thing that I think that all of us will probably agree with it is a very good time to be a fan of comedy.
Oh yeah, distribution, ability to see people that we have all these Netflix specials, now Hulu’s jumped in, you have the HBO specials. Anyone can sell release on YouTube. And this is why I always advise my audience if you go to a comedy festival, go to the showcase shows, go to the local small club slash bar where they have six comics doing sets. Don’t go see Chris Rock. Do I like Chris Rock?
Yes? I at the Las Vegas Comedy Festival one time. I saw Seinfeld and Rock on back to back nights, and Seinfeld is justifiably at the top of his game and Rock was a very close number two. But if I went to I don’t know, the Toronto Comedy Festival, I’m not going to go see Chris Rock because I know what he can do and I can watch him on Netflix. I’ll go see ten people I’ve never heard of.
I get much more out of that discovering comedy because the big acts. Nate will come to your house on Christmas Eve. You don’t have to go see him anymore. And I’m not trying to not sell tickets for people. Don’t worry Nate and Jerry and Jim and they’re all going to sell out very well.
But for comedy fans, go see a smaller show. You never know who you’re going to see. I remember Chicago Comedy Festival. It was a rainy night and we were at it zanies and a guy named Hannibal Barrus got up and crashed, and I was like, oh, this is great. You think about how the phenomenon that has killed Tony and for these overnight successes, right, we all know that’s a bunch of bs that most of the time it’s not an overnight success.
There are people who have been busting their butt for so long in the small clubs and kill Tony who people would go see it, or they would watch it or listen to it, and they would say, this is the funniest thing that’s out there right now. And seventy five people are a part of it. Brian Redman and those guys. You got to whether you like them the concept whatever or don’t, you cannot deny the success that they’ve become. And it started as you’re talking about one of these showcase things, and it’s so much fun.
Just like a band when you discover the band that’s the next Beec’s thing before they become the next big thing. It’s a great feeling. Oh that’s great advice. You’re like a wealth of knowledge when it comes to the stuff. You’ve been doing this for a while.
Stop stop. I love kill Tony. I understand the comedy snobbery of it’s just a minute, and a minute is not a tight five, a tight eight, not an hour. I get it. I get it.
Kill Tony is a show. I’m a civilian. I just want to sit down and listen to something, watch something and be entertained. Somebody gets up for a minute. They’re funny.
Sometimes more often than not, they’re not. Tony comes in with a sleigh, rips them to shreds. We all laugh. One of the funniest of the year was Shane Gillis coming by in character as Trump and co hosting the show as Trump. Oh my goodness, was that hilarious?
Oh so good, so good, Shane Gillis there, you go. Okay, So we mentioned a whole bunch of killers here who were in the conversation. There’s a guy right there you talk about a guy who’s dealt with adversity, the public perception adversity in a way that just Chappelle same thing. People are apparently up in arms and just said, no, I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing. I’m gonna let my voice be heard.
And Shane gillis right now just a phenomenal talent. And yeah, that night where he came out as Donald Trump was fantastic. And even Lauren Michaels admitted he blew it and count out to NBC when they didn’t want Shane on the cast of SNL. You wish he had. Shane, here’s another reason why I love your show so much.
What I read one of the quotes, because I follow this stuff all the time and I see the stuff online and recently though, Lauren, he did the same thing. In my mind that what he did with Norm McDonald a little bit, he passed the buck over to the network and you caught it too, and you talked about it on your show. I love that you catch some of these things and throw that out there because he blamed it on NBC with Shane gillis. My old mentor, guy named David Bernstein taught me this many years ago. He was I was the assistant program director w or New York.
Dave was the program director, and he was teaching me the concept of Steinberner meaning George Steinberner. So anybody who is familiar with eighties letterman knows who George Steinberner is. I want to have to explain. And he said to me, you know, sometimes George calls you up and go, hey, I signed a player and he’s now the left fielder, and your job as the manager is to make that work.
And then you can go back to your office and you can throw a rock against the …
But your job as the manager, you’re going to play this guy because the owner said so, even if you’re Lorne Michaels. Sometimes you got to play along with the network. We all have capital that we can use. Is this battle you want to fight or not? So is Lauren going to use his capital to defend a guy that had been announced on the cast two days earlier and take on the network for that as opposed to say, I don’t want to name names.
If somebody on the current cast did something yep, and I don’t know what they would have done, and ABC was like, oh, we should get rid of so and so. Maybe Lauren goes to bat for somebody who’s been on the show for several years, a little more than using the political capital against all Right, we announced this guy, nobody knows who he is. Whatever, We’ll just pick somebody else to be in the cast. Whatever. It wasn’t a big deal.
Shane Gillis wasn’t yet Shane Gillis. Yeah, Yeah, that’s a very good point. That’s where it differs from norm. This is the current this is the current anchor of Weekend Update, and this is happening where Shane at that time. Yeah, so that’s a very good point.
And let me drop another break in here, be right back with more with Mike Chishom on The Letterman Podcast.
Let’s talk about Satura in life here for a second, because everybody seems to…
That is a recurring joke on my show, inspired by Letterman style humor. Did you hear SNL is turning fifty? Yeah? I did hear something. I still think about SNL forty.
I thought SNL forty was one of the greatest, even though it was some people say how long it was, Yeah, guess what, it’s forty years and it should be and let’s highlight everybody before they start passing on. And in that ten years a lot have So I will always voraciously defend SNL forty, but boy, SNL fifty has a lot to live up to because of that. And I can remember in high school when the SNL fifteen anniversary, the Prime Time fifteen anniversary happened, and how much I loved it, and how being just in high school and seeing some of the stuff from the Chris Guest Marty Short era that I hadn’t seen before because there were no VCRs at that point as an elementary school, and I didn’t My cast was the day in the Carvey cast. So seeing some of this stuff and these anniversary shows were incredible. And they’ve just gotten bigger and bigger and bigger.
SNL fifty is gonna be. It’s February, right comes up in February. I think I think it’s February that it’s coming out. And apparently they’re inviting everybody back again. Apparently they’re gonna do the same thing that they’ve done in the past.
What a high wire act Michael’s and company have. So I have questions for you. Let’s work work this through. Let’s start with the credits. Do you have Daryl Hammond do Don Pardo and announce two hundred names?
Like, how do you even handle the credits? How do you handle that? Who gets to say live from New York? Do you pick? Do you go across the eras so it’s somebody from the original cast and Eddie Murphy and Will Ferrell and Tina or somebody and Bowen Yang?
Like how do you handle that? Who gets to say it? Like? Where do you give the honor to one person? Do two hundred people come out on the stage and say?
Like, how do you even produce that show? It’s one thing to be like, Okay, Gary Krueger stand in the back. That’s fine, and we understand that part of it. But yeah, what a show that’s going to be and an absolute must watch. Absolutely, And Lauren, whether you don’t like, I think SNL is suffering from a little bit of what’s going on in the culture here.
I’ve jokingly called again the American election the bud Light election. Where you’ve got this sort of just like with bud Light, you’ve got a sort of silent majority that sits there and when something happens, they react. I think SNL has been trying to figure out its tone as to what should we be putting out there, and I think this season, because of me, you’re talking, it’s SNL fifty and the ratings are at a place where it’s okay, is the tone exactly what everyone is looking for because the ratings have been soft. I don’t think SNL fifty is going to be soft, by the way, and I don’t think SNL fifty is going to have a political tone or leaning. I think it’s going to be a historical look, which is why I think it’s going to be such an almost a refreshing show because it’s not going to be about social commentary in any way.
And I think that might be something that they’re wrestling with right now. I think that might be I didn’t want to call it a growing pin because they’re grown, but it might be a little bit of a struggle that they’re having right now. Yeah, I have found this season weird. So season forty nine was not good, ye, Season fifty has leaned into this weirdness I’m finding now again I’m a podcaster of the basement and LORDE. Michaels is Lord Michaels.
So again I bend the knee. Loren, you clearly know what you’re doing and I don’t, yep. But as a watcher, yeah, as the audience, and I think the audience has a this is why podcasting has blown up. The audience gets to speak back sometimes. What is the point in season fifty of Dana Carvey opening the show as.
The church lady? What is the point of that? He wasn’t the guest host, It was just and Dana Carvey’s sort of on the cast? Now, what is the point of having Jim Gaffigan play Governor Wallas? Was Jim Gaffigan good at it?
Absolutely? But is that such a complicated impression that nobody on the current cast could take that on? Like, I don’t understand the creative choices of not using the current cast because you’re not building stars. So a year from now it’s going to be SNL fifty one. Do you still have jostin Cha?
Do you still have Bowen Yang? And if you don’t have those guys, you’re in a rebuild year off the big celebration that could get ugly really quick. Yep. The breakout star next one might possibly perhaps be Marcelo Hernandez, but I also feel like he does a one note character and YE shows. Up that Marcelo’s funny.
But let’s see if it, if he can evolve or whatever else. What Sherman’s my girl? I love her. I think Sarah Sherman is fantastic, but so let’s put her in some sketches. Yeah, exactly.
You don’t want The last thing you want is to be on that show. Is that is the Chris Rock there for three or four years or whatever. And I love Chris when he was on the show. But then he goes and does the HBO thing. He does.
What was his big special? I was gonna say, row, that’s Eddie Murphy and Chris Rocks was bring the paint. Was to bring the paint. It was bigger and blacker. Yeah, and he leaves SNL and suddenly, oh my god, look at the guy.
And you don’t want to if you’re producing that show, you don’t want to have too many of those people. You want those people to pop like Eddie Murphy did while we are actually on the show. But yeah, it’s a fantastic time to be looking at all this stuff. Gosh, you and I could do this effortlessly, and I love that what happened we talked about what were some other things that we. Oh, we haven’t talked about David Letterman.
Isn’t this a David Letterman podcast? It was not. I have you ever seen a show? You would like it? I’ll check it out.
I’ll check it out. I said, I gotta go get a Samsung TV. Now. I wonder if because on the YouTube channel, I’ve had a couple of people reach out to me and say, hey, it seems like on YouTube they did this experiment a couple months ago. Or if you looked at the Letterman YouTube channel, there was a live tab and you could just click it and it was going through a lot of these clips, many of which hadn’t gone on.
I wonder if that was a test pattern or a test balloon. I should say for the Fast channel. It’s gonna be interesting to see if they put those back on YouTube again. I don’t know if it’s an exclusive thing with Samsung. I don’t know if some of these other could Roku now also say oh, Samsung did it we’re gonna sign a deal.
I don’t know if it’s exclusive. I didn’t see that word in any of the press releases this week, did you now? I didn’t you know that they gave it channel one thousand. Yeah, says something to me. I know when I was at Serious, what channel number you would get would be a massive discussion.
You have no idea what a big discussion is what channel number you get? Really? Notice, Howard is channel one hundred. One hundred and one to one Howard? Yeah, And I know that as a Canadian that doesn’t even have Serious and I know that.
Yeah, so that was a discussion as opposed to what’s the next available channel? Okay, Howard one thirty four? Yeah, so that was a thing. So that it’s channel one thousand makes me think that it’s some sort of showcase for the Samsung TV product. So I have a Samsung TV.
There’s a button on the remote that will take it to those channels. The only time I ever use it is when I accidentally hit the wrong button and that comes on and then I’m an old man. It takes me half an hour to figure how to get out of it. PlayStation damn it yeah, And last night I was trying to get to the Letterman channel and I got to it and I had trouble getting out of it. But they did have a showcased in their big advertising carousel, So maybe they’re trying to draw more attention to using those service because there is money in advertising.
I don’t know who sells for them, but as I tell my college students and my producers, the answer is always money, right. Yeah, I do agree with you that there’s a legacy point to this, because I’ve dealt with people in the Hope of State, the Cavita State, and those two cases. There are definitely legacy parts of let’s keep the name out of the carson A State as well. Yeahsolutely absolutely. And you and I’ve talked to all the same people we are referring to here, and it’s not a secret.
I’m not like, oh, don’t tell anyone who we were, but that’s not saying nobody knows who that is. We’ve talked to those guys. So I think there’s a legacy play here. But fast channels, you can’t skip the ads, so let’s make some money. I don’t know, but that it’s Channel one thousand isn’t an accident.
Yeah, I agree. I totally agree with that also, But before we finish too, and I know it’s an interesting kind of seguey back, but you think about Legacy, who also has a fast Channel as Conan O’Brien, he was there before hosting the Oscars this year. Really excited about that. But at the same time, that guy is he’s having a tough week, and I just want to throw a shout out to Conan O’Brien right now. I can’t even imagine what he’s going through, losing his parents this week and within days of each other, and I’m really glad that he’s hosting the Oscars.
I love Conan. I’ve always loved Conan unabashed lee, and I think it seems right to me that he’s going to host the Oscars. So we want to throw love out to him very much. So I know both of us feel that way. But Conan hosting the Oscars.
I love that Kimmel did it. I think it’s a car I love that Letterman did it, of course, unnaturally, love that Dave only did it once. Even though people say it was a disaster, it was not. It was actually really good. Then they started immediately creating the narrative that it was a disaster, which I think is charming and very Dave.
But I believe Conan. This is long overdue. He killed it at the Emmys before. I’m excited about Conan doing the Oscars. How about you?
Yeah, because unlike Dave, where it’s Dave’s unnatural element, Conan will put on a straw hat and perform at a live version of Mono Rail became the Sensen sketch and walk around and sing and dance, and if he’s awkward singing and dancing, doesn’t care, and he will do that. So I think as a performer he’ll do really well. I think the industry likes him. There aren’t anti Conan people. He’s someone that people root for.
He’s charming, He’s been around for thirty years.
And then after the first fifteen minutes, unless something wacky happens invo…
Yeah, Kim Oll a couple of years ago came out and did a Trump joke on the fly, which was clearly written during the show. I’ll be very interested to see if Conan’s sitting there with Smigel and somehow, some way they can figure out a way to add and not necessarily political necessary, but something that would be very current in that moment and spontaneity which Conan is of course very good at. If you watch him in front of some of these crowd that he would perform. He he’d go to Comic Con every year and do a show there, and the spontaneity that would happen there obviously also very let him and ask let him and used to add spotan eighty to his programs. It would be very cool to add some of that to what could be a very dull show.
I’ve loved episodes of the Oscars. I have loathed episodes of the Oscars. I believe that the DAC is stacked for this to be a love. I would caution Conan and smile. I come at this.
I come at this as a strategist, not from a political angle. If we look at the recent election cycle, yep, factually Trump won. Yep, that’s just a fact. I may like him, you may like him, you may not. So somebody out there is a fan of Trump, generally profiling the stereotypical Hollywood celebrity, the stereotypical Hollywood celebrity.
I think if you walk down the street, most people would be like, oh, they’re Democrats. Okay, fine, Yes, So if you on the fly start making Trump jokes during the Oscars, yes, you’re playing to the room. You will kill in the room. Yeah, but do you kill at home?
And then my question is a strategist on a celebration of the Academy Awards, …
Yeah? And that’s where I was talking about. I wasn’t talking about the topic so much. I was more I just really was impressed with when Kimmel came out and it was a it was something that was done kind of real time because he was responding to something that was happening in real time and you could tell it was spontaneous. And that’s more the spirit of what I’m talking about, exactly.
If it’s something about one of the biggest stars in the audience and something they’re wearing or something they’re doing, something that you can tell wasn’t canned. And Conan is very good at that, and I hope he does that when he does host the Oscars. That’s gonna be a lot of fun. I hope he’s parted at SSNL fifty as well. By the way, Yeah, when I say make a joke about Tom Cruse too, I don’t me say make a mean joke about Tom Cruise.
You’ll make a joke about his love of doing stunts, or how are you so handsome at sixty one sixty two? Or you have great hair? Or I love your smile. You make that kind of joke. This is not a roast.
This is not Ricky Gervai’s the Golden Globes. This is the Academy Awards. Go down the middle. Here are some films we all liked. Let’s celebrate them, Let’s do some light jokes.
Let’s get out of here. Yeah, and I love that we can do this, but maybe we finish on Nicki. I’m excited Nicki is hosting the Golden Globes. I hope that they let Nikki be Nicky the way they used to let Ricky be Ricky. That is what my hope is.
Watching the commercials for it and the promos for it, I’m just shaking my head, going, oh, I feel like they’re putting Nicki in a cage. I hope that they don’t do that for the actual broadcast, because the Golden Globes can be one of those shows that steals the show when it comes to awards, award banquets as well. I think a very big key there is the room. So she’s been doing comedy on Thursday night football to buy football announcers, and she sounds like she’s bombing. Whether or not the writing is good or she’s delivering it, she sounds like she’s bombing.
So back to my friend Joe Cooi. I’m not his friend, but back to Joe Cooy. In the recurring bit, Joe Koy told a joke that’s pretty good. The only difference between the NFL and the Golden Globes is we have fewer pictures of Taylor Swift. That’s the joke.
And then they cut to Taylor, who either could have went and I’m making for those listening on audio, I’m smiling and holding up a drake. She could have done this. Instead, she gave a stoneface and killed the room. Taylor Swift killed the room. Swifty’s come at me.
Taylor Swift killed the room. So if NICKI gets up there, and I’ve read some interviews with her, she is aware that America doesn’t know who she is, so she’s got to win America over quickly. She’s aware that she’s not one of them Hollywinterers, yep, so she’s got to win them over. So if she tells a joke and it lands and the room is loose and she’s getting laughs, I think she can crush. But if she runs into an audience like the Thursday night football crowd, it could be a challenge for the same reason it was a challenge for Joe.
Yeah, I think she’s gonna crush. Oh. I love hearing you say that. It gives me the goosebumps. I hope she does.
I hope it’s an elevation for her. I really do. Yes, I’m a Nikki Glaser fan. And when you know her story again, go back if you listen to any of the time she’s been on some of these shows, Rogan, I mean one of them. Her story is unbelievable, and to see her where she is now, it’s a lot of fun.
I’m a big fan of that. I’m a big fan of you. I’m really grateful that we’ve made this connection, and I hope that our paths cross more and more. I know they’re certainly going to I hope that also that we’re coming up to the ten year anniversary of Dave calling it quits on Late Show. That’s happening within the next six months.
The ten year anniversary is going to be happening. We’re doing some special stuff on this show to commemorate that. And again, you’re a friend of the show. So thank you so so much for coming on here again. John.
I appreciate that you’re in my life. Brother. Yeah, thanks for having me on again. Like I told you, I’ll be your Tony Randall. Anytime somebody cancels hit me up.
It’s going to be a lot more than that, although that is charming nonetheless, of course this has been great Daily Comedy News and not okay, hold on Daily Comedy News, but also you’ve got the Good News podcast as well, and the meditation one is what I love what you’re doing. You got your little podcast network there, deep podcast network.
Let’s talk about that and promote that a little bit too.
Sure, so Daily Comedy News, I think we’ve covered what I might be doing on that one. I also host one called five Good News Stories. Yes, it’s inspired by what Krasinski did during the pandemic and also inspired by it was my wife’s idea. So it’s a short show. I do five new stories that are all good news or smile stories, or as we used to call them in radio, kicker stories.
So I’m not going to tell you about the horrible murder. I’m going to tell you about the wacky Guinness record and the dog that came home from four thousand miles away, and what the scientists are up to. And the format behind the scenes is the first and fifth story tend to be quirky, some science in the middle. I limited to one. I really could every episode could be and another dog found its way home, and then this other dog.
So I try to do one animal story, maybe one science, two quirky ones, and then whatever fits my mood. So number five, five good news stories is the name of that show. Off best. Yeah, we have all five Minutes of Gratitude, which is my Wednesday Friday and just a quick show. I don’t host that one, but my company produces it.
Five minutes of Gratitude and just get up and think about like, all right, things are okay, here’s something to be thoughtful about, and then go about your day. My men’s mental wellness podcast that I host very quickly, a couple of themes came up. We’re one hundred and I forget how many episodes, well over one hundred episodes in that thing, and a few themes came up with guys who are talking about their mental wellness and sometimes struggles and victories and all that sort of stuff. And one of the themes that very quickly came up is that the antidote for many of these things that we go through is anxiety and things like that is gratefulness. And the thing I love about your podcast unlike this one, really short, really sweet, You get the points immediately, and it really does affect the way that you’re viewing the day.
And I love that, whether it is talking about comedy, whether it is hearing these good news stories, because there’s a lot of good that goes on the world. Much of it, unfortunately, just doesn’t get publicize the way that it probably should, and gratefulness is a huge one. I wanted to ask you what was the so you guys produce it, what was the genesis? Where did it come from? I’ve wanted to ask you that for the last month.
The Gratitude podcast. Yeah, yeah, real answer, Yeah, we’re podcast business, yep. Five Good News Stories was doing really well, and we brainstormed and said, what else could we do that people might like? And candidly, we could make some money doing Sure, it’s the podcast business. Yep.
Like I tell my audience daily coming news. Look, I like talking about comedy. It’s fun. I also run commercials and it pays my mortgage. It’s that.
That’s why I do the show. Otherwise I would just email you and be like, hey, did you watch that? And get that out and get it out of my system. But yeah, we were just five Good News Stories started to do really well and we thought, okay, what’s been the same lane that we could do? And that’s where that came from.
Oh, there we go, and it’s awesome. It’s water in the desert for a lot of people, and I just I’m really excited and I’m grateful for your gratefulness podcast. We love it. I’ve talked about the same trust promotion. I would, oh would love to do that.
To do it well, email we won’t bore the listeners. Yeah, we’ll do that. I just appreciate you very much, thanks for coming on the Letterman podcast, and thank you for doing everything that you do. Thank you Mike Chisholm, host of The Letterman Podcast. Thank you so much for having me on.
That was a lot of fun to record, but we didn’t plan it at all. And at the end he hit stopped and I’m like, how long did we go? Like an hour and a half? And yes, an hour and a half. Anyway, happy to your normal episode tomorrow, See you then,