Daily Comedy News Podcast Transcripts

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Featured: Jason Zinoman, Bill Burr, Mark Normand, Kevin Hart, Sebastian Maniscalco, Dave Chappelle, Luis C.K., Gabriel Iglesias, Jimmy Carr, Whitney Cummings, Tom Segura, Andrew Schulz, Jim Jeffries, Jessica Kirson, Tim Dillon, Pete Davidson

What’s in This Episode

• Riyadh Comedy Festival and ethical concerns
• Saudi Arabia’s entertainment PR campaign
• Comedian participation in controversial festivals
• Free speech issues and Saudi government criticism
• Jamal Khashoggi and Saudi Arabia’s human rights record
• Tim Dillon’s removal from Riyadh festival lineup

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

Caloroga Shark Media, and there are another bonus episode. My guest is Jason Zenniman, friend of the show from the New York Times. Jason is critic at large for the Culture section of The New York Times. If you listen to this podcast, you hear me regularly cite him. I’m gonna flip overrom my cards here.

Of all the podcasts I’ve done over the last seven years, I think this is my favorite episode, and I said it to Jason at the end of the interview. We just had a fantastic discussion, respectful, deep dive, serious issues, disagreed as friends do. I just want to be clear, we both had a big smile on our face throughout the entire thing. Everything here is friendly, even if sometimes we get into a little jousting. But this was a fantastic, smart interview.

As I host this podcast, and you know, answer the question, well, why do you thank you hosted? You’ve heard me talk about what my resume is, and I always say I know more about comedy than most people. But the people that know more about it than I do know a lot more about it. And I will put Jason in that camp. I respect all his opinions, as you’ll hear me say during the interview, and I’ve said in the past he always helps me sort my feelings about things.

So in this discussion we sure get into the kimmel of it all. We get into some other comedy topics at the end, like Gianmarco Soresi. But I asked him first hear about the comedy Festival that maybe, like a lot of things, I’m the Ralph Kiner of comedy. I apparently mispronounced a lot of things. But let’s jump in.

Hey everybody, it’s friend of the show. Jason’s innoment from The New York Times, how you been tired? Good time to run a Daily Comedy News podcast. You’ve picked the right line of work. It’s been incredible.

I’ve been putting out two three a day, and I just I’ve learned. Yesterday I spoke with Mark Malkoff from Inside late night, and I deliberately time stamped it because my spidey sense was telling me that the news would change five times, and it did before I even could publish the darn thing. So I just want to let everyone know Jason and I are speaking on Tuesday at around ten thirty a m. So if we say something, you’re like, how cub and I are responding to the thing. That’s why so much going on.

We’ll get into the kimmel of it all, but that you know that new story has changed. Even since I booked you, you have helped me in the past sort my feelings. And I don’t know how I feel about the Rio Odd Comedy Festival. I know I’m making crinkly face, and usually when I make crinkly face, something is troubling me. But to catch the audience up, there’s a big festival starting on Friday.

Some big names performing at the Riyadh Comedy Festival, including Bill Burr, Mark Norman, Kevin hort Sebastian Manascalco, Dave Chappelle, Luis ci K, Gave Iglesias, Jimmy Carr, Whnney Cummings, Tom Sigora, Andrew Schiltz, and Jim Jeffries. Normally I wouldn’t qualify somebody with their sexuality, but it is interesting to me that Jessica Curson is performing there. Tim Dillon was booked there and was uninvited, and you know the Pete Davidson is appearing there and his father notably killed on nine to eleven. I don’t know how I feel about this thing. I like a good paycheck and I’m trying to buy a property up at a lake.

So I’ve been joking with my business partner that right now, you know, Daily Comedy News is brought to you by insert horrible joke here. So I don’t want to be holier than now. You know how much Dylan money? How much money were you offered to go and podcast at the Rahadi Comedy Festival. Oh wait, you’re pronouncing it better than me.

Say that again. Well, I’m proud of wrong. I’m sure. I’m sure that at the I’ll be there. How the it is?

It Riyadh? That’s how I say it. But I get half the comedian names wrong. So what do I know? Saudi?

Let’s all, It’s called Saudi. Yeah, you know? So what is my price? I don’t know? And I think that’s what I’m struggling with, is the first of all, should you even have a price?

Is it wrong that the comedians are going? There is a paycheck? A paycheck? This is I’m struggling with this. And I saw you wrote a piece about it.

You wrote that the optics were never great, but they’re and I’m paraphrasing. They’re very interesting now in light of everybody being a free speech warrior over the weekend. Yeah, the optics were never were never I mean, the optics are never great. But now that although you know, and now that free speech is the big issue that we’re grappling with, now they look even worse. At the same time, it’s sort of like, who I imagine what they could claim or the comedians doing this.

And I’m also not overly righteous about I think there’s these are there. It depends what you do. Part One thing is interesting is what they do once they’re there. But it’s also you know this, I would say, what’s happened in our country over the past you know, weeks and months could make some people say, who are we to talk the UH? And but I mean, of course the I mean for me, you know, the bones saw of a journalist who disagreed with him, you know, the Washington Post writer kashowge by the same people who are sponsoring this festival, would be a deal breaker for me to show up at this festival.

The they’re obviously the UH. These people are being offered huge amounts of money, and the broader context here is that the Saudi government has been doing a kind of full court press, not just with comedians, but with athletes and golfing events, sporting events. There’s all sorts of people there and they’re making solved. You know, there’s some movements that they’re starting to be you know, shipt a little bit in their policies. And so this is just an elaborate pr campaign where there is trying to use American popular culture and entertainment to you know, make people think of them not as the place where they chop up people who criticize the government and cracked down on minorities and limit women’s free speech, but as the new Saudi Arabia.

And so if you were offered a million dollars, I know Tim Dillon was offered, what he said, three hundred and seventy five thousand dollars for one show, one night, and I think he’s on the low end. So if you were offered one million dollars to go, would you do it? If you if you went and you criticized the Saudi government when you were there, would that change the calculus. I know you want some guidance from me, but I’m afraid I might just give you more anguish and confusion. But I think I think it’s I say I wouldn’t do it, but I’m not want to judge.

That’s a lot of money. Yeah, so several thoughts there at a personal level. When this was first announced, if they had come to me and said, hey, I heard you have this really awesome podcast, do you want to come cover it, I would have said yes and not thought about it. As I’ve gotten deeper into the story and talked about some of the news threads and pulling on those, I think I would be afraid to go now, even taking the money out of it. And I don’t know if that’s spic about the location personally, when I was at Sirius and million years ago when the Olympics were in China, there was light talk of us doing some radio work over there, and people were afraid to go to China.

And my attitude twenty years ago was I’ll go. They’re not going to lock me up. I’ll go. I’ll produce it. That’d be great.

You know, I get to go to China on your dime, that’d be awesome. As I continue to cover this as a story, I don’t you know, I don’t know, like, yeah, you’re some stupid podcaster who cares, or you know, when somebody look at me, you know, with a sad face. I don’t know if I would be comfortable going in terms of just pure finances of here’s a check, want to cover this comedy festival. You know, I’ll go to the Vancouver Comedy Festival. Yeah.

I like money, of course I like money. A separate story, I know, maybe like third party, but I know of somebody who was asked to work at I live golf event and the paycheck was crazy, and I said, you know what, hold your nose. That’s life changing money and you can pay off, you know, your college bills and whatever. So I’m not taking the moral high ground, but I’m finding I think you nailed it as usual. The optics are just interesting.

I don’t know what to do with this. I’m really struggling with what’s really fascinating about it is it’s so related to what we’re going through. Because on one level, you know this, there’s the government policies and the corporate actors who are being spineless in this country about standing up for speech or standing up for their artists. But there’s another level, and I know a little bit of this. You know, I’m the child of a foreign service officer.

You know I grew up someone in a qual and poor right next to Singapore, which has very different attitude towards free speech that we do. You know, I have Vietnamese members my family. There’s all sorts of attitudes about government censorship and crack downs are very different. That doesn’t mean I don’t go to the I haven’t gone to these places, but it makes you think, and we’re now here, what about from the point of view of the artist, of the individual, of the ordinary person who’s trying to get by is trying to figure out that do you try to play within the rules that set? Do you play along?

Do you cut a deal or do you push back? Do you fight? Do you fight? Do you draw a line? You know where do if you draw a line?

Where do you draw a line? These were once academic questions. They’re no longer academic questions. If you work for a law firm in this country that cut a deal with Trump, what are you going to do? If you work for a university that just took away research for cancer, are you going to put pressure on your administration?

Are you going to write a letter? Are you going to say nothing? Are you going to try to do what you can in a small way?

And now our little silly world of comedy, we have this great you know, the pi…

You have late night hosts. All right, Clearly there is an attack, you know, a government led attack against late night that is you know, I would argue unprecedented. You know, there obviously have been previous late night shows that have been you know, in Broiland controversy, but this is something new. And what do you do? Do you push back?

Do you do you criticize your bosses on air and fear getting taken off? Do you try to play along? Do you try to make your show more a political These are real question. We’re in it now and so this looking at what these guys trying to figure out with the Saudi Festival, it’s like a microcosm for what’s going on in our country. Yeah.

And I’ve worked at places like Serious where the we’re all sorts of radio stations that covered some things, and there might be a radio station that was not aligned with your personal views. Do you just not work there? Do you take the paycheck? I’m also looking at the individual artists. You know, if you’re Sebastian Manuscalco, you just go and you do your thing.

You’re gab Iglesias, you just go and do your thing. If you’re Dave. Chappelle, well, your thing kind of is political and you have been known to do a big chunk about LGBTQ plus are you doing it? Are you’re not doing it? What’s Dave’s act there?

You know? This is all This is just such a fascinating topic. It got a little covered by Kimmelgate, but I think this is going to be a comedy thing. Oh I would love to cover this festival. I mean, it’d be fascinating.

I’ll be honest with you. I was shocked that they I wasn’t shocked, but I was. I was surprised that they fired Tim Dollan because if on the Saudis let them say whatever they want to say, you get the pr win. You know, if you the fact that you get to show Dave Chappelle or criticizement, you could, I think. But it shows you how different it is that they that they fired Tim Dillon, and it does what I think, It puts more pressure on the Dave Chappelle’s and the Luisy Kays.

We should say, you know, you you were talking earlier about if you got to feed your family. These are not comedians strongly to feed their family. Yeah, Kevin Hart doesn’t need another paycheck. He’s got enough work. Like they did not, Like almost all of them.

I would say, it’s clear they did not need to do this festival. That is also plays into the calculus. I would say, And you know now that Tim Dillon got fired, does that change their thought about it? Do they not? I mean if that happened in the US, if Columbia University, you know, hired somebody and they told a joke and then there was protests and they canceled it.

And Dave Chappelle was showing up a Columbia university, is there any question that he would make the whole set about that, you know, the oppressiveness of of you know, the Columbia University cancel culture mob, etc. Right. I think it’s that the general public, even the comedy fans, just haven’t caught onto this. I noticed it during the summer. I’ve been mentioning on and off.

I truly did have it as my opener on Monday, and then as I was working on Monday Show on Sunday, I saw your piece. There are a couple of things CBS wrote about it. There’s been a few blogs about it, but I don’t think this has registered yet. Yeah. No, Well maybe when it starts and when these guys perform will be interesting to see what happens.

And considering the climate here, it’s even more interesting. The name that it pops out that really jumps off the page for me. Well, well, we’re Tim and Jessica because of their sexuality, and Pete Davidson for the nine to eleven connection. As we’re recording today, what’s on my mind it is the it was my father’s birthday. He died thirty plus years ago from cancer.

Sure, and I’m not sure, you know, I’m not sure I would be at the Lucky Strike Comedy Festival despite the paycheck. That might just be a thing where, you know what, Johnny Mac loves money. But you know, I’m not reading live reads for AR fifteen’s and I don’t know if i’d be at the cigarette festival just as a personal thing. So I find Pete Davidson might just be a much better person than me, but that juxtaposition to me just keeps jumping off the page. Yeah, the uh I hesitate to go.

I mean there the I don’t know what the reason is and what his politics about that are. You know, there’s all sorts of things. I mean, the there’s also the problem, there’s a lot of I think a lot of these comedians are working for places already that they don’t support, and they probably get immune to it. And I mean, you know, you could take there’s people who certainly could take I’ve seen people who say, like, oh, if you’re if you you should you know, you shouldn’t appear on the Joe Rogan Experience. Joe Rogan has done the people who think that Joe Rogan has done irreparable damage to the country and the world.

As we you know, are recording this the day after we learned that Kyle Linoll causes autism. And what is the responsibility of the artists if they get you know, if if Jordan Jensen gets offered to be on the Joe Rogan Experience, should she say no? These are these are live questions, right and the you know where you draw the line says something about who you are and what you’re willing to do. But they’re also not easy questions. No, and we saw over the weekend when we all had Disney rage.

I pointed this out. John Stewart separately put it this on I’m not doing the John Stewart still what joke, you know, peril thinkings more people can sometimes come to the same line. But I was pointing out, Okay, we’re mad at ABC, which means we’re mad at Disney, So don’t watch Monday Night Football. Cancel your Disney plus, no more Star Wars, nor no more Marvel, no more Red Zone. Does your morality on this end at Monday night football?

Here’s the thing the uh, you’re exactly right. One of the issues we have that sort of all of these issues are related to, is is this one of kind of corporate consolidation. Trump is using all these levers that are wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t for the fact that like a handful of companies control everything. And so yeah, when you realize, yeah, boycotting Disney and ABC is gonna is much a much bigger ask than a lot of people probably think. That said, if there’s another thing we’ve learned.

It’s that Boycott’s work. I do think that Bob Iger changed course in part because of Boycott’s And I also think there’s a danger to this sort of neolis stick view that, oh, you know, it’s all complicated, so we’re not going to draw any line. You know, everything is you know, who ever, anyone who says they’re they’re not going to do something on moral principle is you know, a self righteous prig right’. I’ve really am kind of sick and tired of like five If you want to not take moral stands on this, I understand it. But to judge people who do, who actually are putting themselves at risk and in the process perhaps making a difference, that that sort of pisses me off.

And I think you’re seeing a really you know, in some ways, you look at what happened. Kimmel got taken off the air, and people sign petitions, the people that Santa Fleuve to mock actors, celebrities, you know, people wrote articles, people ordinary people cancel Disney Plus and posted and on social media, you know, the most mocked thing in stand up comedy virtue signaling posting something right, like how many times have we heard about the post George Floyd posting the Black squares and oh, these hypocrits screw you that really you have to also say that had an impact and sometimes getting politically being politically involved makes a difference and the and I think that we this is the case where part of the goal of authoritarian regimes is to scare you and to make you feel powerless. And I think one of the things that we’ve got to do now is not fall for this idea that we have no power. We do have power. We we have our voice.

We can speak out, we can stay, we can say what our line is. We can and it can vary. Maybe for some people it’s you know, they’ll go with Joe Rogan, but they’re not going to go to you know there, or they’re not going to go to Saudi Arabia, or they they’re not gonna cancel Disney, but they’re gonna sign a petition what they People have a voice in this country and they have to and they should use it and they shouldn’t feel like they have no control. And because of what if they do, then we’re in a really dark place. Well said, I’m trying to be a better host than actually building the break, So we’ll come back.

We’ll talk late night. Jason Zinnaman is with The New York Times. Let’s dive in on late night. Let me just throw a grenade to open it up to your fellow Americans. You weren’t watching Stephen Colbert anyway.

I know it was number one. I know you’re so upset about it, but you weren’t watching at eleven thirty anyway? Is late night over? Oh my god, is late night? It seems like it’s more relevant than ever Johnny.

This week, But you weren’t watching Kimbell either. I think Trump has made late night the tip of the spear. It’s it’s more important. People are gonna walk. We’re on Tuesday, eleven o’clock tonight is Jimmy Kimmel’s monologue.

You’re gonna be watching it, Johnny Mac? Are you not? Are you not gonna be watching it? Is everybody gonna be watching it? Is it the most important piece of comedy of twenty twenty five?

Probably? Probably? Probably? So let’s not get it twisted like there’s this other lie that gets spread. I hope we can talk about the substance of what happened.

There’s a lot of bs from people who don’t know what they’re talking about, and including from commentators who are like, no one’s watching the shows. Not true. Colbert had the high no one’s watching Everything has lower ratings than it did twenty years ago. Sitcoms, your show everything, that’s just a fact, right. The yes, it’s expensive and the economic models is not as good as it used to be.

But this is the highest rated program in its time slot, Stephen Colbert, and it got canceled. So it’s not about that, right, there are people watching. It’s about something else, right, it’s about the reason. The reason they’re being canceled is about something else. It’s about what they’re saying.

Right. So if you’re using this moment to say, oh, Late Night’s irrelevant and it’s no one’s watching it, one, you’re lying. Two, you’re missing the fucking forest with the trees. It’s the more relevant than it’s been in thirty fucking years. And so get with the program this.

You can’t choose where like the action is. The action is not on stand up specials to Netflix right now. They have not released a single special since this administration began that mattered remotely to ports politics in America, what has mattered are these late night shows. So we have to ask ourselves why is that. We both have fixed smiles on our face and while we’re doing this.

So I’m just gonna poke and do what I would do if we were doing this over beers, because this is what I would do it over beers. Sure, yes, Tonight’s Jimmy Kimmel Tuesday Night Jimmy Kimmel is super important. But a week from now, next Thursday, hey join me tonight at eleven thirty five, Jamie Lee Curtis and some band are coming by. It’s last week’s. News already, and we’re back to does late night matter in twenty twenty five?

I get what you’re saying about the importance of it, and I was talking with Mark Malkoff about it. I think there’s still something to be said for eleven thirty If you look at THEO Vaughn. Clearly influential, clearly making a lot of money, clearly selling a lot of tickets. But he’s a podcaster and so am I. It’s not as impressive.

It doesn’t have the statesmanship that eleven thirty five has, So I can argue it either way. It’s an important position, but Also, I don’t think people were watching it tonight to last night. I guess sure. I guess my brushing you is, if it’s so unimportant, why did Trump go after it? Because they’re making fun of him?

Okay, a lot of people are making fun of him. People are making fun of him on social media, people are making fun of him on in comedy clubs. People, But why did it go it? Like, you don’t go after something that does it matter? I think you have to question your assumptions now, like it is not.

Did you watch the Adam Frielan show every week? No? Okay, so that is a show that young people are watching in a way and you can make the cases relevant in a way that late night shows are not. Right And certainly it went viral for this conversation with Richie Torres about Israel. Right, there’s a there is a time and a place to say yes, shows on YouTube that like are like that kind of show are relevant to young people in a way that late night was in the eighties.

It’s not as late night is not as relevant to that. But that’s not now. Like if you’re still saying late night is not relevant now, you’re missing the point. They it maybe never been more relevant like we are now in an authoritarian moment. The Donald Trump has picked has gone after it was Colbert and Kimmel.

That’s the best piece of evidence for its relevance there. Now, if you want to argue about ratings, we can do it, and we could talk about numbers, right and I think there’s actually a case to be made. It sounds counterintuitive because so many people have been saying nobody watches late night shows. But you could argue that more people are watching some form of late night television than they have in twenty five thirty years or twenty five may twenty years. If you include like you, if you look at like at the end, you know, close to the election.

If you look at like what Seth Myers did online plus his ratings on the show, plus clips, and you compare it to the Letterman or to the Conan Letterman late nights period of that same thing, it’s not that different. That’s a different question. That isn’t making money. So it’s not making it’s making less money. There’s no question to that.

But so when you say it’s not relevant people are watching what you it’s not true. What you really mean is the econdog anog model is not there, and I don’t think you really want to be saying that. And the reason I feel very personally about this is what’s happened to my industry newspapers. There’s more people reading about like cultural news than ever before, but the economic model fell apart, and so all these new sapers fell apart. It’s not because no one’s reading them.

And to understand the economics. There’s a whole other question has to do with advertising rates and how digitally digital advertising rates are much worse than print advertising rates versus. And the same thing is going with going on in late night. But that’s a question of money, it’s not a question of relevance. So if you want to talk about money, but I just reject the idea that this is not relevant.

I think we have to now be like, okay, this is now very relevant, and you got and I do think people have to pick a side. Wait, like are you going to stand up? Are you going to stand up against government censorship? Which is distinct cancel culture. This is why I love having you on because you help me sort my feelings.

As I’ve used that phrase already, you point out I’m thinking one of my best birthday presents. Ever, when I was a teenagers, I got a VCR, and the point of the VCR was so that I didn’t have to stay up till one thirty in the morning watching David Letterman. I could then watch it the next day on tape literal tape, which really is no different than watching Jimmy Kimmel’s monologue the next morning on social media clip. It’s just a different form. So I think you make a good point there.

Let’s talk about the money, Stephen Colbert number one, it was that something else or it’s we’re losing forty million dollars. This makes no sense. I mean, I think when it happened, there was this debate that was the question, right and the uh I think now post this Kimmel thing, it seems like a silly thing to ask. Obviously, it’s not like something else is going on here and in another But at the time I suspect did it was a silly question, And the reason I suspected it was this. For the history of late night television, the metric for success was one thing.

Ratings right. If the show was doing well, ratings were good. If the show is doing bad, the rains. This is from Steve Allen, from jad par to Johnny Carson to Jay Leno to That’s how we did it? That all changed coincidentally the moment that Stephen Colbert got canceled Suddenly, CBS after eighty years or whatever it is of asting us to judge success or failure by ratings, asked us to judge by a completely new metric, budgets.

It’s losing forty million dollars. We never been asked to do this before. And let’s be honest here, Johnny, we are ill equipped to judge it because we don’t have an answer. We don’t know how much money it costs ten years ago. We don’t know how much the Morning Show costs.

We don’t know how much an hour drama is cost or losing. So basically, they’re asking us to judge by this entirely new metric that we’re completely ignorant about. We have no context for. My conclusion is it is I call bullshit. I call bullshit.

There’s something. It’s politics. It’s politics right now? Do I know? Do I think that the Late Show was making money?

No? Do I think the Late Show is a healthy economic model? No? Do I think Late Night is gonna stay the same in the next ten years. Absolutely not like it costs too much money to put on a show in the ed sol of the theater.

And there are all these other models, particularly podcasts, that are much more financially viable. Now there are other examples of entertainment which are which lose money aka Broadway. Everyone knows you’re gonna lose money if you invest in a Broadway show. That forever for the astuery of Broadway. The majority of Broadway shows lose money, But people still do it because of other reasons.

Right, they think it’s good for the culture. They like to go to parties. It’s the prestige. They’re name and lights whatever it is, right, And there was a time when Maate Night was the prestige you had, like, Oh, this is the face of the network. It’s doing, it’s responding to the news, it’s being it’s reless.

That has declined. The prestige of late night shows has declined from the days of Conan and Letterman. The artistic ambition of these shows has declined, so that I think, in some ways is more important than the dollars and cents, because you’re not if the prestige is down you’re not willing to lose the money as much.

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And then if the presceige is down and you’re getting attacked politically for…

Serious point. A second is I’m listening to you with your passion, your cadence, and your vocal range. If they ever make a John Stewart animated series, you can get the voice work on that. You’ve got that down. I apologize for yelling at you, John, I’m all mean to be yelling you.

I’m just just an Actually, we both have big smiles on our face. This is just this is what we would be doing at the bar and order another round now and go back into it. And this is the way I show love. This is the way Happy Russia, Shana Johanny back, this is the way Jewish family show love. And I’m doing my host job.

I don’t want to just go yes, I agree, Jason, great point. Next topic, like, I’m asking you questions and then shutting up because I want to hear what you think specific to Colbert and the money. Many people have made the point, do we need the Ed Sullivan Theater? Do you need two undred staffers? Can you do with one sixty?

Could we do the show four nights a week, three nights a week. Let’s double tape Wednesday and do two on Thursday. It’s interesting to me that they didn’t stop off at any of that and went straight to and you know what, we can’t afford this completely. Let me tell you, in every other show they’ve asked to make cuts. Some you’ve heard about, some you haven’t.

So that’s the first thing you do when you have an issue. They didn’t do that here, right, But let me just also answer that question. I do think they shouldn’t be in the ed Solvent Theater. I mean, here’s a controversial hot take. David Letterman got worse moving from thirty Rock to Ed Sullivan.

It was too big a room. Yep. Colbert got worse moving from a small intimate space in the Colbert Report to the ed Solvent Theater. I get the appeal to artists of doing work in the place where the Ed Solvent was, with a beatles porch played, putting on a big show. There’s something wonderful about a big show around Broadway.

Trust me, I understand that, but it doesn’t. It isn’t necessarily the best form for most kinds of comedy. Some kinds it is, But I don’t think it’s going to be a great artistic loss to lose the Ed Sullivan Theater. And I do think by the way network you might find is a big part of the calculus here is selling the Ed Solivent Theater. CBS is gonna maybe they’ll sell that to a you know, the Schubert’s, the Neederlanders or a Broadway landlord, and they can get a lot of money from that.

And maybe that’s the real economics of it. Again, it’s so oblique. We don’t know what’s what the calculus here is. But I think that I think that, you know, it’s worth saying that, Like there was this moment that ironically, I would say reached its peak with the Dawn of the Late Show, the Letterman’s Late Show, where they felt like, oh, we’re printing money. This is an incredibly cheap form, that’s what’s great about it.

So we can we can pay we can buy expensive theater, we can pay huge salary for talent. We can say and they and you know that time has passed what once the ads ad rates went down. They can’t do that. So now they’re stuck with this real estate, you know, in New York, it’s all real estate, you know, And they’re gonna have to downsize and adjust. And there’s nobody who’s better equipped to downsize and adjust than comedians.

Right. They don’t need a fancy theater. They don’t need like that’s the beauty of podcasts like it. The reason that the comedians have dominated that form is they don’t need the bells and whistles. They don’t need an orchestra.

It’s not like forty second Street, like you need a twenty piece orchestra and a long line of dancers, high kicking dancers to really do justice to one singular sensation and every little step we take. You don’t need that to do a great David Letterman monologue. I wonder if there was a Taylor Thomason butterfly effect. Now let me scream from the mountaintops. I’m not blaming Taylor Thomlinson.

I’m not blaming Taylor Thomlinson. But Taylor Thomason’s twelve thirty show had been picked up and then, as we’re told, she changed her mind. What was the plan there? Were you going to have a twelve thirty show but no eleven thirty show? That’s kind of weird.

Were you going to slide tailor up to eleven thirty that’s differently weird. That doesn’t add up to me. Although having been in corporate boardrooms with programming meetings, I could see a scenario where once the band aid was pulled off twelve thirty, I could see some Weisenheimer like me going do we even need eleven thirty? And that that starting thing. I don’t know if that’s what happened.

I think it’s a very good theory I heard, I saw it. Maybe it was usaw make a footing this theory first, But I’m again, we don’t know. There’s some the reality is most And you know, I got very exercised earlier because I have strong opinions on what I think happened, and I think every piece of information that comes out I think supports my initial instinct, which is this is fundamentally taking a step back political But it’s a multi callsal thing. And yeah, Taylor Thomlinson was part of it, but that is as it’s clearly a weird It doesn’t make It doesn’t add up that they would make her an offer at the same time they’d be getting out of the late night business. Yeah, that doesn’t add up at all.

Let’s dive in on ABC because the greater issue, other than the specifical Jimmy Kimmel is, as you’ve pointed out, the important issue. The FCC chair goes on a podcast, has some things, then two hours later, Jimmy Kimmel’s pulled off the air. I mean that escalated quickly, you know, And that’s not a conversation where I was going. Now you know, we’re also losing money on Jimmy Kimmel. This was clearly the affiliates overreacting to what Jimmy Kimmel actually said.

He was the line they apparently have a problem with the front half about their trying to distance themselves. Probably could have been phrased better. If I’ve said, if you’d speak into a microphone long enough, you will say things you wish he had phrased better. I’m going to listen back to the edit of this show and go like, oh, I misspoke there. I wish i’d clean that up.

That’s going to happen, So maybe Jimmy could have made his point more clearly on the first half, but in essence that’s a Trump joke.

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And then the FCC chair goes, I don’t know, you know, we can handle this the e…

And then the affiliates bail and then the strangest thing to me, having worked in the entertainment industry, even though radio is not Hollywood, but radio, it’s the entertainment industry, you back your talent. You always back your talent. Now we might pull you in the back room and be like, hey, Jason, you got to cut it out with the publicly. Hey, Jason’s been a great contributor to the Daily Comedy News podcast. He’s a recurring guest.

We love the guy. We’re going to have him back, and you know we’ve got your back. You always do that publicly to kick the face of your network out the door. Within two hours, the FCC chair could say whatever he wants. That’s a reaction to the government going you guys better cut it out, or you know, bad things could happen.

I think what you just said everyone should be willing to agree with that. You’ve got to back. You’re like the job, the core job. And I think, as someone who writes for a newspaper, I believe that incredibly strongly, Like I will, just like you’ve got to back your writers even when they’re wrong, right, even when they’re wrong. That doesn’t mean you don’t it don’t run corrections, we don’t come up with different points of view, We don’t admit we’re wrong.

But the you need to support artists and writers so they are willing to take risks. And that’s true in Late Night’s Hue in your business to my business, is true in for right wing left wing it’s true for that is how a large measure of how these people should be judged. Now, one thing I want to ask you, because I’m a little bit I’ve been sort of confused or I’m not sure how what I think about this. What Jimmy Kimmel actually said, Okay, what even some people who defend him, the Andrew Schultz, who I think has had like a tried to kind of do a both side on this, but all fundamentally defended his right to free speech right. But he also said, and I think some other people have said that when he said the killer of Charlie Kirk that the Trumps is trying to make it so the killer of Charli Hirk is anything but Maga, Right, Yes, did you think that what he was saying was the killer of Charlie Kirk is Maga.

As I listened to the edit here, I think this would be a good time to replay what Jimmy Kimmel said, and then I’ll go back and pick up with Jason’s question. We hit some new lows over the weekend with the Maga gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and everything they can to score political points from. And in between the finger pointing, there was grieving. On Friday, the White House flew the flags at half staff, which some criticism, but on a human level, you can see how hard the President is taking this. I condun’t have that a lot of your friend.

Charlie Kirk asked sir personally. How are you holding up over the last day and a half, Sir, I think very good. And by the way, right there, you see all the trucks they’ve just started construction of the new ball room for the White House. Did you think that what he was saying was the killer of Charlie Kirk is MAGA. I do not.

I believe Jimmy Kimmel was saying that the politicians or the conservative speakers were trying to make it clear that the shooter was not one of them. I think Jimmy was saying, that is what they are saying. I don’t think Jimmy was saying that the shooter was Mega. I think he was saying that the politicians are trying to make it clear to everybody else who might be misconstrued that the shooter is not Maga.

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And then the funny part was the president’s reaction to how do you feel about…

Check out this beautiful ballroom. I’m building that that’s the joke. But I don’t think Jimmy was implying something. Could he have phrased it better? I think that’s clear, But I don’t think there was any malice there at all.

Well see that. I think that is looking forward to tonight where to see what he says, which everyone’s going to be watching. I think that’s going to be the thing to watch for because I agree with you, but clearly other people disagree clearly. I I you know, I don’t think I can say it’s all bad fate. I think some people really did take him to say that, and I think it was as you say it was.

It was clumsily put and it opened up this window for him to be misinterpreted. A lot of it is bad fait, clearly, But I think what he’s going to do is he’s going to clarify that. I think he’s good. I think he’s going to say I did not mean to play because I think that is first of all, it doesn’t seem to be. It’s not true, and speculating on that is is not a good thing to do, in my opinion and by all evidence, his first reaction to the assassination was to express sympathy and to say, can we just be all share a remorse, just feel just you know, not politicize this, but call this a tragedy.

So the idea that he was doing that seems like that’s not what he was trying to do. But that doesn’t mean that it didn’t come off sounding like that to some people. And one of the things that’s been frustrating about what’s happened to he got taken off the air. Is a lot of people. There’s a certain numb of people who saw what he said, but most people didn’t.

And there’s a lot of people who are saying, oh, I disagree with what he said, but I support his right to say it, which is better than saying nothing or not saying you support is ready to say it. But I think it’s also I think I think unfair to him because I think it’s more accurate to say he didn’t put this well and he was confusing in his delivery. But his intent, which is clear to me, was not to say that. It was just it was that he was commenting on the politicization of the killen. Now around the same timetable on the Fox News channel, Brian Killmead on live television made a comment about I’m paraphrasing here, but the gist of it was involuntarily lethal injections to the homeless.

Excuse me what now. He apologized for it pretty quickly, but he wasn’t removed from air. There’s no outrage about that. But you know, we should round up the homeless and inject them and kill them. Excuse me what?

To me, that’s far worse than even if we think Kimmel was saying what some people think he was saying, and I don’t. I don’t think the let’s round up people and shoot them with lethal injections is far worse. I mean, obviously I agree, but even the fact that we’re discussing it is sort of a concession, like this is not fundamentally my interpretation is this is not about I don’t think Among the good faith readings of that comment are includes Brendan Carr from the SEC like he was looking for something to take out late night talks to us because Trump wanted it, which he said explicitly. This is Sherlock’s Holmes mystery. This is couldn’t be more obvious.

Me kibble your next. It’s like, it’s so maddening that we have to sit around. I mean, it’s interesting to exp from like a craft point of view, to be like, well, did he say something that was actually he said is quickly. But the bigger picture we should not lose sight of is he was he got shut down because of the governments wanted to shut up its critics. This is government censorship and it’s and it’s clear as day, and if it could happen to him, it could happen to you, and it’s He’s not the first either, He’s I mean he’s not or the most important.

Look at the universities, look at the law firms, look at companies. This is now what life is in this country and we need to figure out. You know. Obviously, I think it’s like, I think he’s going to clarify it tonight, But I think that the problem with the Disney response is Disney started, Disney starts to treat this attack as a good faith concern over you know what he said, They’ve already kind of lost the plot. I do want to say, as somebody who’s been a manager at broadcast companies, you do back your talent.

There is a line in all situations. There are exceptions. So what might be an example of where you might not back your talent? As a total hypothetical, And I always use the example of the Martians for a reason because I’m not trying to do hate speech, but it’s the way I illustrate hate speech. If on the Saturday Night Live premiere, one of the main casts loses their mind and goes into a taia tribe about the Martians, those green skin antenor freaks are horrible and they’re eating the cats.

That might be a situation where NBC and Lord Michaels might say, you know what, that performer is no longer part of the SNL cast. That might not be a situation where you’re going to go in and back the talent. It might be a situation where you do back the talent and go obviously, so and so is having personal issues and lost their mind on live TV, and we apologize to the moortion community. That could be a scenario. But that also could be a scenario for a dismissal where we’re not going to back hate speech, which is not at all what we’re talking about in any of these cases.

I agree, but let me say something that let me give you, let me compliment a network an exec. Okay, I didn’t like a lot of the Dave Chappelle specials about the obsessive focus on trans stuff. I said so in print right more than once. But I also think that then Ted Serandos standing but not pulling the special, not you know, standing by him was the right move that even I think, and I think she deserves he deserves credit for that. The in the same way.

You know, also, he could be like you can also say I disagree with him, which which is what happened, by the way, with HBO. Once Eddie Murphy got a protested for his for his Delirious where he made incredibly offensive remarks that age HBO president. They eventually apologize it, and so did the corporate did, but they didn’t take it off the service. And I’m not saying there’s never a time to take someone off of service, or to take someone off the network, or there’s no line you can’t cross to get you fired. Of course they’re you know that, I think, and their boycotts are away for people or another form of speech.

But as somebody who cares about artistic freedom, I would like the suits or my editors are the people who run your podcast video to err on the side of letting people say what they want to say, even if they disagree with it, even if it’s even a you know, obviously there’s a line that goes too far, but I think they The Kimmel thing didn’t even come remotely close. The Chaffellevee came closer, and I still think the right response is to fight it with boycott’s speech criticism. That’s the way a healthy democracy works. And so the people who don’t like Jimmy Kivel had many many forums to express their dislike of him. They have Magnum before.

They can also not watch them, but they also could put can boycott them where they can create. And I’m sure they’re goynew you know, they have many, many ways to do it. That’s not what happened here. That’s the difference. You know.

I’m excited about the reverse boycott because I do have shows to make it a cast of beaeff. And to that point, let me get in one more break with Jason Zenmann from The New York Times. Jason, we’re losing Mark Marin at the wrong time. He just peaked, I think with his last comedy special as the Best. I feel like he’s the right guy.

He was, you know, not being shy about his opinions about some of his fellow podcasters. And I think he’s bothered that his fellow podcasters became podcasters because of the success of the medium he helped build. And here we are as we head into October, and Mark’s gonna walk away from us. Don’t leave Mark. How do we convince Mark Maron to stay?

We need Mark Mann. I wouldn’t be shocked if he does come back in some form, don’t you think. I don’t think the guy can stay away. He’s like, yeah, he’s on Instagram live, he’s kind, you know, he likes being in the mix, and he’s at the at the height of this. I mean, his podcast run was an all timer for in support of this new special.

I think he you know, I can’t think of a more successful podcasts, you know, just let get a great example of like criticizing all these people and starting conversations, getting pushed back, having back and forth, going on their shows to some of them, you know, going to talk about Howie Mendell bad friends. These It was interesting to see like a genuine conversation about and to see what their reaction to it was. So I don’t know, we’ll see, we’ll see. I agree. I think it’s an odd time for him to leave, because I do think there’s like a huge lane for like that kind of outspoken liberal political comedy voice, and it’s going to be filled.

It’s going to be filled, we’re bother by Marring or somebody else. I could see the him being burnt out on prepping for guests and doing that. But maybe do something like Bird doesn’t just pop on Monday morning and do twelve minutes about whatever’s on your mind and doesn’t have to be fancily produced. Just open up the mic, rip and go. But yeah, weird.

Time to walk off. Couple of things I want to hit. I know you’re on the Gianmarco Soresi train. That special was fantastic. Yeah, he’s been one of my favorites.

I feel like this is a really jerky thing to say, but I’m just being honest here. So on my show. I saw him for the first time at the Montreal Comedy Festival New Faces, and I have been saying like, no, this is the guy. He’s amazing, and I feel like he’s making me look good. And that’s such a jackass thing to say.

Well, I’ve been there, I’ve been there, I know, I know the feeling of it, and yeah, you look good. I think it’s a it’s a great special. It’s doing really well. I see it’s like past half million views, and I think he’s a good example of somebody that does all the nonsense that you need to do in twenty twenty five, the social media stuff, the crowd work, politics and what you see in this special is he also works hard at the craft of comedy, at refining jokes. It’s a it’s a punchline, dense set.

It’s I mean, it’s actually what’s really exciting about it is I think it’s a step up from his previous work. But I don’t think it’s actually I think he’s got another gear because he he is, you know, a very thoughtful guy that has things to say, and this special is not you know, this special is more about jokes. I would argue, and not to say that there’s not things to say in it. And he talks about his dysfunctional family and he talks about but he I think he actually has a lot of range as a comic, which is what I think maybe you were seeing, is that he can do all these different things. He’s he’s act out’s physical puns, you know, the you know, crowd work.

That he has all this rate. How he can be like a political comic. He could just be a straight up potical comic. The he could be club he can be all tis. He’s obviously theater obsessed, so he blurs a lot of lines.

And I think what’s cool about this special is it’s him showing off his sort of Club Comic Chops. I’m just gonna move on because we’re tight on time. I did two more things I want to hit coming off the Emmys. Can you help me talk Nate pergetsie off the ledge that he’s going to stop being a stand up and he’s going to build a theme park. Because I’ve said this, I’m going to ten years from now be like, remember when nateer gets he thought he was going to build a theme park.

Nate, you got it. You’re at the peak, man. Just play the theaters. It’s all good. I think we’re now thirty seconds past peak.

Nate. They pulled out the cherry host of the Emmys. I don’t think it went well, and you’re a great stand up. Just do that, dude, I mean it’s I do wonder what he thinks. Let me just for the sake of fun podcast clashing disagreement, let me play Devil’s Advocate.

Ratings were up eight percent, I think, even though all all the critics seemed to dislike it, even though he seemed uncomfortable and he seemed we can debate for another time. The central bit of the Emmys, which I actually think I’m a little bit of an anomaly on. But I do agree he was the wrong person to deliver that bit, but it reached. It was judged by the success we mentioned earlier, the sixth secta metric that we’ve always judged by ratings. It worked, and I’m sure the Emmys are gonna want him back next year.

Now, he also was this guy who had gotten great reviews and until this Emmys were suddenly a lot of people who didn’t know who he was had maybe a bad feeling about him. So I don’t I’m not sure he saw that as a success, but so yeah, I agree. Will he stick to doing theme parks and movies? We’ll see. Maybe after a movie comes out and it doesn’t do well, he might have a change of heart.

Last one, I’ve started a segment called comedy stock market. I won’t have you do any sales because you’re a positive kind of guy. But in the comedy stock market, who should we be buying a proverbial stock in comedy? Oh my god, I don’t know. I mean, I think Siasi is a good is definitely a guy to buy stock, and he’s on the he’s on the ascent, and there’s too many people.

But right, but this week, since the special came out. He’s somebody who is on the rise. I think, you know, I’ll just shout out another one who I liked, Dusty Sleigh. Oh, yes, absolutely, who’s a great comic and is in the the Nate universe. But somebody who who’s special I think deserves more attention.

All right, Jason Zenniman. You can read him in the New York Times, especially if you want to prechape a Saturday. You can read a couple of paraphts. And thank you for that. I’m gonna say this on air.

This is the best hour of this podcast ever. This was just a wonderful conversation. It was thoughtful, it was respectful, We let each other speak, We had smiles on our faces. There was nothing antagonistic. Don’t at end of the text.

This was a good, healthy discussion. Always great to have you on. I appreciate it, man. I am flattered to hear you say that, because, as you know, I am a fan of this podcast, a regular listener. So I’m very flattered and I appreciate do you giving me a fortune to get some irrational anger off my chest?

Man wasn’t that great? And I forgot to record a proper clothes. I’m sitting out on the back deck trying to get some fresh air for the first time in a week, and cleaning up the edit, and I’m like, oh, I can’t just knock out like that, So this is the proper close. See you later.

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Featured: Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, Ted Cruz, Ben Shapiro, Clay Travis, Candace Owens, Brendan Carr, Charlie Kirk

What’s in This Episode

• Jimmy Kimmel’s 18-minute monologue addressing controversy and return to air
• Late-night hosts expressing support for Kimmel amid free speech debates
• FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s controversial statements about regulating Kimmel’s show
• Presidential criticism of ABC and threats of legal action against the network
• Kimmel’s apology regarding comments about a young man’s murder and political groups
• First Amendment and government regulation of media companies

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

Caloroga Shark Media. Hey, I’m Johnny Mac. Let’s get right to it. Jimmy Kimmel kicked off an eighteen minute monologue with this homage to Jack Parr, which I explained to you in a bonus episode yesterday. That was good.

Thank you. Anyway, as I was saying before I was interrupted, if you’re just joining us, we are preempting your regularly scheduled encore episode of Celebrity Family Feud to bring you this special report. I’m happy to be here tonight with you. Yet you say it. I’m not sure who had a weirder forty eight hours, me or the CEO of Thailand Hall.

It’s been overwhelming. I’ve heard from a lot. Of people over the last six days. I’ve heard from all the people in the world over the last six days. Everyone I have ever met has reached out ten or eleven times.

Weird characters from my past are the guy who fired me from my first radio job in Seattle, where we are not airing tonight, by the way, sorry Seattle. His name is Larry. In nineteen eighty nine, Larry tried to force me to do a bit called Jokes for Donuts, where people would call in with a joke and I would give them donuts. I refused to do it, and I made a lot of fun of Larry for suggesting it, and eventually Larry fired me and I had to move back in with my parents. But even he wrote in to cheer me up.

Thank you, Larry, and I want to thank everyone who checked in. I would say all he fill of them, but. Some that I do especially want to mention are my fellow late night talked show hosts. My friend Stephen Colbert. Here’s himself in this predicament, my friend John Stewart, Seth Myers, Jimmy Fallon, John Oliver, Conan, O’Brien, James Corden, Our Sineo, Kathy, Janda, Chelsea, even Jay reached out.

I heard from late night hosts in other countries, from Ireland and from Germany. The guy in Germany offered me a job. Can you imagine this country has become so authoritarian? The Germans are like, come here, come, who’s my boyhood? Idols Howard Stern and David Letterman were.

Very considered time and I feel. Honored to be part of a group of people that knows what goes into doing a show like this. And I also want to thank all of you for a. Lot of these clips. I’m scoping them down to cut down on audience applause.

Jimmy then got more serious. He thanked his audience, but then thanked these folks. Maybe most of all, I want to thank the people who don’t support my show and what I believe, but support I write to share those beliefs. Anyway, he’s old, he’s there, or I never would. I’ll imagine.

Like Ben Shapiro, Clay Travis, Candice Owens, Mitch McConnell, Ran Paul, even my old pal Ted Cruz, who believe it or not, said something. Very beautiful on my behalf. I hate what Jimmy Kimmel said. I am thrilled that he was fired. Oh wait, no, not that the other part.

But let me tell you, if the government gets in the business of saying what you the media have said, we’re going to ban you from the airwaves if you don’t say what we like, that will end up bad for conservatives. I don’t think I’ve ever said this before, but Ted Cruz is right. He’s absolutely right. That’s a fuss, all of us, including him. I mean, think about it.

If Ted Cruz can’t speak really, then he can’t cast spells on the Smurfs. Even though I don’t agree with many of those people on most subjects, some of the. Things they say even make me want to throw up. It takes courage for them to speak out against this administration, and they did, and they deserve credit for it.

And then for telling your followers.

That our government cannot be allowed to control what we do and do not say on television, and that we have to stand up to it. Jimmy Kimmel then spoke about the comments that kicked off this Kurf fluffle, and he gets pretty choked up here, and I got pretty choked up watching Jimmy Kimmel get choked up. I’ve been hearing a lot about what I need to say and do tonight, and the truth is, I don’t think what I have to say is going to make much of a difference. If you like me, you like me. If you don’t, you don’t.

I have no illusions about changing anyone’s mind, but I do want to make something clear because it’s important to me as a human, and that is you understand that it was never my intention to make the murder of a young man I don’t. Think there’s anything funny about it. I posted a message on Instagram on the daves killed, sending love to his family and asking for compassion, and I meant it. I still do. Nor was it my intention to blame any specific group for the actions of what it was obviously a deeply disturbed individual that was really the opposite of the.

Point I was trying to make. But I understand that to some that felt either ill timed or unclear, or maybe both. And for those who think I did point a finger, I get why you’re upset. If the situation was reversed, there’s a good chance I’d have felt the same way. I have many friends and family members on the other side who I love and remain close to, even though we don’t agree on politics at all.

I don’t think the murderer who shot Charlie Kirk represents anyone. This was a sick person who believed violence was a solution and it isn’t it. Ever, And also selfishly I am I am a person who gets a lot of threats. I get many ugly and scary threats against my life, my wife, my kids, my co workers because of what I choose to say, and I know those threats don’t come from the kind of people on the right who I know and love. So that’s what I wanted to say on that subject.

But I don’t want to make this about me because and I know this is what people say when they make things about them. But I really don’t know this show. This show is not important. What is important is that we get to live in a country that allows us to have a show like this. Yeah.

Jimmy then got very serious about the FCC. Should the government be allowed to regulate which podcasts the cell phone companies and Wi Fi providers are allowed to let you download, to make sure they serve the public interest. You think that sounds crazy? Ten years ago this sounded crazy, Brendan Carr, the chairman of the FCC, telling an American company, we can do this the easy way or the hard way, and that these companies can find ways to change conduct and take action on Kimmel or there’s going to be additional. Work for the FCC ahead.

In addition to being a direct violation of the First Amendment, is not a particularly intelligent threat to make in public. Ted Cruz said he sounded like a mafioso. Ahead of Jimmy Kimmel’s return. The President of the United States went on social media and boasted, I can’t believe ABC, fake news gave Jimmy Kimmel’s job back. The White House was told by ABC that a show was canceled exclamation point something happened between then and now because his audience is gone all caps and his talent was never there.

Why would they want someone back who does so poorly, who’s not funny, and who puts the network in jeopardy by playing ninety nine percent positive Democrat garbage and all caps. He’s yet another arm of the DNC into the best of my knowledge, that would be a major illegal campaign contribution. I think we’re going to test ABC out on this. Let’s see how we do. Last time I went after them, they gave me sixteen million dollars.

This one sounds even more lucrative. A true bunch of losers. Let Jimmy Kimmel rot in his bad ratings. I think we’re going to test ABC out on this. Let’s see how we do.

Last time I went after them, they gave me sixteen million dollars. Is that a shakedown? Sounds like it could be possibly, maybe perhaps a shakedown. Stephen Colbert briefly addressed the return of Jimmy Kimmel. I have edited this for pacing.

I’s gonna start off. You know, I’m so grateful to have this show. I’m gonna say. Thanks to everybody in here and to everybody watching from home, who I think might just be my wife Evvy, because everybody else probably watching ABC because tonight Jimmy Kimmel returned to the airway. Hi.

Well, I’m glad Tim’s back. He is a wonderful fella. To know him well is to admire him immensely, and if he takes the whole summer off. Jimmy Fallon even more briefly addressed the return of Jimmy Kimmel and if. You’re tuning in to see what I’ll say about my suspension the last couple of days, again, you’re watching the wrong Jimmy Dad, the other Jimmy Dad.

And Joe Rogan finally wait in on all this, Welcome to the party pal. On the Joe Rogan Experience on Tuesday, Joe Rogan said, I definitely don’t think that the government should be involved ever in dictating what a comedian can or cannot say. In a monologue, Rogan called Kimmel a good guy, a smart guy, and a funny guy. And Rogan said, these companies if they’re being pressured by the government, So, if that’s real, and if people on the right are like you, go get him. Oh my god, you’re crazy.

You’re crazy for supporting this because this will be used on you. You don’t think the bleeping globalist lizard people who are in the world are sitting here going great, what do we got three years? We’ll wait this out, We’ll wait this out. Yeah, yeah, let them say the government should be involved in censoring people’s speech. Well, Joe Rogan, Uh, to answer your question, the companies, if they’re being pressured by the government, if that’s real.

The President of the United States put out on social media. Last time I went after them, they gave me sixteen million dollars. This one sounds even more lucrative. You tell me, Joe. Jimmy Kimmel, in his eighteen minute monologue, addressed were there conditions on your return?

Jimmy Kimmel. People have been asking me if there are conditions for my return to the air, and there is one. Disney has asked me to read the following statement, and I agreed to do it. Here we go to reactivate your Disney Plus. And Hudo account, open.

Open the Disney Plus app on your Smart TV or TV connected device. Jimmy then thanked ABC. Fortunate to work. At a company that has allowed me to do the show the way we want to do it. For almost twenty three years, I’ve done almost four thousand shows on ABC, and over that time, the people who run this network have allowed me to evolve and to stretch the boundaries of what was once traditional for a late night talk show, even when it made them uncomfortable, which I do a lot every night.

They’ve defended my right to poke fun at our leaders and to advocate for subjects that I think are important by allowing me to use their platform, and I am very grateful for that. With that said, I was not happy when they pulled me off the air on once. I did not agree with that decision, and I told them that and we had many conversations. I shared my point of view, they shared theirs. We talked it through and at the end, even though they didn’t have to, they really.

Didn’t have to. This is a giant company. We have short attention spans and I am a tiny part of the Disney Corporation. They welcomed me back on the air, and I thank them for that. And in a really good bit, the new head of the FC see played by Robert de Niro in character, he explained how things are gonna work from now on to Jimmy Kimmel, I have made a few edits here for pacing.

Pardon me for saying so. Maybe you’re the wrong guy to talk to you, but it seems like the FCC is using mob tactics to suppress free speech. What did you just say to me? I didn’t mean any offensive. You know, you can’t curse or we’ll get fined by the FCC.

I am the FCC. I can say whatever I want. No, well, this does it sounds a little like threats and intimidation to me. Gairman, stop that’s look, it’s just me, Jimmy, the chairman of the FCC, gently suggesting that you gently shove the fuck up. But you can’t say that that’s a violation of free speech.

Oh yeah about that speech. It ain’t free no more, right, it’s a free no more. Yeah. We charge you by the word. Now you’re charging by the word.

How much are you charging? It depends on what you want to say, Like you want to say something nice about the president’s beautiful, thick yellow hair or how he can do his makeup better than any broad that’s free. Right, all right, I feel very vulnerable. But if you want to do a joke like he’s so fatty he needs two seats on the Epstein jet, that’s. The far Welcome back to Jimmy Kimmel, all right on this feed at noon today, a really spirited conversation in a great way with Jason Zennaman from the New York Times.

We discussed the Riyadh Comedy Festival, which is the next big story that we’ll be covering in a couple other comedy topics. It’s actually my favorite hour of this podcast I’ve ever done. So come back into newon Eastern and catch my wonderful conversation with Jason Ziman for the New York Times, and I’ll meet you back here then

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Featured: Andrew Santino, Caleb Maupin, Gianmarco Soresi, Alazzo, Mark Malkoff, Jason Zinoman

What’s in This Episode

• Andrew Santino on leaving Hollywood for podcasting and stand-up
• Caleb Maupin’s new HBO Max special ‘Model Comedian’ and interviews on queerness
• Gianmarco Soresi’s YouTube special and crowd work techniques
• Alazzo’s ‘Room Temperature’ benefit shows for detained immigrants
• Jimmy Kimmel’s return to late night
• Comedy industry shift away from traditional TV and film
• Mark Malkoff’s ‘Love Johnny Carson’ book discussion

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

Caloroga Shark Media. Hello again, I’m Johnny Mac with the normal episode for Wednesday, September twenty fourth. Jimmy Kimmel returned to the airwaves last night, and I will do a bonus episode separating out the Kimmel stuff some other stuff on the feed that I hope you checked out. Yesterday, around noon, I dropped an episode with Mark Malkoff. He’s the host of the Inside Late Night podcast, the host of the Carson Podcast, and the author of the new book Love Johnny Carson.

We had a great convo about Carson and all things late night. Later today at noon Eastern, Jason Zinoman from the New York Times and I had a very spirited discussion about We started about the Riyadh Comedy Festival, which I may or may not be pronouncing incorrectly, as I learned, who knows. We talked about whatever that festival is called. We also got quite into the Colbert and Kimmel of it all, and then some other comedy stuff on the end. So at noon today really my favavorite episode I’ve ever done with Jason Zenman from the New York Times.

And then later in the afternoon I’ll do the Kimmel bonus so that I can pull together all the clips and everybody’s reaction and then we’ll take it from there. All right, here is the normal episode for Wednesday. You know what I’m feeling bad for our comedians. You should and will know that got buried. I mean talk about comedy being timing.

Oops, I mean that just that got lost. I want to talk about those people, but I cannot find the time.

Let’s talk about Caleb here, And apparently I like his interviews better than…

Caleb said, I think our national conversation about so many things is lacking. And one thing that I think is really unfortunate is that conversations around queerness specifically really veered into this precious object’s territory, where we were incorrectly made out to be the sensitive, precious people. It’s just not really reality. I hope we are, and he qualifies queer and trans people and our allies and people don’t understand us yet but will at some point. I hope we’re moving towards a conversation that’s less about policing and being sensitive and treating us different and special and holding us up and just going like, no, we actually just want you to treat us like your neighbors.

We actually just want to be joked around with. We have the same wants and desires you have. We want to make a living wage and take care of our families and have a good time. And I think it’s so unfortunate the conversation has drifted into this psychotic the about trans people, apparently one of his go to quotes. I shared this one yesterday.

This is a different interview, I think, but he said, my favorite trait guyes out right now are conservative Republicans. I don’t care. I love them. He pointed out the ridiculousness of men like Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, Vice President Jade Vance, and Florida Governor Rond Dea Santis worrying about masculinity and scapegoating trans people while wearing little boat’s eyes and so much mascara just to be compelling and having the vocal inflections of somebody’s seen do share. At Hamburger Mary’s Marioki, he was asked, who do you mean?

He said, I’m not seeding home to anybody. I’m not scared of these mffors. I’m from this place just as much as anybody else is, and don’t get to tell me we’re something that we’re not, or that we don’t belong where we’re from, because we do. Model Comedian is now streaming on HBO. Max Andrew Santino had caught up with Variety.

I was telling you about that before all this Kimmel stuff started. I like what Santino said here. A lot of us want to feel more free, so we’re doing our own thing. A lot of people are making significantly more money doing their own thing. They going down the traditional studio route.

It took us a long time to realize these guys were robbing us. They were getting all the money, and we were working really hard, and they were giving us what we thought we deserved. We realized if we just made our own world and not beholding to someone else’s idea over what we deserved, we can build our own audience and make our own future. I still love television and film. I hope to act again, I don’t see it in my near future, and focusing on stand up and podcasting and creating my own world in the digital space.

A lot of people you don’t see in TV and film anymore. Because not a lot of stuff is being made in the comedy circuit in terms of big commercial comedy films, comedy television shows have kind of slid into the unknown. There’s not a lot of opportunity unless you’re one of Seth Rogan’s friends and they can get on one of his fifty TV shows. Outside of that, it’s a little different. It’s a little bit harder.

A lot of comedians, particularly, we’re tired of playing this weird please love meet aim of the business. Instead they were like, we’ll just go right to our audience and try to connect with them. Did you watch Gianmarco Soresi sir Raizi’s especially yet on YouTube. It’s fantastic. I do have to give the edge to Maren who really brought it.

But Gianmarco Soresi in a different year might be the number one special of the year. Good chance it’ll be the number two. The New York Post said, hey, you’ve been somewhat known for crowd work. That’s still a big part of your show. Gianmarco Soresi said, it’s dependent on the layout of the space.

If you’re in a theater, the people in the back can’t here. Still, I was trying to incorporate it to a certain degree. It makes it exciting for me. I hate doing the same thing over and over. I can’t guarantee how much crowd work will be there.

I can guarantee you’ll be at least getting eighty percent of the material. Often find you could do crowd work for two minutes, and if it’s great, the audience will got in their fix. They got to feel the part of something can only happen on this show, and that was risky. He got into the physicality of his act. He said, one time there was a New York comedy club booker who didn’t pass me because they said I was to one man’s show.

I told my friends at the time, I can mumble, I can stand still. Honestly, I don’t think I can. I’m able to deliver a lot, even if I go to Europe and the audience members don’t fully understand all the jokes. They appreciate how animated I am. Now that I have the stage in time, I’m able to fuse being a one man show with someone who moves, with someone who uses the space with obsessive joke writing to deliver an elevated stand up experience.

Talked about his process. I record every single set and put it into a transcription app. It allows me to look at the text and pick up at any point. I have three different word documents going. One is finished material that I look through, but usually that’s all burnt.

I keep it more as a library. The second is everything I’m working on right now, which I’m trying to consolidate. Then I have another that’s one hundred and eighty pages of stray thoughts that aren’t going anywhere. It’s ultimately this gargantuan mess that will never be sorted out until I’m forced to do the next hour. Tell the story about auditioning for Orange is the New Black.

The role I auditioned for was the lead singer of an all white roots cover band, just two lines. I did a lot of research and the audition went really well. On the way out, my manager at the time called and said bad news. They canceled the audition. They found an actual all white roots cover band, so they don’t need the role anymore.

Alazzo with the La Simes recently did a series called room Temperature as in no Ice shows to raise money for detained immigrants. At those shows, she handed out no your Rights cards. She explains my price point was thirty dollars a ticket. You don’t think thirty dollars a lot of money, but when you group it with all these other people, we came up with tens of thousand dollars for a nonprofit. What’s up next for her?

She’s working on a tour, which means I have to write. But you know, it’s funny. I had a TV show. It was only one season, twenty two episodes. It was canceled in ten years ago, and there’s not a day that goes by that people don’t ask me about it.

People always ask me if I do another TV show, And the truth is I never wanted to because when I had it, I was the first Latina to do whatever. And the problem that happens when you’re that is that people don’t know how to deal with it. Would basically have to picture culture and ask them for acceptance. But now I’m at the point where, having done Upperclassy and talking about where I am and really taking stock of where I am mentally in my approach to life, I think I’m actually ready to do another show that’s based on the themes that I talk about in Upper Classy. I was talking to a network recently and I was like, look, I don’t want to do a show about a single woman trying to navigate her life.

Been there, done that. What if you actually explore somebody that’s really really happy where they’re at. What about a show with siblings? What about a show with something a little different? I wonder if that pitch worked.

The Times of India is your home for comedy news. They reviewed Kevin Hart’s show and Movebai. They tell us Kevin Hart’s show included reflections on life, societal norms and personal growth. After India, Kevin was on his way to Australia to play Perth, Milbourne and Sydney. And of course if you want to see Kevin Hart, you will find him at the Riyadh Comedy Festival in Saudi Arabia.

Look at Johnny Mac learning from mistakes. He actually put the Toronto Comedy Festival in the notes today? Did he bookmark the website? No? Look, he can’t have everything, and he’s gonna make you listen while he babbles while with one hand he types Toronto Comedy Festival.

Yes he is, And why doesn’t he make that edit? Because that’s not fun. Tonight in Toronto, Ashwind sings seven o’clock Sabrino Woo seven o’clock. Did I say Montreal or did I say Toronto? I don’t even remember.

This is Toronto. Matthew Brissard nine thirty, the Monster Island Character Showcase at nine thirty, and a Hidden Gem show and Midnight Matti. Since the middle of the week, it will pick up on the weekend. You need something to do, well, go on the eight hundred pound Gerilla site. They’ve got Lewis Gornham’s choosing the wrong story to tell.

That’s out today. Now apparently the Manila Times has a comedy section. They made my rovers and we learned that bark Metza, who’s, as you know, the co founder of Digital Dogs Crypto, connected with comedian Shane Gillis to explore the intersection of digital communities, culture and comedy. That’s right, Christian bark Metta Barker recently met with Shane Gillis at a private session in Austin. I can tell how excited Shane Gillis is about this because there was a picture of Shane with the guy.

The guy also has pictures with some other famous people. Now, Shane didn’t provide any quotes, so you know, he’s clearly really into this. This isn’t just some crypto bro ran into Shane Gillis and got a selfie and is really good at getting newspapers to write about you. In the Philippines, Mark Meta said, comedy thrives on connection and community. Crypto is building those same connections in new digital spaces.

Meeting with Shane shows how these worlds are coming together. Uh huh. Chris Fleming caught up with the Stranger dot Com. Chris is fantastic and says in my Twilight ears, I have no interest in winning a crowd over. Chris is not that old.

How old is Chris Fleming? Chris, you’re thirty eight years old. You could be fifty six recording a podcast in your basement. You’re still young and have so much future in front of you. You can tell I’m doing extra silly stories today because everything has been so serious.

You know, if you want serious, listen to the bonus episodes. I just need to have some fun. Chris Fleming tells the Stranger dot Com and my twilight years of thirty six or whatever I just said two seconds ago, I have no interest in winning a crowd over at this particular show. Before I even grabbed the mic, somebody yelled, let’s go weird now, see Chris says curly here like a younger weird all, and I was like, you know what f this. I’m gonna do two songs that you’re gonna hate, so I don’t have to hear.

You gonna make the music so loud. I’m just gonna kind of stare at the lights so I don’t have to engage. That’s fantastic. H Chris as a Dane Cook bit and has Dane ever heard it? Yes, and he thinks it’s funny.

And I’m so relieved because Dane Cook. A lot of people say a lot of stuff about Dane Cook. Dane Cook was like a theater artist when he was starting out. He bought a theater icality to the stage that hadn’t been done before. I’m not sure I got that word right.

You do what up saying at the utmost respect for his stage work. Yeah, And we see that kind of physicality in Jennmorco SIASI and Gianmarco Soresi might be throwing his phone against the wall now that I compared to him Dane Cook, I don’t know. And J. C. Penney is doing some comedy with Shaquille O’Neal.

By the way, Shaq and Kevin Hart and those commercials, can you just stop that? Those make me want I’m throwing my phone against the wall. The Kevin Hart commercials are just They’re all annoying. And I like Kevin Hart, but it’s just just stop. There’s a bunch of commercials in which Shaquille O’Neal plays the role of a talk show host queuing up a featured comic whose routine will reveal this week’s really big d up and coming comedians Catherine Blanford and former JCP associate turn to comedian Von Daniel Or part of a lineup of talent delivering quote sharp observational takes on real world shopping and every day essentials.

All these ads are running every day through Christmas Day, and we’ll be on Thursday night. Football.

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Speaking of football, boy, Johnny Mac had a good week.

I finished like either second or third. But the most important part is I passed in the football pool that guy Scott Beckett. It’s not always about the money, it’s about making sure you beat Scott Beckett. And this was a good week for Johnny Mac in the football Pool Niners, squeak went out. Yikes, guys, come on man three and zero, but you barely beat the Seahawks, the Cardinals and the Saints.

Not exactly murderers. Row Carl Bird is the SVP Creative Director for J. C. Penney, who said, we started dipping our toe in the idea of comedy. We did Kimmel in the Spring and we love Giermo and realized there’s something here not as sure.

Comedy News on Wednesday again. Keep checking the feed. You never know when a bonus episode shows up. There might be one there right now. Download it, take a listen, share it with your friends social media, help the show grow.

See you later bonus episode, Yeah, see you later, then see you tomorrow. Crutchrays

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Featured: Jimmy Kimmel, Bob Iger, Dana Walden, John Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, Jimmy Fallon, Brendan Carr, Jack Paar

What’s in This Episode

• Jimmy Kimmel returns to Late Night after suspension
• Disney negotiations and executive decisions on Kimmel’s return
• John Stewart’s monologue response to Kimmel news
• Stephen Colbert’s commentary on Disney’s reach and influence
• FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s statements on the Kimmel situation
• Comparison of Kimmel’s return to Jack Paar walking off in 1960

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

Caloroga Shark Media. All right, this is the Tuesday, September twenty third Jimmy Kimmel bonus episode. Jimmy’s Show is back tonight. Just to clean up the feed. There was a normal episode this morning.

Around noon, I dropped an hour long episode with Mark Malkoff from the Late Night Podcast. We talked about this stuff a little bit, mostly about Johnny Carson, and this is the bonus episode. If you are a new listener who has recently discovered the show. Normally I do one of these a day, seven days a week. It is called Daily Comedy News, and I am Johnny Mac.

Deadline reports that tonight’s return of Jimmy Kimmel to Late Night was the result of days of meetings and negotiations with top Disney executives. They only figured this out on Monday around three Eastern was when the news came out. The conversations were between Disney CEO Bob Iger, who many are saying has really tarnished his legacy with this Kimmel move. Disney entertained Mint chief Dana Walden, Jimmy Kimmel, and Jimmy’s team. An insider toil Deadline, there was always a desire to do the best dating for the company.

Yeah, you think. There was apparently a last minute flurry of paperwork, techts and calls with team Jimmy Kimmel. What will Jimmy say tonight? A source says Jimmy will say what Jimmy wants to say. It is believed there are no restrictions on that.

Personally, I’m expecting Jimmy to clarify what he meant by the controversial remarks, and I think he will give a very thoughtful response. I don’t think you’re going to get what you might have gotten out of say John Stewart here. I think he’ll get a very thoughtful monologue tonight. We will see, and of course I will cover that on Wednesday in a bonus episode. Deadline reports people in Hollywood were not happy about this.

One source called it a pseudo suspension. They also quote a Hollywood power player saying it became such a mess the only solution for all sides was to get this over with sooner rather than later. As I record this on Tuesday, I have not seen any sort of reaction yet from the President of the United Slime States. The show’s staff found out around the same time we did. A staffer tells people, we received an email from the executive producer with the good news.

It was shortened to the point just sharing the good news and telling us to come to work on Tuesday. That person said they were surprised that it happened all of a sudden. They thought this would drag out a little bit. The staffer says his coworkers had relief and joy across the board. Myself and my colleagues are overjoyed.

Can’t wait to see Tuesday’s monologue on The Daily Show. Was John Stewart’s time behind the desk? By the way, you guys gave him a free pass for jumping on the desk last week on Thursday. I know we all love John Stewart, but if Jay Leno stole the desk from Desi Lidick, you guys would have lost your mind. Fair’s fair, guys.

Anyway, John Stewart had this to say, No, Kim’s coming back. That campaign and I you know what I’m joking around. I want to say this seriously. That campaign that you all launched pretending that you were going to cancel Hulu while secretly racing through four seasons of only in the building that really worked. Congratulations.

It wasn’t it interesting to try and figure out all the tentacles Disney has in your daily life. It’s one thing to swear off cruises, but the Avengers. No, how is it possible that by getting rid of one company, I can’t watch Winnie the Pooh or Monday Night Football or listen to early Hillary Duff So yesterday, I would sing more of it. Obviously, Disney is very litigious. Stephen Colbert also commented this.

He refers to in this clip is his Emmy. We do like one hundred and sixty of these a year or something, And you know, when I have the chance, it’s always nice to start the show with some good news. Well, just a few hours before we tape this broadcast, we got word that our long national Late Nightmare is over because Disney announced that Jimmy kim Alive will return to Well, I just see tomorrow Thursday Night. Come on, what. Yes, sir?

As well, they said me, this is I just couldn’t have just wonderful news for my dear friend Jimmy and his amazing stat they get into the show. That’s you know, I’m so happy for them. Plus now that Jimmy’s not being canceled. I get to enjoy this again. Yeah, I.

Discussed once more. I am the only martyr and late Nights great unless CBS you want to announce anything. In the course of my travels, didn’t see anything from Jimmy Fallon. I have to check. Jimmy did do a Tonight show on Sunday night, so it’s possibly Monday was a rerun seth Meyers said, we make jokes about politicians and people in the news, including Joe Biden.

It was just harder with Joe Biden because he didn’t say much. You Trump, on the other hand, talk all the time. You never stopped talking. You didn’t stop talking when he was president. You talk more than all the other presidents combined.

Ever, people say Johnny Carson didn’t make this many jokes about politics, but he would have if every time he spoke Ronald Reagan did fifteen minutes on how toilets didn’t flush well anymore. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said, Jimmy Kimmel is in the situation that he is because of his ratings, not because of anything that’s happened at the federal government level. Sure, Jan Chairman Carr was at the twenty twenty five Concordia Annual Summit. Listen to this crap. I’m not gonna pull my bunch here.

Listen to this crap. Carr said, what I spoke about last week is that when concerns are raised about news distortion, there’s an easy way for parties to address that and work that out. In the main that takes place between local television stations that are licensed by the FCC and what we call national programmers like Disney. They work that out and there doesn’t need to be any involvement of the FCC. He adds, then now if they don’t, there’s a way that’s not as easy, which as someone can file a complaint at the FCC, and then the FCC, by law I set up by Congress, has to educate that complaint.

And when I’ve been very clear in the context of the Kimmel episode is the FCC and myself in particular have expressed no view on the ultimate merits. Yeah, because Carl said, frankly, when you see stuff like this, I mean, we could do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action. Frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead. Look, there’s calls for Kimmel to be fired.

You could certainly see a path forward for suspension over this. This is previously Again, the FCC is going to have remedies that we can look at. We may ultimately be called to be a judge on that right sure. By the way, a Google search of the phrase Joe Rogan Kimmel at eight fifty four Easter in This Morning turned up nothing. One of the comparisons with Jimmy Kiml returning tonight is when Jack Parr walked off the Tonight Show on February eleventh, nineteen sixty.

Parr walked off because the night before they had cut one of his jokes. His joke was about WC. Now, younger people are like, huh, well, WC is water closet. Younger people are like, huh, what’s that? A water closet is a bathroom.

It’s nineteen sixty. We’re not joking about bathrooms on the air. We’ve come a long way. Everyone. Parr sat at his desk on the Tonight Show and said, if you read some of the newspapers, you think I had committed a terrible obscenity.

The whole thing has gotten out of hand, but the damage has been done not only to the Tonight Show but to me personally. I’ve been wrestling with my conscience all day. I’m leaving the Tonight Show. There must be a better way of making a living than this. There’s a way of entertaining people without being constantly involved in some form of controversy, which is on me all the time.

It’s rough on my wife and child, and I don’t need it. I believe it was let down by this network at a time when I could have used their help. Parr got up, shook hands with announcer Hugh Down, and then Downs had to wing the show. Down said, I told Jack when he first mentioned to me he intended to do what he said. I wish he wouldn’t do it.

So my hope this isn’t final. Jack does things hastily at times that he doesn’t hold on too. I hope he can be putting his mind back to the show because he built it. Downs then hosted the show with guess orson Bean, Shelley Berman and Genevieve Downs hosted the show’s next eight episodes, and then Arlene Francis hosted a week. Jack Parr returned to the Tonight Show on March seventh, strolled on stage, took a beat, and said, as I was saying before I was interrupted, which is one of the all time late night lines, it might you know what probably is the number one line.

Par then continued, when I walked off, I said, there must be a better way of making a living. Well, I’ve looked, and there isn’t. That is Jimmy Kimmel. A bonus episode All eyes on Jimmy Kimmel tonight all right in the morning, normal episode, and then I’ll have a Kimmel for you, and I’ll probably also have a bonus episode with Jason Zinnemann from The New York Times, who I was planning on recording with on Tuesday morning. So keep checking that feed lot going on.

Thanks for listening.

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Featured: Mark Malkoff, Jimmy Kimmel

What’s in This Episode

• Mark Malkoff’s new book ‘Love Johnny Carson’
• Inside Late Night podcast returning for new season
• Johnny Carson’s approach to political comedy versus modern late night hosts
• Comparison of Carson, Leno, Letterman, Fallon, Colbert, and Kimmel’s comedy styles
• Jimmy Kimmel Live season premiere
• Carson’s rule against booking politicians in office

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

Caloroga Shark Media. It’s me again, Hello, Johnny Mac with your Daily Comedy News bonus edition. Earlier today, the normal Tuesday episode went out later today, I will have a Jimmy Kimmel bonus episode for you, as Jimmy Kimmel is returning to Jimmy Kimmel Live tonight, so that should be exciting. Give us all something to talk about this episode. My guest is Mark Malcoff.

You know Mark. He used to host The Carson Podcast. He currently hosts the Inside Late Night podcast. Boy, I hope they can find something to talk about. And as I discovered on the fly as we recorded this interview, that’s back today for a new season.

Totally accidental. I reached out to the guy because he was on my radar anyway because of the book, and then there was this whole Jimmy Kimmel thing, so that worked out for both of us. He also has that new book it is called Love Johnny Carson. In this conversation with Mark Malcoff, author of Love, Johnny Carson, host of the Carson Podcast, host of Inside Late Night, we’d talk about Johnny Carson, but also words like leno letterman, fallon Colbert and oh yes, Kimmel gets said. So here’s my conversation with Mark Malkoff and Johnny.

Mack started with a long winded question, I definitely want to talk to you about Carson a lot up front. I’m sure we’ll get to the other news of the week. I’m struggling here. If we could do like some sort of Marvel movie time travel and somehow insert Johnny Carson into this current era of kumbaya, we all get along. I don’t mind that you have another talk show at eleven thirty on the other network, and I’m not sure I can even get there.

But if I can, I’m struggling to imagine Johnny doing, say, what Stephen Colbert has done, or what David Letterman has done. I was trying to channel my inner Johnny this morning, and with all apologies, the best I could come up with would be a joke, something like I on the way over here, I saw Jimmy Kimmel working at the Windy’s and then looking left right, did that joke? Land? I can’t picture him doing a ten minutes die tribe about the government to the FCC as a Carson expert. What do you think, Johnny Carson would somehow do in twenty twenty.

Five, I think he would probably just be doing the same show that he did for thirty years. But I mean it did upset presidential administrations. Like Nancy Reagan called the show twice and was upset. Gerald Borg said it was a love hate relationship. Jimmy Carter’s mom, Lillian called Carson and ass, I don’t know if you can swear on this, but until she met him and went on the show, and then she thought she he was delightful.

So you know him, like Jay Leno, like Conan, they were always doing hammering whoever was in office. It was just you know, they were you couldn’t You’ve never knew where Johnny was voting. I mean, he would hammer. When he found out that the Reagans were upset with his jokes, he said, that’s surprising. He thought we were tougher on Carter or Jimmy Carter.

But I think it was since well Rogers just like you have people like this that just did this. But it was definitely very different for somebody to take like Colbert and Kimmel to take stanzas but it’s different, you know, people forget I think that first year when Colbert was on, he wasn’t taking his stance. He was getting cloppered in the Ravens. He was number three, He was doing the show he wanted to do, and Trump was on the show with him, and I thought he was easy on him, and Stevens acknowledged that. But I think Carson was just doing the same show.

I mean, his rule up until he retired in Burbank was no politicians in all office. And he broke it twice, only once for Reagan on the anniversary show in seventy two because they were out of videotape because NBC he found out how it erased the first ten years and they needed big stars, and Reagan did five minutes, and then once with Clinton only because he did saxophone and he was not famous. They booked him as a civilian, which was for the non famous people in eighty eight. Were in nineteen eighty eight when they got in trouble with the DNC speaking for thirty three minutes when he’s supposed to do fifteen, and he was getting just trounced in Carson’s monologue, and then those are the only two times, so he just yeah, it was it was a different show, and I just think times change, and yeah, and I think Johnny would definitely, I think, just get this huge kind of like just be baffled by the whole thing. Today.

I did see over the weekend some Trump joke circulating, one with a joke about Jennifer Flowers being the backup mistress. So there were a couple of things like that, but they were later in Johnny’s tenure. But yeah, I can’t imagine him doing you know, ten minutes about the way cold Err is doing it his way outside. I think two with Johnny and Letterman got into this as well. There’s a type of needling joke that’s just fun among friends, like a Mark Malkoff joke.

Punchline might be he’s probably watching a Carson rerun, like it’s a harmless joke, whether it’s true or not, as opposed to you know, digging in about you know why so and so is a horrible person. I think you’re right that it’s just a different time. Dave took a different approach the later years. I think after he said John Stewart on cable was, you know, was going after politicians and taking kind of a stance that Letterman, Yeah, Letterman just you know, he emulated he wanted to know what did Johnny do at this point in his career and trying to emulate him. But the thing that he the one thing that he didn’t was, yeah, he started to get a little bit with his political views, and I think that that probably gave room for the others to do it a little bit.

I mean, I do find the Colberts first season very interesting when he didn’t try to do that again, him and Kimmel a two hundred people, you know, staff and crew that depend on him. And I get why Colbert did what he did just because he was number one. When you’re number one and it’s working, you just keep doing what is working. But you definitely, like Carson was very much like you’re going to alienate fifty percent. Like I talk about it, like David Steinberg was doing a Nixon thing and Carson routine and Nixon it is getting some laughs, but at the braid, Carson just told Steinberg it’s like you’re losing half your audience.

It doesn’t bother me, but they’re not with you yet. And yeah, that definitely like, yeah, it’s definitely not where Carson would would would would would go to taking a stance, but it definitely he hammered. I mean he especially in New York. He was he had a lot of politicians on he had that. He had people like atheists like Marraton, like Merck, Madeline Murray O’Hare, the head of the NRA, the head of the Church of Satan, believe it or not, Jim Garrison from the JFK movie, who is a prosecutor who with the first real JFK kind of conspiracy.

So they definitely did the politics the first ten years over there. But again you just had no idea where his politics lie. He did do something for Lyndon Johnson in his inaugural, which he did definitely wish he didn’t looking back, but it was like non political. It was like so many stars were there and basically the attitude was like it’s for the new president. You want to support them.

But he he really tried to stay out of politics. If Sinatra corralled him in one of the Reagan inaugurals, because he was Frank Sinatra and he Johnny kind of owed him, which I talk about in the book. So he did. He entertained one of the Franks and Reagan inaugurals because Sinatra was producing, but he didn’t want to do it. I have so many threads I could pull on, including the fifty percent stuff, but I want to save the Jay Leno conversation for later.

Let’s talk about your book. Sure, I’d like to hear you say the title, because I can’t tell if it’s like I got a love note from Johnny Love Johnny Carson. It’s love Johnny Carson. So how do you pronounce the book? The book is called Love Johnny Carson.

And the reason it’s called Love Johnny Carson is because I talked to over four hundred people, and overwhelmingly they would tell me, either when we were recording or not recording, or an email form, that I love Johnny Carson. They would say, yeah, I love Johnny Carson. And I was like, the I didn’t expect that to happen. Just I basically, you know, I’d read some of the books, and I had heard with people like Joan Rivers and just a few people, like two or three people that were the loudest megaphones over the years that would repeat stuff about him. And there’s only a handful of people if that that really had bad stuff to say.

But definitely seemed like that those were the loudest voices. So I was very I don’t know, it was conflicted going into the podcast because I just didn’t want to put negative stuff out there. I just didn’t want I wanted to tell the truth, whatever the truth was, but I thought it would maybe be seven episops because it would go to negative. And I was shocked when I talked to his friends and I talked to people that worked there, and it was like, he’s unrecognizable. I really believe in this book talking to the four hundred people, I mean, this is the conclusion I made.

And I think if people listen to the Carson podcast that overwhelmingly the people loved him and the stuff that how he acted with his friends. Universally, they would say he was the same Johnny on the show as he was with them, but they had to feel Curson, I had to feel comfortable with the person, but they would say he was nearly the same Johnny. His second wife said the same thing. Yeah, he was a bad drinker. He would acknowledge it on the show, not only with Mike Wallace in sixteen Minutes in nineteen seventy nine, he would talk about the drinking he struggled with the drinking.

He became a different person, which I go into. He would admit he had huge flaws from perfect extremely sensitive individual and that goes with my book with him banning some guests that I go into. He was just for somebody that was in the public eye and that famous it really are. He would get his feelings hurt all the time. He was one of those people that would say the critics.

He never believed when guests would come on and be like, the critics don’t hurt me, have a that thick skin, and it’s like not always hurt. He would read all the press. He read all those books, negative books about him. He just he would read the press on him, but it would hurt, and he would talk about that. I mean, yes, sensitive guy.

I listened to the Carson podcasts. Uh, you know, I guess you could have gone out of your way to books if we dig deep enough. Somebody hates me, hates you, hate Johnny Carson. You could have gotten on somebody. But it’s what you said that everybody really liked him personally.

I did try to get Joan Rivers. I tried to get Waye Newton, I tried to get only a handful of people that I knew. But if if I knew Elaine Boosler, a people that had problems, none of them would talk to me. Please continue to hearing. I was going to name drop Joan Rivers.

I worked with Joan in you know, two thousand and two thousand and two, that range when she had a radio show with w OAR, and she you could tell the whole breakup bothered her, but she didn’t have a bad word to say about Johnny Carson off the air, behind the scenes. You know, obviously things went sideways there and it bothered her, but she had nothing but reverence for Johnny Carson. I think when she got a mic in front of her and a camerash, the venom would spew. But like I think, like I think, when she was with talking to people, it was a lot of it was just like he was the best straight man. He knew how to set me up and made my career.

I do go very in deep in depth with that story. I met Joan a few times and she’s like twice and she’s just very nice and like I’m her pressed to find. I mean, the people I know ultimately loved her so much. People that worked with her, the people that knew were and I write about this and I defend her that the people that worked on the Tonight Show. There’s a lot of people I talked to that loved when she was over there guest hosting, and I wanted to make note of that.

But we I do go in very specific about the versions of the people that were at the Tonight show and what happened on there and and what some of miss Rivers friends and people that knew her thought. And it’s like it’s such a night and day story with Joan Rivers was there and always like I just couldn’t believe, like somebody really smart, Like I’m not gonna mention names, but there’s like one comedian that recently was talking about the Joan Rivers thing and just like how they both believed to this day, it was so simplistic that Johnny just you know, Joan didn’t tell him, so he never talked to her again. The end of story. Didn’t have to air his dirty laundry and the specifics publicly. He didn’t owe anybody that and he didn’t.

I mean, somebody asked him one time during because after this monologue, a lot of times he would take questions from the audience. Somebody like asked him, what are your thoughts in Joan go in to Fox and he’s like, I wish her the best. I mean after he never mentioned her on air after the show got canceled, he never mentioned her publicly that I’m aware of. I mean, he was a couple two journalists. I would have handled it differently, or I don’t think she handled it well.

But like, yeah, he wasn’t going to get into like a back and forth thing about it. But I go into a lot of depth, and there’s a lot of revelations about what according to the Carson staffers and according to some of miss Rivers friends, what happened was. The book blessed at all? Did you talk to the estate? The nephew, Jeff Satzings is the controller of the estate.

I still believe you know, did you guess the ring or you draw on your own? It doesn’t matter if that’s a stupid question, John, it’s a good question. Jeff knows about it. I told Jeff he hasn’t read it yet to my knowledge, but I really hope he likes it. Like I had.

Somebody who was on my podcast been like, is it like, is it a pro Johnny or is it anti Johnny book? And I’m like, I wrote that. I just and I told them, I’m like, I wrote the truth. And he’s like, oh oh, And I’m like the truth is because I feel like I just I owed it to the listeners. Like some people were urging me.

You might not want to make him look bad. It might take away empathy from the audience in your book. And I’m just like, I just wanted to write the truth. But my conclusion, and I think people that read the book ultimately is overwhelmingly positive. I mean that is the people that I talked to.

I mean, I yeah, he there was definitely when he drank there he was not it was he called himself. It was like he said it was he be fine and that one more drink. He compared himself to Attiladahn and I go into the drink game stuff. But overwhelmingly, I mean, it was stories like that. I couldn’t include all of them.

I wish I could add to a director’s cut of the book. But how much amazing stuff he did for people behind the scenes, and he didn’t want any poop listed. I mean, everyone knows about the foundation which at the time was the largest foundation. It was like one hundred was it one hundred and eighty one hundred and ninety million that he left. That’s still the foundation gives away millions of dollars every year to all these different groups and charities and nonprofits.

But he was doing the same stuff, just a peepool, and it was just it was just not the Johnny Carson that I expected at all, and I was shocked, and I felt like there should be a book out there that answers like I feel like there’s a people that made certain claims, and I felt like I wanted to put the truth, like Wayne Newton, for example, about what I believe happened, doing a little bit more research than him waiting for Johnny to pass away until he could make a claim because he I mean, it’s easy to wait until somebody dies to make such a claim that he did on Larry King in two thousand and six, two thousand and seven or whatever it was. And I was like, I know what, I feel like, I just need to like set the record straight according to what the research I have done, and I did a little bit of that here and there. I really wish you would have participated, but what can you do? Uh before we even get to the Carson podcast, let’s back up before that to the eye test. You see him within vaguely my age range.

So for me, I watched Johnny Carson at first because it was the thing on that I killed time waiting for Dave to show up at twelve thirty and came to approchiate. So what is your Johnny Carson. You don’t seem like you were watching episodes in nineteen seventy one, so what So what’s your journey do you? Why do you? Why are you like the Carson guy?

I think when I was like really little, like four or five, I you know, my dad was showing me stuff like it’s a mad, mad mad mad world, Murdered by Death. So like I knew who like all these people were, Like, I mean, I knew who Jonathan Winners, Peter Funck, Eileen Brennan, so many, like Peter Seller’s movies. I was watching The Pink panother there, and he’s in Murder by Death, which is like the greatest movie. But it’s like, Okay, Truman Capodi, I know who he is now. And I was like such a sponge in terms of like early entertainment.

My dad would just tell me he got to go to Carson’s show in sixty eight and would tell me who was on this show, and he showed me. You know. Sometimes they would do these primetime specials, the anniversary shows, which were the those were the things that really I would fell in love with the show, I feel like, but sometimes Friday as I could stay up and watch clips or the watch a little bit of the show. But the thing with Carson is he you could show kids and the animals segments him talking to kids that this the sketches like are gonna go over a lot of the kids’ heads, but like there’s enough within the sketches where they can work on different levels, kind of like some comedy does. But he was just so likable, and it was a party, and I got to you know, sometimes like danger Field, I didn’t really I probably shouldn’t have been watching his sets when I was a kid, but like I didn’t get some of it, but he was just so funny and I did get some of it.

But it was just like this adult party with all these people and show business, and I just loved the comedians especially and when the animals were Jim Fowler or Joan Embery, but those anniversary shows were like the best. I mean, those were those the clip shows I think were the thing that really did it for me. But I was just obsessed with entertainment in general, and I was just trying to, you know, like a sponge with comedy, just anybody, just watch as much as I could. But he was so likable. I think that’s why he succeeded thirty years without any real serious competition.

Was the liability thing, and he was completely himself on air that I asked Larry King and I talked to other people, I’m like, why do you think he was so successful on this? Like it’s obvious, it was so clear. It’s he was himself. I mean he definitely like was a shy person, but he you know, he’s with he was in control and comfortable. He could be that person, but that was definitely part of him.

But he was definitely a like all of us, a complicated person. So is it more than just even in New York City there were seven channels and what else you’re going to watch at eleven thirty? Because you know, Dick Cavitt is likable, but maybe doing a more low to term he or smarter show. But then again, his guest is John Lennon. That seems pretty cool.

I might watch that, So is there more to Johnny just then? Yeah, he had eleven thirty back at a time when what else you’re watching? At one point there were him, David Frost, merv Griffin, and Cavot. Yeah, it was four of them going ahead to head. So I mean there definitely were last options.

But I guess I definitely think at the end of the day, I think these shows are always about likability. I think he knew his audience, and you know, he would read the letters that would come in. He would personally respond to people. Sometimes when they were upset with a joke, he would either call them or write them a letter. He definitely was would study tapes like like an athlete, like a coach, watching clips of his team play, and he was just he would say, and at least in the New York years, I find myself that’s all I think about is the show.

And I mean I think he would probably realize that’s not the most healthy thing. On the occasions him calling up on off weeks, calling Fred de Cordova up with ideas for the show. When he comes back. You know. He would always say he didn’t really watch the show that much.

Sometimes if he would, he watched it most of the nights. It seemed like he would stan up and watch his show, and he would You could tell he watched the guest house too, because he would comment on them sometimes and there would be a comedian that had never been on an his show that did the guest host in and he’d be like, you know what they did very well, let’s get them on with me. But yet he has I don’t know if you can last thirty years like that in terms of like the pressure cooker that is going on that show. I mean, Dick Havitt said something in the that I mentioned in the book in a Time magazine interviewers like go into two hundred cocktail parties in a row and having to be the life at the party and the amount of energy. I mean, the guy doing an hour and forty five minutes in New York the first couple of years, I mean, it was unbelievable.

Now they do an hour. They do maybe one hundred and eighty shows at the most were Carson of Television a year where Carson was doing this first couple of years, like over four hundred hours the first couple of years, and then it went then in nineteen minutes, but it was still in exhausting. I mean, Shan Lane was did an interview Shannon and I think twenty and twelve, and like, no one knows how exhausting it is. One of these competitors, Carson’s competitors, that it’s more grueling than shoveling snow for eight hours just going out there. People, I don’t think realize how for the most part, unless you’re a cyborg robot like Jay Leno, for the most part, how exhausting and not consuming those shows are.

I teach on Monday nights and my wife is no knows this, you know, I lecture for two hours and change and just the act of standing and talking. Yeah it’s not construction workout in the sun, but just even that is exhausting. Never mind, if you’re hosting the Tonight Show or one of these shows you’ve got to be on on you really can’t have a bad night. Plus the prep. Uh, you know, you can’t just show up and be like, all right, who who am I talking to?

Burt Reynolds, Right, I’ll wing it. You know, that’s not the gig. It’s not just oh, you work an hour day, it must be nice. Yeah, there’s a misconception about because Letterman would be at his studio all day like most of the people, and Johnny didn’t get there until maybe two hours before if there were rehearsing a sketch, maybe a little earlier. But from the time he woke up he did take a tennis break.

It was about the show, and he was so hands on from the time. The reason he wasn’t there all day at the studio is because rightfully so, he protected his energy and he knew if he was there too much it would just like affect his energy. He wouldn’t have lunches with people, he wouldn’t interact with people that he just he believed that he just had to guard and that energy. And people said this was a thing that several people on the show told me that when it was a show day and he showed up to the studio and if you were around him, sparks flying these those were his worth, sparks flying off of him. They would tell me you could feel his energy.

And the two people that worked on the show told me when they were guests on the show, one of them wrote a book and one of them played did some music during the show. When they shook his hand once that it felt like a nuclear reactor, and the other said that you could feel the sparks, I mean the energy that he would exude when he was hosting the show. He did this famous thing where they took his heart rate I think some doctor or his pulse or something during when he was hosting the show versus before the show or just like regular and it was like his heart rate was just so much higher when he was doing the show. It’s just it was I mean, yeah, from somebody that performs and somebody that’s teaching, you know what that was like. But he just he was exhausted, and a lot of people gave him like he’d make fun of it, but people would give him a hard time for only doing the show three times a week the last couple of years.

But the truth of the matter is it wasn’t laziness. He just did not have the energy interesting anymore. And he would not let the energy he didn’t with the quality beat the show to slap. I mean he didn’t. He could have shown up those five nights a week, but he knew the energy just he just did not have that with him in it and he could feel it, and.

It’s a viewer. I don’t think the three nights a week thing with the live shows on Monday and the one reun rerun was Tuesday, right, and then a Wednesday, Thursday Friday live if I’m. Remember something like that. It was like like somebody like Leno the permanent guest host or then you know Joan Rivers is the permanent guest was like it gave him a break, It gave Leno and Rivers a chance to shine and get up there with Las Vegas touring money. I mean yeah, I mean it was just it was a win win for I think everyone in like, there was definitely expectations when Johnny did host.

It was such a big deal for any for people. And I mean, but people make fun of him about it and he acknowledged it. But I mean, yeah, I just I just he knew. I think he knew what his limitations were, and he is he was getting older. He just again, and I mean I think I’m not without naming names.

I think some shows sometimes stale around a little too long and the quality diminishes, and he just didn’t want to be Bob Hope. He didn’t want to be Benny. He didn’t want to be luci Oball who he all believed stayed around too long, came back when they shouldn’t know. And he just wanted the work to speak for itself, and he just didn’t want the quality to dip. And I really feel as the time it was right.

I mean, he was getting made fun of its Saturday Night Live and he hated that, and he just didn’t want to be perceived like he perceived some of the other entertainers that he loved Hope, he personally loved Benny and Lucille Ball. He just didn’t want to He didn’t want to be remembered like that. So that’s what he got out when he did. I think he was smart in terms of legacy. I’m a big Hope fan because I’m familiar with the entire body of his work, and so many people Bob just gets dragged for the work he did at eighty and ninety years old.

People will remember that. Bob Hope we’ve talked on the past, asked about why Corson didn’t really enjoy Bob as a guest, because Bob would just come in and do his thing and not have a conversation. But I think there’s something for off the stagehead. Only near the end. Like I think he was fine up until like the early eighties with Hope.

It’s when Hope had trouble hearing and Hope could couldn’t really unless Johnny was reading off the cards with the questions in order. Hope was having a tough time even even having a conversation. I think that that’s when it got in that. I mean, it was just tough because Carson would be like like, well, Bob, like why are you doing this on Christmas? Going to Hawaii?

And he’d be like, they really lay the money on you, and it’s like you you don’t need the money, like what Like he Carson would be like, Bob, Hope has no friends, like no friends or interests, no no real friends and no interest outside show business. And Carson had so many it was a curious guy and interest and just he just he just didn’t really understand where Hope was coming from. But in terms of him personally, he liked Bob as a person and he respected his early career huge Hope. Then there was never any personal dislike like there’s so many either like hack journalists or like YouTube AI videos like Carson hated. There was no hatred there.

It was just near the end. He just it was he didn’t really like having him on, but he had him on out of reverence because he was Bob Hope. But he there was never it wasn’t a personal thing and it was just near the end. But I Hope. Carson wrote a handwritten letter to Hope and it was really I think it was a ninety eight just with how much he meant to him.

And you know, Johnny retired from the Tonight Show and left the Tonight Show and was so careful about what he did. But when Hope said, will you do my ninety at that NBC? Johnny said, yeah, of course. I mean he made a rule that he wasn’t going to come back and do anything, but he’s like for Bob Hope, I’m gonna be there. I mean, so for people that asked me all the time, is it true that Johnny hated him, I’m like, not even close.

That’s not that’s not even yeah. Well said, appreciate you clearing that up. So did did Johnny live for the show or was it just something he was good? And uh, you know he didn’t need to do it. He lived for the show, and he told somebody privately near the end of his life it was the only time he felt alive and felt happy and you know, really really alive and happy, and it was just something he just would he talked a little bit publicly.

It just and went interviewed just about the adrenaline and just like to be in front of those that many people when it goes well. I think Dave Letterman’s probably in that category. Two. I mean that it was just even when sometimes it didn’t go great, it just Dave would always say it was the best hour of his day by far. And I feel like Johnny probably was like that too, but it became his identity just I mean, he there were there were definitely he had interest, but there were he didn’t try.

There were he was definitely very careful. Could like, for example, like he tried golf in a few times and he found he was terrible at it, and he’s like, He’s like, I don’t want to do this because I don’t want to do anything that I’m not good at because I’m so good at the Tonight show. I’ll only like do things if he can be good at them, and there there weren’t a lot of things like he con tennis. He was manageable and stuff like he could be okay, but like if he if he couldn’t be at least like decent or good, he wouldn’t want to keep doing it. He just was like his standards were really high, which is the Tonight Show.

So that’s I think why he turned down a lot of movies and acting roles like lucre Is, stuff like Steve McQueen and well movie wasn’t I read about it in the book, but he turned down like Lou Wasserman’s offer. I think no, no, no, no no, it was one of the other guys had it might have been Wasserman, or it was one of those those moguls, Irving Lazar, actually Swifty Lazar a million dollar check for like ten days or back then. Now there’s a lot of money’s and now it’s a lot. But I think a lot some of it was just like he just knew what he was good at and that and he didn’t think anybody would accept him for being an act or a movie star doing he called sitcom like the Kiss of Death, especially back then, if you were on a sitcom you do a lot of times, it was the end of your thing that you were known as that, and it was over. After that, it was hard to kind of build a career.

So Mark Malcoff’s book is Love Johnny Carson More to come.

Let’s talk about the Carson Podcast.

Yeah, let’s do it. Why, Like, like you started that when there weren’t a lot of podcasts before everybody you know, even I have a podcast now, but you were one of the podcasts I was listening to pretty early on. It was easier to discover such a thing. And I can’t remember if you monetize it at all. You weren’t like stuffing it with mid rolls or anything.

So why the Carson Podcast. Everything I’ve done, anything that’s certainly been successful, has been curiosity. Like it was bafling to me that the guy who held the curse curt and open for Johnny that no one had ever to my knowledge talked at him Like that’s the way my mind thinks, Like who is this guy Jeff sat saying? When I sat down with him, I was like, Oh, it’s this gentleman named Irving Davis, And I’m like, I want to talk to IRVINGI what was that like being backstage with the show and he would tell me he’d be with Johnny and like a lot of performers just need silence and they’re in their own and they’re like, no, Johnny would be smoking the cigarette, telling jokes and hanging out with me up until here’s Johnny. He would just be like, you know, just and it was just interesting to kind of get that point of view.

I just had so many questions what went on behind the scenes. My dad, even from the time I was still in elementary school, would be like, no, Mark. The reason that they’re so funny together with the guests, a lot of it is because they determine what they’re going to talk about before the show. And there’s like look at the credits, these talent coordinators, and I was like, how do you get a job like that? Like what?

I just wanted to know how all the magic tricks were done, Like it was this giant mystery, like how people got booked on this show. How they would get the like a farmer from from from someone like Frank Hall or someone from North Carolina who is the manure man they called him that made the quail dropping necklaces from and sell them, and it’s like where do they find these people? And like the writers, like how did they get jobs that are what was it like writing? So it was just like I had endless questions and basically I got all my questions answered from asking people. And you had no idea that there were people like other people like you.

Thank God, there were that wanted to follow me on this eight year journey doing almost four hundred episodes, and it was just pure curiosity. And I got to ask how all the magic tricks not magic tricks, but with what went on behind the scenes, And that’s all I really wanted to know is how everything went down and what Johnny was like off camera, and just it just like opened up this whole different world.

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And then that’s what the book, which comes out on October twenty first, two d…

I’d say the book is thirty forty percent of the podcast, and it’s about sixty percent new stuff that I got to talk to a lot of people like Jay Leno that wouldn’t talk to me for my podcast as well, so I have a lot of new people. I was able to add, but it was just pure curiosity. That’s it. I love. First of all, it’s great because it’s a nice way, a nice piece of the legacy.

I imagine some of the guests are no longer with us, and so this way the stories aren’t lost a time, much like Gilbert Godfreed’s podcast, and we’ve even lost Gilbert, but you know, he got some stories out of people before they were lost. I also like that it’s sometimes you’ll watch a documentary and because of the nature of the business, you have to have famous people on it. So it’s here’s I don’t know why I’m picking this person. I don’t just I think I just read a story about him. But here’s Rain Wilson’s opinion on Johnny Carson.

And like you said, I’d much rather hear from the guy who was hanging out backstage on the curtain or just super fans than tangential celebrities in some of these things. So I think it’s a fantastic body of work that I’m glad exists. Oh thanks, Yeah. The emails that I would get and a messages from people overwhelmingly were the staff that people, the talent coordinators, people like Irving Davis, people like Peter Less Sally who is Johnny’s producer, the writers, I was overwhelmingly Carson’s assistants were the ones that I think people really They moved people emotionally, and they were the ones that just to hear those stories versus having the famous people, which is great. To the people that were guests on the show, those were great to hear.

And again I can’t believe the amount of people Top friend friends with Frank Santa Padre, who was Gilbert’s co host, and the amount of people on both of our shows that are no longer with this. I think it’s like forty or fifty people that I had on the show that are gone. And it’s really set like so many younger people too, like Saggot Bob Saggot, Louis Anderson. Gilbert was on my podcast. I had to bring him a sandwich.

There were conditions. When I went to his Chelsea apartment. He got on the phone with his wife’s like, I think he’ll do it if you get him a sandwich. And Gilbert got on the phone with me and I had to get him turkey sandwich with I think it was mayo and a drink.

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And then a cookie and it was like six dollars a sandwich.

And then he’s like, where’s the mustard, Like, Gilbert, you didn’t say mustard.

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And then there’s this big back and forth.

But he still did the podcast, and then I showed him. He could not believe I had a surprise for him. I said, Gilbert, did Johnny ever mention one air to your knowledge? He said no, and it was on the show he was never mentioned. I was like, Gilbert, this is your life.

And then I played him a monologue ic that Johnny did about and when the Emmys when he got into some controversy with a routine, and he couldn’t believe it. He’s like, can we watch it again? I was like yeah, So we played it a bunch of times and he just was like so baffled, like a little kid that Carson mentioned him on that Tonight show by name. It was really fun. It’s fascinating that Johnny Carson is still, at least for Late Night, the north star in the way that George Carlin is the north star for comedians, both gone now twenty years.

I stumbled across that fact that it’s been twenty years since Johnny’s gone. That kind of I knew it and forgot it, and it’s stunned me the other day. But he really is just a north Star. Yeah, this show has been off the air. I cannot believe this for over with it has been thirty two years.

I mean, it’s it doesn’t feel like I remember when on May twenty second, nineteen ninety two, where I was watching that final show, and it’s it’s amazing to see to think about that. I do think the one that the geniuses about Carson is like, I feel like so many of the clips still play. It’s interesting to me, Like I sometimes we’ll get emails from people that are in college or people in their twenties that are discovering him on YouTube and just they think the clips, some of the clips are so funny, and just the fact that they still play, it’s it’s unbelievable to me. But just the fact that, I mean constantly I’m trying to go online to see who’s talking about Carson, and I’m shocked about the mainstream press that he still gets like his son. Unfortunately, Chris passed away at seventy four, and then his third wife, Yeah, Joe Wane Uh passed away a couple of months ago, and just the amount of national news that he still makes, Like the Wall Street Journal just did a piece about his Malibu home.

His last home is up for there’s like one hundred and ten million or something somebody’s trying to get for. But the fact that Carson, all these years later in the late night shows fallin Colbert and Kimmel, up until recently for Kimmel, we’re still talking about Johnny and asking guests about Johnny. I mean, it speaks volumes. I think. I think if you watch the old monologues and the same is true of the young Bob Hope, there’s the rhythm of the joke, so you could swap out the particular surname of the governor at that time or the president of the time, but the rhythm of comedy is there on those old monologues, and I think that’s what’s resonating with younger people.

Yeah, I mean, the monologue was Johnny’s favorite thing. It was definitely this process where the thing that I miss about the monologue in the last twenty years or so is that Johnny’s monologue he either got laughs or silence, And in the last twenty years on the little late night shows, the clat no matter what I mean, if they had to suck on their hands and they couldn’t do the clap an thing, I think that there would be some silences and it would be interesting. The jokes never bomb. Everybody either claps or here laughter, but they clap, and just that Johnny that there’s I wonder today. I’m sure that some of those those hosts could add up and be funny with I just kind of missed like Johnny was like a high wire at doing that because he could cover with the with the bombing, and I think that was like part of the charm with him is that he was so he would make fun of himself and just put himself in a situation like that where the other hosts now don’t have to worry about that.

But there was just that something amazing, Like I talk about this in the book a little bit, like there were sketches where the writers learned very quickly, you don’t want to put a phone in his sketch because Johnny, if it’s not going, I can pick up the phone and be like, let’s fire. The writers, you don’t want to put a lighter in the sketch because he could set fire to the script that’s in front of him at the desk, because if it’s not funny and stuff. So because sometimes it would like Doc would play taps if a sketch bombed, or if like the monologue joke. But there was definitely like humanity and people loved him more for it. That’s why he kept in all the mistakes for the most part.

When Robert Gulay is up there in eighty six, nineteen eighty six and forgets the words to Memories from the show Cats and he just turns to Johnny, He’s like, no, you’re gonna keep going. We’re gonna get this and keeps everything in, saying with John Davidson when he forgot the words to a song, he’s like, no, you’re gonna get it right. The audience just loves the performer even more. It’s that makes them human and just it was a genius. Now they would just stop tape, but Johnny just was all about, let’s keep all these imperfections in, and it was wonderful.

I think that was really a charm, and I kind of missed the whole of that whole thing, just keeping all the mistakes in. And refresh my memory. I think you just addressed this. When Joe Coy hosted the Golden Globes, he caught a lot of guff for throwing his writers under the bus. But I seem to remember Johnny joking about the writers when a joke didn’t land, and it was charming.

And I don’t want to debate Joe Coy, but was that something Johnny would do? Would reference the writers very rarely. I mean I would talk to writers and said, I asked numerous ones. Did you get in trouble with Joe? He said absolutely not.

He never blamed any of us. He said I picked the jokes. He took full responsibility. The thing like Carson said that I think Joy had a really tough time with hosting the Golden Globes is Carson w always say it’s eighty percent acceptance. If the audience accepts you, you get in out there, it is so much easier they know who you are.

And it took it took Johnny a little bit because he was this game show host and for the audience to accept somebody is something different. And I don’t think the Golden Globe audience really it is certainly not in America where he was not a household name by any means. So I think it’s just much harder time to do that. Whereas Ricky Gervais, they steps on stage and people get his sensibility right away and they know where what to expect. Same with Carson.

It is extremely hard for somebody that is not accepted, as Carson would say, to go up there as you’re just it’s just the battle is it’s it’s just harder. I think may berghets he just suffered from that on the Emmy. He’s a very likable guy, very popular comedian, but he’s not La Hollywood, and I think he struggled for the same reason. I just think like certain people are built for certain shows, Like I think he was really great on Saturday Night Live, and I think it was probably a smart thing to play to the strengths to do that type piece that I know that did well on S and L the same premise. But yeah, I mean, there’s just certain some people that were born to do that show.

Like I mean, a lot of people I’ve talked to us will tell me they think Johnny and these are people that didn’t work on the show told me that they thought he was the best Oscars host by far. I mean he hosted, I think it was four or five times, in the fact that he was able to do it that many times, and he clashed with the director Mars Marty Pissetta, and he it wasn’t always easy, but he did very, very well. Mart You know, he wanted Johnny, like if you notice on the monolog he always, unless he made fun of Doc’s outfit or whatever, he wanted this that always to remain on him the camera and never did audience cutaways, whereas Marty Passett when he directed Oscars, wanted to do cutaways and Johnny wanted to keep the lights down like he did in Burbank. And he always this thought of a joke bomb he could he could say that but with his reaction on his face, rather than if they did cutaways. But he felt like that was the way that he could he could make if jokes didn’t do well, that if the camera just would stay on him.

So they hit all these different philosophies and it was definitely a hard collaboration. But Johnny I think his work is the Oscars. I think his film historians when they look back and TV historians, I think he’s definitely one of the best, if not the best. I think that’s done the Oscars in the top the race. Certainly.

As somebody who’s been had a media career of thirty five almost years now, I always appreciate a professional host. There are some talk show hosts. I would put Johnny Carson in this category. The current generation of late night hosts. There are people you could wake up at three in the morning and be like, Hey, we’ve got an emergency.

I need you to host the Oscars right now. I read the cue cards and then throw it to break and then I’ll tell you what to do next. And there are people like that that can do that. I’m a big Ryan Seacrest fan. I know people like to give Ryan the business, but there’s something about being a professional traffic cop host that is underappreciated.

I mean broadcaster, and people that are good broadcasters make it look so easy. Like Dave Letterman recently mentioned the late Regis vill Ben, and he always has to preface this. I’ve heard him say this before that people think it’s a joke about what a good broadcaster he was, but he was unbelievable that he could do that the host chat without any script and like just be interesting and just be likable and go on Dave’s show and they would do a pre interview, but never get to it that he was able to do that. There are certain people that just have that skill set that could just get up like you’re saying, without much to little prep and be able to do well. I will say this though, and I talk about this in the book which comes out October twenty First Love Jenny Carson is that Carson was the only, to my knowledge was still the only person that would host those shows without any teleprompter or Q coch wow really would he had he would do the mnemonic device.

He did something I’ve heard two different versions. One was Harry I know Harry Loreno went on the show who was a magician like he went on a bunch of times that he had a technique. And there was another person that had a technique as well that went on the show and memorize. And I know Johnny took a class speed reading, a class. He was very he liked taking courses in classes.

He took a class on mnemonic so he would memorize. And his whole thing with memorizing, he is that he could he if he could read the audience and felt like if you wanted to insert joke. The fourth joke he memorized, maybe he would put that seven and he could he could edit in his head. Doc Seffnston told me he had never seen a performer that could edit as he was speaking. He could edit in his head and think about what he was going to be either if he was in with guests, like what are you going to ask next?

Or listen to the person, but then also be able to do both things in multitask as a host, and that skill set. I don’t know how many people can do that, but Johnny was just brilliant at it. Mark Malcoff’s book is Love Johnny Carson. We’re coming up these days. You’re hosting the Inside Late Night Podcast.

We’re between seasons as I speak to you now, I’m going to deliberally date this on Monday, because I’m going to start asking you some topical question and it’s quite possible as we’re sitting here in the studio that nine news stories have broken. So, in case we are dated, this is Monday, September twenty second, around a lunchtime. So you’re hosting the Inside Late Night Podcast, which is between seasons. Right now, where did that come from when the Carson Podcast ended. I do want to mention it comes back tomorrow with the new season.

Unless something happens. We’re all set to do a new season on Yah September twenty third, Tuesdays on Late night Er. Well that’s hopefully today as the audience, here’s this. I’m planning on dropping this on Tuesday unless my life goes sideway. So oh good, good timing.

The twenty third guest So today, wasn’t that a great podcast episode? Everyone? So yeah, it was one of those things where I loved talking to people about Carson. But at the time, I was running out of people because you had all these people that were even when they were kids, like Neil Patrick Harris, Jason Bateman, Drew Barrymore that they’re all now like in either their late forties or early fifties, and it was just like the people that I wanted to talk to had either passed away or it was just it was just getting I was running out of guest so it was a little harder. So, you know, I have I think I have a skill set, pretty good skill set with late night stuff.

The things I know about or the things I’m curious about. On some of the other shows. So I just wanted to kind of go broad and talk to people from Saturday Night Live and people that did Latterman and other variety shows and talk shows and just kind of picked their brains and ask the questions I’ve always wanted to ask, Like I really loved talking to Bert Sugarman, who is the creator of Midnight Special. But Bert Sugarman’s Night Special and Johnny Carson and him were neighbors and tennis buddies, and yeah, Burt was the one that told Johnny about his idea he wanted to do after his show on Fridays, and Johnny’s like, absolutely, let’s do this, and really supported Burke Sugarman’s Midnight Special, which I think debuted in seventy three, and it was like revolutionary that there was another late night show. And that’s how Tom Snyder because they’re like, oh, wow, you mean we can do other stuff after Johnny’s show and original program, and so yeah, just talking to a lot of people in late night has been really, really fun.

Well, let’s go down the punch list of the big news story a few months ago the Late Show coming to an end was the Late Show losing forty million dollars? Was this about something else? Where? Are you on the conspiracies? I have no idea.

I’m friends with people over there. I’ve worked on the Comedy Central version of the Colt Beat Report for three years and eight months. And I don’t know. I don’t know the I don’t know the economics. I know things have changed in the last whatever for years, just with viewership, if network television going down, I don’t understand the metrics.

There are way more people watching late night online and it’s amazing to look at the millions and millions of people on YouTube and other platforms. But I don’t know. I have no idea. I just it never occurred to me that you could be number one and that this would be a possibility. But I do not know.

Uh. But I’m glad they just won the Emmy, and I’m glad that they’re gonna at least get till May. But yeah, it’s it’s just it stanks for people’s jobs. It’s a shame any it’s like for any show like that to go under. I mean, there’s a lot of great people over there.

I’m surprised they didn’t look at things like do you need two hundred staffers? Can we do with one eighty? Do we need five shows a week? Can we do four? Can we do three?

Do we do we need the Ed Sullivan Theater? Like that? God was me? That was I was very because to my knowledge talking into people over there, there weren’t. I was thinking that they would the writers in half or try out different things.

Into my knowledge, none of that stuff happened to my knowledge, and I thought that there’d be some foreshadow in and there, to my knowledge, there wasn’t there. Maybe I’m wrong, but yeah, that was that. That definitely to me was surprising that that if that was the case, that there wouldn’t have been some concessions made. I’m also surprised that for any of these shows that we’re going to talk about, no one has tried doing them live or close to live on a streamer like I know it’s called The Late Show, where the Tonight Show, but I’d probably put more eyes on them if either of those shows were available to me. At eight Eastern, I go to bed.

I’m old, and if something interesting happens the next day, I’m not going to go back and watch it on a DVR anymore, because I’ll see the clips on social But if it were live ish at eight Eastern, I might stare at it. Yeah, like John Mulaney, I think he did that for net Fletzi. I don’t know how many episodes he did two seasons. It certainly wasn’t every night. I mean he did it, yeah, I mean, I forget how many shows it were.

The second season was twelve, the first season was several nights in a row. Because he was the first were just okay. I think like somebody that I read an article that said it was just okay, and they haven’t committed to doing more. And I know that, and I admire mulaney. He wanted to put on people he wanted to, like.

I love the fact he had Joan Bias on the show, and it was certainly at least in one interview he mentioned that some of the people like they wanted maybe some bigger people on here and there, and he wanted to do his own show. And I think it’s great he did the show he wanted to. And I love the fact that he mentioned the set was modeled off of photos he saw Johnny Carson’s Malibu home. He had trees in the studio, which I thought was a really cool thing to Carson, But yeah, I don’t know if. Yeah, but if they did the show live, you did get somebody that was doing that every every night, how that would work?

It would certainly be an interesting experiment. There’s certainly enough really funny hosts I think, and comedians or personalities where you could try to make something like that happen. Oh, I mean even just the Tonight show with Jimmy fallon streaming on all you guys. Well, they did talk about I did read an article, and I guess I could be off on this too, but I’ve read an article saying that they were thinking about showing some of those shows on Peacock at like eight o’clock or earlier. The affiliates balked, and the affiliates pro were like, no, absolutely not, because they thought it would kill their audience and some of the networks.

And I can see where they might be coming from. But I don’t know. But so it definitely was a discussion. But yeah, if they did do those live on streaming, that would be interesting. I would Yeah, I don’t know where it’s gonna go.

I think we’ve reached the point where you can’t worry about the affiliates. What springs us to this week’s big News, Jimmy Kimmel, you think he walks, you think he comes back and again recording on Monday, the story could have changed seven times by the the time you answer this and people hear it. I’m just glad that he’s that his staff is getting paid, Steph and crew were getting paid. I have friends over there. I’ve been over there to visit numerous times.

I didn’t see that coming either. I mean, he’s the first one that said, you know, I don’t know if these shows are gonna be around in ten years. But yeah, it’s just I don’t know. I I it’s gonna be I think it’s gonna be a challenge for the thing to come back, unfortunately, but I don’t know. I feel like the best thing that happened sometimes to certain of these house like Honan is like the TBS show ended, and then he is so much more, not only like powerful, but like like just so much more, like just even beloved, just doing his his his podcast and doing his doing the podcast and then doing his HBO show.

I mean, I feel like they’re for a lot of those hos, some of these guys can maybe find a different outlet that might be hopefully employ their staff as many people as possible. But yeah, I don’t know. I just didn’t see this come in with him, and I just hope that people can still get paid for as long as they possibly can. New cycles and the obvious aside. I’ve always felt that if one franchise survived, it would be The Tonight Show.

I do feel like I can with Late Night. I don’t feel like Seth Myers is doing Letterman Show. I felt like Conan was doing Letterman Show sort of, but in his own style. I can draw a through line all the way from Steve Allen to Jimmy Fallon. It feels like The Tonight Show.

And I feel like at some point, if you’re a NBC, this is who we are, with the Today Show and some shows and then the Tonight Show, and that’s who we are. I struggle to see the Tonight Show going away. Especially Fallon is sales friendly, willing to play ball, not particularly edgy. I think that one will stick around. He’s on other NBC shows that he’s hosting as well, which I mean, if you’ve noticed Kimmel up until you know recently he got yanked, but he was hosting Millionaire for ABC who wants to be a millionaire.

So I don’t know if that’s part of like the double duty stuff that is like now with with some ratings and monetizing, if this is part of the deal that they have them hosting other shows or how anything works. But I think that that fallin in terms of the people that watch the audience. He does a good job. I think he did a good job recently addressing the whole Kimmel where he mentioned I thought it was a funny joke saying that, like his dad texted him like, I’m sorry he got fired because people constantly are calling Kimmel fallen and fallen Kimmel or thound. You did a good job with that, And I hope he’s he’s around.

I think he’s done a good job. I really do. I really though, like revision is history. I know that he got a lot of bad press for this, but if I was the decision maker, I think that at the time I would have given it to Brian Williams. I think he would have succeeded wildly.

There’s so many news people that went into entertainment and vice versa that have done different things, but just you know, he was number one, I think at NBC News, and so they to have somebody like make that switch. I just they I just the way it played out, especially publicly, it did him. It was not good for him. But I think if he would have been given that chance, I think he was. He’s so witty and so good at that at doing that broadcast, and and so just the likability thing.

I think. I think his show, I think he would still be on the air, if that’s me. But I know that that that that he never even came up, and but I know he is his skill set that that he would have done I think very well. And Jimmy Fallon just turned fifty one, Colbert sixty one, Kimmel’s fifty seven, Johnny Carson retired at age sixty six. Now that was a four cigarette packs a day sixty as opposed to a salad sixty six.

So we might have been headed for a generational change in the near future. Anyway, we’ll see what happens. I mean, it’s like Johnny was doing two packs of Pall Mall’s. I know that his friend Michael Landon who passed away from pancreatic cancer, and that they’re saying that maybe the alcohol and cigarettes was something he was doing. Some people say up to four packs.

It was just people were smoking and drinking back then. It was just such a different time. Yeah, like the younger, younger people to be interested. I really hope with the late night shows never go away, like I could see it being sicklical where you know, like nobody ever thought that primetime game shows would come back, and now, like I mean in the eighties or nineties, if you ever thought there would be primetime game shows like this, and they’re all over the place now. So I mean it’s it’s hard to say.

I mean that anybody can do things on YouTube when like with a phone, and I think that these things hopefully will alway they just exist in some format. But I definitely I don’t know if you’re going to see the big bands and anything or any more to the extent, which is I think a big shame. I do think they’ll survive. Like you said, you may pull back the budget. Really you just need a host and a desk and a chair and you know basically what Mark Maron does but film it.

I do think there’s something for eleven thirty. Some people have asked about, you know what, what else can Jimmy Kimmell do. And one thing that is true, I’ve been showbusiness so showbiz adjacent for a couple of decades. Now. In Hollywood, they do keep score.

You know, your Oscar is better than Miami, and we both know it, and we keep score that way. There is a big difference between I’ve got a late night show at eleven thirty five and I’ve got a podcast and make a lot of money. I mean, the podcasters are all doing so well, and a lot of them the people that are those comedians that are doing selling out arena. I mean, it’s unbelievable. It’s just it’s different metrics definitely, like younger people listen to like stuff like Theovaughn versus maybe watching the traditional late night shows.

It’s just things have changed. Oh sure, and money and money wise, Theovon is probably doing really well, but at the fancy Hollywood party, if we care about such things, Theovon is not Jimmy Fallon. Yeah, and things definitely in terms of like traditional media, which is just yeah, I mean things definitely, and broadcast television and those type of It’s like people that are under thirty, I can’t believe. And I do get it just because it’s so different, like the like the YouTube people or the people that like we grew up with that, Like you know, the mainstream people are like all on YouTube people we probably don’t even know, you know that they that’s who they’ve gravitated to. And it’s yeah, it’s just completely a different boat ball game.

Well, you talked earlier about how you knew who some of these celebrities were. We grew up in the monoculture where I kind of knew who Humphrey Bogart was because Bugs Bunny did an impression. I kind of knew who Carry Grant was because you know, Rich Little did an impression, or these people are on the Hollywood squares. I’ll let you go a second. I do want to talk to you about Jay Leno, who had become obsessed with So jay Leno recently said, you don’t want to tick off half your audience, which, according to Mark Malkoff, author of the book Love Johnny Carson, is something Johnny Carson said, But jay Leno was completely lionized.

How dare he even weigh in on this? So what does jay Leno know about Late Night? He’s the worst person ever. No, my take and I’ve been doing a bit on Jay Leno’s the worst person ever? Is he seems like a nice guy who’s taking care of his wife who’s suffering from dementia.

We can get into the conon of it all or not well well debated, well discussed, but he seems like an okay person. But anyway, why did we lionize Jay Leno for saying, don’t lose half your audience? You don’t know, I mean that there were definitely I think people that some of those hosts that he was talking about. I think some of the hosts probably didn’t appreciate and some of their audience. But I mean, Lena has asked his opinion.

I mean, I don’t know. I definitely think it’s easy. He’s an easy target to bash, I think people. I mean, he was still an amazing stand up comic and his letterman appearances when he was with Dave on the NBC Show were amazing, amazing. He was number one for his entire run on The Tonight Show when he was host.

You know, he’s a really really nice guy. I’ve met him a couple of times. I mean, I would not want to compete with him. There was definitely like when he was trying to get Dave’s job. I go into when him and Dave were competing for old Dave really was and he was like, I think the best person should get the gig.

What steps Lena was doing to get the Tonight Show, and I talk about some of that stuff and some of the stuff that went on with Conan. I think those are the probably the things that maybe people have brought up with, things that they might have issues with him. But you know, I mean, I think at the end of the day, I think Jay is just an amazing stand up and yeah, I mean his Tonight Show. I mean, yeah, you can’t argue with being number one. I mean, I definitely think it is hard for him from what I hear, just the fact that, like every comedian, it seems like in all that the TV historians is just like they praise Dave and his Tonight Show and his innovation and just everything he has done for comedy, and Jay kind of gets a little bit forgotten on the Tonight Show.

But it was just a different choice. Jay’s goal was just to be number one, and he did that. But I definitely think it did come with a price, which is I think people with kind of like looking back at the two of them and the shows and stuff, Dave’s stuff just kind of stands out and just remember more. I think, like Jimmy Fallon, Jay Leno understood what the Tonight Show is and how you do it, as you said his Letterman appearances, we saw a different, edgier ish Jay Leno back in the eighties. He understood what the Tonight Show was.

He executed the mission. He was obsessed like a lot of people with I don’t know if Letterman was like this, but Jay was obsessed with the writings. Every morning, look at the writings. Would called Rick Ladwin, vice president of the NBC Late Night how did you think this show was? He just needed, like Rick told me, at least the late Rick Ludwin that he needed.

Jay needed, like I guess a superstitious athlete or whatever, just approval from him every single day until near the end when Rix supported the whole NBC decided that Conan was going to take the Tonight Show in four years, and Rick supported that, and Jay kind of yeah, stopped talking to him for a bunch of time, and near the end of Rick’s life they did reunite, which was good that they did get back on speaking terms and friendly, but there were a bunch of years where they weren’t. And you know, I mean he I think he knew his audience as well as Johnny in terms of in terms of getting the ratings and staying number one. I do think it’s insane he didn’t mention the previous host of The Tonight Show in his first episode. That was his Managres’s call. As the story goes, but just unbelievable.

It seemed like it was a very from the people I’ve talked in a very unhealthy relationship and that she was just controlling in that the dynamic was very complicated and unhealthy. And I talked to Jay a little bit. I talk about that in the in the book about Helen Kushnik. Jay has gone on record so many times saying that was a mistake, and yeah, Helen wanted Johnny to acknowledge that Jay or do something on Johnny’s last show, and Johnny’s like, no, not doing that. I mean, he Johnny said to them, and I talk about this in the book, he said, I just didn’t I never understood the whole Helen kush thing.

She basically Johnny said, He’s like she Jane never would have gotten the permitted guest host if it wasn’t for Johnny’s and if it wasn’t for me, they would not have gotten it. And it’s just like I never understood like like like our show, like the thirty Years, like how they treated us in how thirty years like we didn’t exist or anything, and just yeah, it wasn’t yet that just that Pallenge just didn’t do Jay a certain Yeah, did him a disservice. And that’s Johnny’s opinion. I talk about that. When NBC hit the panic button on Conan, if j says no, do they give Conan more rope?

Do they call? I don’t know, Gary Shandling, what was the planed c. I don’t know. I have no idea. I talked to Jay and I asked him because I said that one of the reasons I think that they kept you is good that if you would have left, they would have had to pay they would have one of the reasons that got rid of Conan is because they would have had to pay you, like it was like one hundred and fifty million.

And Jay said that was absolutely not true, that that day they didn’t have to pay him all that money, and that’s the work. The reports that came out, I don’t know what they would have done with Conan Leban. Yeah, the skill set is really tough. Maybe would have moved falling up. I’m not sure, but it’s yeah for the Tonight Show for eleven thirty, it’s a tough time slot of somebody doesn’t have their skills up to part me.

People forget like like Letterman was like the hottest thing in TV in August of the ninety three when nineteen eighty three and he premiered. He had done the show for eleven and a half years. Prior to that, he had guest hosted, he had a morning show, and he had guest hosted for the for Carson all those times. So by the time he got his show in February of eighty two at twelve thirty, he had already had so much practice. So the critics liked him and he knew what he was doing.

The interview is still it still took him a little bit more time to figure those things out, even with that practice. But by the time you get to eleven thirty, if you don’t know what you’re doing, they’re going to collabor you. And that’s what happened to Colbert that first year when he was at CBS sent me people forget But I just remember on the message boards and comments on articles like Deadline Hollywood, but I can’t believe this is the worst mistake ever. And like sure enough. I was like, just give him a year and see if he figures it out.

And he did, and then he gets back he’s a number one. I mean, it’s just that you need time to figure out though shows. The line out too. I said to Jay on the phone when we spoke, because he was basically like, you know, if Conan show is better, I’m like you, no one gets and they’re like, Jay, your show was not the great the first year. You got all that time.

You got to go to New York to figure out like, oh this works with this type of setup, go back to Burbank and switch studios and have kind of like an eight ah Saturday night left studio with the thrust stage of the audience up there. You had wean more time. So I think I don’t think Conan had enough time. I mean, Jay certainly was given more time to figure those things out. That they’re extremely hard.

They look easy. There’s people that watch them the public that watch it and think that I could do that, and I promise that that is probably It’s like, it’s the hardest thing to do. People say, that’s what people say. I think history proved that if you were going to pull the plug on Cone and fair or not, that Jay was the right move. I struggled to imagine thirty six year old Jimmy Fallon and whatever it was twenty nine and twenty ten.

Same age as Johnny when he took the Tonight Show. But a different era, and and Fallon would have been following a failed Tonight Show and now we’re going to throw another young buck in the chair. Uh yeah, I. Don’t know how that would have worked. It would have been interesting.

They have different processes. The one thing I didn’t with that Johnny did, which I don’t really understand. To my knowledge, I don’t think any of the three Kimmel’s not unfore got yanked. But to my knowledge is that this in New York. The writers would do his monologue, but they would also look at the pre interview questions the talent coordinators, and the talent coordinators and writers would write Johnny’s ad libs.

There were so many famous ad libs, and they would do that in Burbank only with the civilians. With like the farmer potato chip Lady, they would write even though that was Johnny’s idea for the potato chip lady to bite down on the chip when she wasn’t looking. But they would always give him ad libs. And I don’t know why some of the they don’t do that now with some of the with with some of the hosts, But I don’t think that that that’s a thing. But I think it really like New York, there’s so many things with Johnny and Nixon where they’re both like so witty and so likable in terms of some of their lines, and I’m like, it’s always all script, it down to the syllable, and I just think like Johnny didn’t always go with those prepared ad libs, but sometimes he would.

He really the people told me he didn’t need them, but sometimes he would slip them in. I think it’s just a good thing to have. I would really do think the host would benefit having those. I mean, he was a genius at making them look like he was making them off the top of the head. When he would do a segment in la If the writing was bad.

He didn’t like the writing that day. He would do something like Blue Cards, where the audience would be in line and they would write down questions for Johnny and the writers would have ninety minutes to come up with ad libs for Johnny to type a secretary type on a car, and Johnny would read these real questions and then you could not tell that they were prepared ad libs. I mean, it was just like even Mike Greese, who was a writer for Carson Simpson’s producer, was telling me Hughes with his mom and they were watching the show, and Mike like, I just wrote that, and he’s like, no, Johnny just came up with that. She didn’t. It couldn’t make no sense that that an ad lib like that would be prepared, because it’s so natural the way he was able to throw those things out.

But yeah, amazing. Joan Rivers had the same skill set on her radio show. She had two writers with her. They’d rip up pieces of paper, pass her note to deliver the line, nail it and throw the thing behind her and would clean it up after the show. But she had it.

It’s unbelievable how they made it look easy. I mean, Joan when she had her laid show on Fox, that was harder. Like the interviews, she definitely was not listening as much as she should have. A lot of people said in terms of like to her guest and it was just it was just a hard skill set. I mean, I think even though she had all that time when she was guest hosting for Johnny, it just to do it night after night versus every you know, like a week, every like five weeks.

It was just she just couldn’t do it. I mean, it’s a shame. I mean, I definitely think maybe she would have succeeded, I mean a little bit more, because if Barry Diller after ten months I think it was ten months, was like we’re firing, we’re getting rid of your husband’s producer, and Joan thought he was buff bluffing as if no, and then Barry Diller promptly fired her from the position. But I definitely think if she would have stayed, maybe she would have figured it out a little bit more and they would have been able to take the writings up. I mean, the writings were not good when she left when she was at the show near the end, But I don’t know, I think Joan had good intentions, and I just think she in terms of not telling Johnny, I go into that in the book, but I definitely think it was some of some of it had to do a lot of it had to do unfortunately with her husband, Edgar Rosenberg kind of hurt like listening to him and his opinions and just kind of differing him, and I think it ultimately was not a good thing.

I think it’s.

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Also a brand mismatch.

You know, Fox, especially in those days, was edgy sitcoms and Simpson’s and then you’re you’re throwing on you know, Joan Rivers from Las Vegas, a little older than your demo. It visually looks kind of eighty cheesy. The set I think has not aged well. So I think there’s a lot of that there, Whereas in the scenario where had Conan gone to Fox, that made more sense. Now Conan may have been older than Joan Rivers was in these scenarios, but Conan just feels more Foxy than Joan Rivers did.

Yeah, I definitely think it would be more of a fit. I mean, it was tough with Joan because it’s like she’s doing these stunts like given a Victoria Principal’s home number on air and like Victoria Principles, like I suit her or did vile the loss, and I don’t know what happened with it. So it’s like, why would an A list person go on her show? Like I mean, she would trouble getting guessed? Is my point is that she would do these things, and it’s like she she really felt like people like Barry Diller would use their personal connections to help get guests.

But like I mean, there were just so many complicated things that things that were mismatched with running that show. But definitely the way that she was perceived with guests. I always defend her. When she was guest hosting for Johnny, she always, in my opinion, with maybe one or two exceptions, made the guests look good. She did not do the jokes at people’s expenses like people.

I think people sometimes they get this idea that she would make her guests uncomfortable like Dave Letterman would sometimes. And she was very good at making her guests look good with with a few exceptions over there, but I thought she she overall she took Johnny’s note about making her guests look good. I thought she did a good job when she was a guest host. Well, and that and that aspect. Well, anybody still listening to us clearly enjoys your company as I do.

The podcast Inside Late Night is back today. And do you have a book coming out? Can I pre order it? How do I get this book? What’s it called?

I heard it’s called Love Johnny Carson. And you can go to either Amazon, Barnes and Noble Books, a million Target, there’s Walmart. There’s so many places, and people have been asking me, and this is really nice that they want if they want an autograph copy. There’s a place called a Story of Bookshop that’s an astoria in Queens, New York City. So a Story of Bookshop is pre ordering for signed copies.

So yeah, please make me happy and pre order. And there’s definitely stuff in this book that it’s primarily new stuff that people do not know. This is not on my podcast, and I did my best. It’s one hundred and thirty thousand words roughly with then I think it’s like fifty pages of citation something like that could be off a little bit, but I thought it was important to cite everything. And yeah, we have like stuff that when I was able to like use like Jim McCauley, who was the head book comedy booker on the Tonight Shopers stand ups from seventy seven until Johnny retired.

He wrote an unpublished book like a manuscript, and I was able to use some of it, which with permission. So yeah, there’s a lot of stuff from like that. I just blew my mind that I had no idea just doing research reading McCauley’s unpublished manuscript and some other things. So all that stuff is there. Weird bit.

Were you able to get to Letterman? Dave Letterman talked to me even though I worked on his show for eleven months and fifteen days. No, not all. Dave will not talk to me. I’ve tried so many times.

He you know, I think he just he does it when he feels like he’ll talk to somebody about race, car driving or something. I don’t think he likes talking about his own comedy unless he has to, or about maybe it’s Johnny was such a special thing to him that I think he did it for the PBS documentary talked about Johnny. But I don’t know if it would just be too hard for him just to talk about his guy that meant so much to him. But no, I mean I tried so many times back on the podcasting with this. I think he knows about it, but and it’s what it is.

I mean, I had a bunch of things in the book I did want. I tried to get him to verify, but I feel like my sources are good enough that I just they’re in the book and I just would have loved to talk to him. Maybe he’ll look at the book. But at the end of the day, Dave, from the people I talked to that knew him, some of them, he’s just a shy guy and he just doesn’t feel comfortable around people he doesn’t know. I’m sure it’s gotten a lot better since he’s left the show, but it’s just what it is.

I would not want somebody to feel uncomfortable interview in them. I mean I get it. Like I’ve had like certain famous people that are just like I am, uncomfortable doing interviews and I was like, Okay, then we have nothing else to talk about it. I appreciate you getting back to me. I don’t want you’re feeling comfortable.

So that’s that’s all I can do, is respect to know. Definitely, there were people that took me five or six years, like Diane Cammon or Angie Dickinson, where I just once in a while would be like, you know, I’m still doing this. I would love for you to consider it. This is somebody I talked to you recently. Here’s the episode which you can listen to.

And sometimes I am in the game of, like you know, holding out and checking in and you never know, and sometimes it takes a little longer. So Love Dave to do Inside Late Night, so who knows, but so far it has not happened with him. I’m going to stop asking you questions that we’re going to be here for four hours. Mark now, this is fine. His book is Love Johnny Carson.

His podcast is Inside Late Night. We should also plug latenighter dot com. I’m on there daily, a great resource. Appreciate you, thank you for your time today. Yeah, it’s nice to talk to you again.

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Featured: Mark Malcoff, Jason Zinneman

What’s in This Episode

• Jimmy Kimmel Live returns after Disney conversations
• Mark Malcoff’s new book ‘Love Johnny Carson’ and Late Night hosts discussion
• Caleb Hearn HBO Max special with political material about Trump and Republicans
• Cristella Alonso Netflix special ‘Upper Classy’ concluding trilogy
• Bert Kreischer starring in comedy film ‘Homecoming’
• Adam Sandler performs at Buffalo and Syracuse, visits basketball centers

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

Caloroga Shark Media. My, oh my, we’re having some fun now. Hello, I’m Johnny Mac with your Daily Comedy News. I know I’m feeding your feed every ten minutes with stuff. On Monday after noon, just as I was editing this show, I got a text from my business partner, Mark Francis.

He’s like, Kimble’s back tomorrow, and I’m like, oh good, because I have to teach In an hour. ABC announce that Jimmy Kimmel Alive is returning two nights after thoughtful conversations with parent company Disney. So here’s the plan for today. You’re about to get the normal Tuesday episode as I’ve been doing. I’ve just been doing the normal stuff as their own regular episodes.

Around noon today, assuming I actually got a chance to do the edit and a new opening, I have recorded an hour with Mark Malcoff, you know him from the Inside Late Night podcast, which is back today with a new episode. And he’s got a book coming out called Love Johnny Carson. So I asked him on to mainly talk about Carson, but we also said words like Fallon and Leno and Letterman and oh yeah, Kimmel and Colbert. We got into that too, so I gotta put that out around noon. Now.

Luckily, my spidy sense must have been tingling, because at some point I said something like Mark, I just want the audience to know that it’s like one pm on Monday as we’re recording this, because I have a feeling the news cycle will change seven times between us recording this and me actually publishing it. Johnny Mac was right, it’s not dated at all because we really were focused on the carson of it all. But that’s coming up around noon today, and then I have to catch my breath and I’m going to get out a Kimmel bonus episode later today. I’m also scheduled to record with friend of the show, Jason Zinneman from The New York Times, so I’ll have to figure out how that slots into all of this, and you know, and then tomorrow on Wednesday, it’ll be super busy because I’ll have to tell you what Jimmy Kimmel said and all that. So plenty, plenty of stuff coming up in this feed.

And let me now just abruptly cut what I had said before the Kimble news broke, and I was talking about Caleb Heern. Caleb Heron had that new special. This was an HBO Max special. We’ll get back to that. He commented on why President Donald Trump and other conservative Republicans are some of his favorite straight guys.

He says, because they hate gay people so much and they’re such and then he used the F word, not that F word, the other F word. Why did he go political in a special? Caleb said, because every day I feel e fing insane. These people in charge are liars, They’re evil, and I’m not scared of these mfors. These right wing fascist freaks are trying to make a Christo fascist government in the United States.

Right now. I see right through them. They’re weakend pathetic. I feel like in the national conversation there’s a lack of normal people just telling the efing truth. So I did watch some of the special on Sunday night between the main football schedule and Sunday Night football.

I was surprised this thing made HBO Max. Now. I share this thought in the Facebook group Daily Coming his podcast group. It might just be that I live on old Man Mountain and I’m always protective of brands, and I felt like this thing airing on something with an HBO logo anywhere near it it felt very below par. This looks like a YouTube special, like you know, Caleb at the Chuckle Hut and just thrown up on YouTube.

It looks like one of those, and that to me does not say HBO like if I look at the recent Mark Maron special, visually, it looks like something on par with a George Carland special from thirty years ago. That in my old man brain is what HBO comedy is. But I guess we live in this era where between this whole HBOHBO Max, HBO now Max Max plus, so all that and plus putting the HBO shows on the same platform, on the same level with Doctor Pimple Popper, They’ve watered down their brand. And I think this is a great example of that of this to me is not HBO comedy. Apparently it’s HBO Max common And I don’t think the civilians understand that.

Surprise they this thing belongs on YouTube or maybe possibly hilarious, but this is not an HBO special. The material is also sea level. Cristella Alonso has a Netflix special out today. She opens her hour with this joke. I’ll spoil one joke for you.

I had to make sure I drank some water room temperature because I hate ice, all right, So that tells you where this special is coming from. Coristella caught up with the La Times. Upper Classy is the culmination of a trilogy of specials. Cristella explains it started off as this random idea where I thought, what if I did a trilogy and showed life as I progressed. I got the idea because when I had my sitcom, one of the biggest notes from the network, which was ABC, right, if I’m remembering quickly, we’re mad at them?

This week from the network in the studio was it has to be about a sension. The family has to improve grow. And I always thought, well, what does that mean in your mind? What do you think making it means? Because I can tell you that for my family, what making it means was very simple.

We have money to pay the bills, but they’re like no more and more, Well, I don’t know the more. I’m still here. So I started thinking, what if in a weird way I document the ascension of me coming into my life. Lower Classy really was this is my bile, this is how my mom was, this is how my family was, this is how I’m doing I shot the first special in August of twenty sixteen. Then the election happened, and I was so depressed because I assume people were better than what they turned out to be.

I actually didn’t know what I was going to do, and I decided to take a break from stand up and everything because I couldn’t mentally handle it and I didn’t feel like being funny. I didn’t feel like being anything she talks about middle classy. I started making a list of things that were different from me, and I wrote health insurance, and that’s when I realized I didn’t know health insurance work. That’s kind of how middle classy started. Upper classy has a play to it in two ways.

Look at how rich I am. You didn’t think I was gonna be that rich because of the story that I share. But also look at the persona my family made me to be. Bert Kreischer is going to star in a comedy movie called Homecoming. In Homecoming, we follow divorced dad Bert.

The character Bert attends his college homecoming and an attempt to reconnect with his eldest daughter, who attends is Alma matter. This sounds like an Adam Saylor movie so far. When Bert arrives on campus, he realizes his kids have parent trapped him with his ex wife. From there, the weekend’s focus turns to competition to boscherus Mayhem, and perhaps a chance to reunite his family. That actually doesn’t sound horrible, but I’m kind of surprised that doesn’t star Adam Sandler and say Sonny Sandler.

Speaking of Adam Sandler, he was at the Buffalo Sabers game before performing his comedy act. He met some members of the Sabers. The team boasted on social media do the guys think shampoo is better or conditioner? They also posted a Sabers GoAhead jersey with Gilmour on the back and a bandaged jersey with Sandman on the back. Syracuse dot Com went to see an Adam Sandler comedy show.

Adam Sandler, as you know, is a fine dramatic actor. He made several good movies, including uncut gems in the Spaceman movie, in the Basketball One, and a lot of terrible movies. Syracuse dot com tells us. On stage, dramatic actor Adam Sandler told the audience he loves Syracuse and share that he and his crew plan a head to Dinosaur barbecue after the show. Earlier in the day, he had visited the Carmelo Anthony Bastball Center, where he played pick up basketball with the members of the SU men’s and women’s basketball team.

Sandler was dressed in his classic oversized style, bright red track pants and a baggy pullover. Wow, I’m actually dressed better than Adam Sandler. I have a properly sized gray sweatshirt on that I got in California, and my often worn gray sweatpants, and of course my neon blue like Miami Dolphins blue. Hocus, those are sneakers. I digress.

At one point, the great dramatic actor Adam Saandlor invited audience members up to the stage so we could sing totally unstrue songs about them. Special guests Rob Schneider and Kevin Neelan were the openers. Sunny Cortland alumnus Kevin James got one of the biggest ovations when walked on stage wearing a Syracuse lacrosse shirt. The local Syracusians is that what you’re called enjoy that, Syracuse dot Com tells us. By the end of the night, Syracuse has gotten more than a comedy performance.

It was an evening of laughter, nostalgia, and music, tied together with enough local shoutouts to make the crowd feel like part of the act. John almost forgot to do the Toronto Comedy Festival again. Why don’t you put Toronto in the scripts? John, because John has been recording a lot of Jimmy Kimmel related stuff. I have not had a minute to myself since last Monday.

Knock a playing. I’m just telling you why I don’t have this in the script. But I didn’t forget. I am having a lot of fun doing this. I’m pumping out a lot of content for good reason or for bad reason actually, but just having a lot of fun.

Okay, today is September twenty third. As I mentioned yesterday that the new owners haven’t done a great job with this website. Okay, here we go, eight o’clock tonight. Matthew Brissard. He was a guest on this show and I like him a lot.

He’s fantastic. He’s at the Bloor Blor Comedy Bar at eight Sabrina Wu at eight thirty of the Dan Firth Comedy Bar. One of the things I like about the Toronto Comedy Festival, it’s mostly bar scenes and you can hop. I haven’t checked, and I should know this. You know, I only host the program.

In the past they would have like a bar hopper pass where you could just go to a bunch of shows. Now I had media credentials because I’m fancy, but it was a really good deal and it’s a great way to do the festival. It’s pretty quiet on a Tuesday that there’s a couple other things that you haven’t heard of. That’s what’s happening there tonight. If he needs something to watch on the eight hundred Pound Guerrillas YouTube channel, Chris Gethard’s The Father and the Son.

Got a lot of TV news that I didn’t get to, none of it having to do with late night. Doctor Cox is back. John c McGinley is joining the Scrubs revival, so I think they have everybody now. I don’t know if we have the Todd. I don’t know if the Todd is back, but we’ve got JD and Turk Elliot’s back.

Haven’t heard anything about Neil Flynn as the janitor. I don’t think. I mean, Neil’s got that modern family money right, he might not need to work anymore. Neil Flynn might have like secret cash, but I could see Neil Flynn showing up Carla’s back, and Doctor Kelso was played by Ken Jenkins Ken eighty five years old now, so it wouldn’t make any sense for him to actually be on the show. But I wouldn’t be surprised if we check in with him at one point.

And the Todd. The Todd appears in one hundred and twenty six episodes of Scrubs. Wow, we’ll see if he turns up. The paper is going to Proper NBC. Now.

I’ve been watching this thing. People keep asking about it. It’s not funny, but it’s watchable. The main two characters are likable. The secondary cast I think is actually subpar, but the main two are charismatic enough that they’re carrying this show and it’s something to have on while you’re playing on your phone, prepping your podcast, killing time until Thursday night football starts.

It’s like, I think I like it. I definitely don’t love it. If it got canceled, I would go on with my day. I guess what I’m saying is it’s better than I initially thought, but it is not funny. But anyway, it’s going to air on Proper NBC.

Lisa Katz, who’s the president of Scripted Programming Entertainment, said in a statement, knowing how much The Office was beloved by a broadcast audience when it aired on NBC, we wanted to give the paper a similar opportunity to connect. Then you should have put it on NBC in the first place. One of the strengths of our company is meeting fans where they are by delivering shows across multiple platforms to maximize exposure and engagement. Translation, Oh, we saw that people didn’t hate this, so we’re going to give it a shot on NBC proper. The Paper will be on NBC Monday nights.

It’ll be paired with Saint Dennis Medical. I thought that was over. That’s still going huh, all right, maybe I’ll check that show out too. Rain Wilson was on the Last Laugh podcast. Is Dwight going to show up on the Paper?

Rain said, I don’t think so. I mean the paper set in Toledo and it’s a newspaper. I don’t know why Dwight from Lakwana County would be visiting Toledo. The answer would be, Rain Wilson needs a paycheck. That would be the answer.

So you’re telling me, Rain Wilson, you don’t need a paycheck. Let me ask you a really difficult question. Hey, Rain, we want to make you the co lead of the paper. Don’t worry about why Dwight is wearing a newspaper. But we’re going to give you steady work.

Now, what’s your answer. I’m just curious. The answer might be no. The last leaft set I’m sure they could come up with a reason, Rain Wilson said, You’re right, never say never. That certainly could happen.

And yeah, I think it would be fun. I mean, one thing I’ve always said to them is can we do a movie? Wouldn’t that be do a two hour movie? We could get like a billion people to watch a two hour office movie. The producers, Greg Daniels, they don’t think of it in those terms.

They think of it financially, like a movie will make X amount of dollars that will be on a streamer. It’s a lot of work. It’s much more lucrative to have a show that goes year after year after year. But I think it would be a lot of fun, and I think you get most of the main cast to participate. Eric Rayhill plays Travis on the paper, he said.

Right after I got signed, my agent sent my stuff to Greg Daniels, who would come in for an interview in the winter of twenty twenty three for a writer role. I thought it went well. I didn’t know. I called my parents like, I think I have a good vibe from this, but then I didn’t hear anything for five months. Yeah, welcome to getting hired in America.

So I took a job at Nordstrom Corporate and right after I started, I got this call in April and they were like, we want you to be a writer and we’ll figure out the acting. But I hadn’t told anyone at Nordstrom I did comedy. The writer’s room started on a Monday. I found out. I got it on a Friday afternoon, up a meeting with the north Strom boss at nine am, and Monday it was rough.

I felt bad. I just started and I was like, Hey, this is crazy, but I’m quitting immediately, and I can’t tell you what I’m working on because of an NBA. But I’m out. They were nice. My boss was a little blindside and said, we wish we would have told us she did comedy.

But then later was like I’m glad you’re doing something you believe in. Great company, by the way, and then at eleven am I joined the Zoom for the Writer’s Room. Natasha Leone and Matt Berry are going to co create and star in the new retro comedy adventure series Force and Majure for UK Sky Network. I Love Matt Barry. The show features a British art expert in an American mercenary teaming up against international villains.

Sky describes the show as a retro infuse playfully, I referent take on the classic TV action adventure detective genre in Force and Majure. British art expert Thomas Force love It, Matt Barry and American mercenary Jennifer Majore Natasha Leote. I love this. Back in the serious days, we used to play this game. I would travel the country with Mark Says, I was our on air talent and we would just play.

Either we would either make up air Bud movies my fair We came up with was Paw position, which would have had Airbud the Golden Retriever driving in a NASCAR race. How that would have worked? Who cares? It’s an Airbud movie? And I remember we used to have a show called Side Out, which would have been about a gay volleyball player and his name was something like James side Johnson something like that, because that’s what NBC would name show.

So I love that. Force and Majure is about Thomas Force and Jennifer Majure. Love it. The pair are recruited by an eccentric, justice obsessed billionaire named Amanda Daventry and find themselves tesked with defeating the evil plans of international villains operating in locations across Europe. But as Force and Majure team up to defeat the forces of evil, they must also work together to escape the clutches of Amanda, a billionaire woman who may not be telling them the whole story.

Force and Majure will be s to us buyers. You can ingest that into my veins. Somewhere on the internet. You should watch Toast of London and Toast of la Let me just pull up just Watch and see if that’s available anywhere. Do you know about Just watch?

And I do this every time I mentioned just watch. It is a website that will tell you where these things are. Let’s see Toast of London, one of my favorites. It’s right now on britz Box if you have BritBox. Mitchell and Webb’s return doing well Mitchell and Webb are Not Helping has been seen by nearly two million viewers, making it UK’s Channel four’s biggest new comedy launched since twenty eighteen.

The opening episode, which launched September fifth at ten pm, hold in one point eight million viewers across linear and quote big screen streaming. In its first seven days got a twenty nine share among sixteen to thirty fours. Charlie Perkins is the head of Comedy at Channel four, and Charlie says they said sketch was dead, but it’s great to see a resurrection underway with Mitchell and Webb are not helping in these increasingly serious time It’s no surprise people turn to comedy for comfort and the release you can only get from watching a dog explode because it’s seen in expensive suitcase. David Mitchell said, I’ve never been worried about the future of comedy really, whether people make sketch shows or not. The future of the sketch show is indw forbid and still is, but I think it’s general people of comedy in this country more than anywhere in the world.

It’s why comedies get so savage by the media when they don’t work, because people really care and they’re offended by comedy being bad or not to their taste. If a drama doesn’t work, they just move on. But we’re passionate about comedy. And the Golden Globes is getting a companion TV special. This called Golden Eve.

Well air Thursday January eight, three days before the Golden Globes, which this year once again hosted by Nicky Glazer. I haven’t heard from her in a while. She was all over the news for the first half of the year. The Golden Eve will honor recipients of the Cecil bs Mill Award and the Carol Burnett Award. Oh one more, I see.

This is all the stuff I didn’t get to because of the kibbl Do you like friends? Well? Central Perk is opening a permanent location in New York’s Times Square. This is so if you are from New York, or if you work at New York, you don’t go to Times Square ever. I used to have to walk through Time Square.

It was the quickest way to get to work. And it’s a nightmare. I get. If you’re not from New York City, I get it. I get it’s really cool to stand there and look at all the electronic billboards and the big space, and you’ve heard of Times Square and you’ve heard of the New Year’s Ball drop.

I get it. But you’re from New York, you don’t go there.

And then you see things like the Bubba Gump Shrimp Store and you’re like, who…

So who goes there? Are the tourists, and the tourists are going to be excited that Central Perk is opening a permanent location in New York’s Times Square. The Coffee House is a quote modern day version of the place the Friends used to hang out at. Central Perk promises artisanal coffee drinks meaning nine dollars coffees, and Friends inspired food items. Central Perk will include a replica of the Orange Sofa, so enjoy standing online for your five second insta merchandise and take home coffee blends available for purchase.

You’ll find this on forty seventh and seventh. It is the second permanent outpost for Central Perk. There’s one in Boston. And that’s your comedy news for today. Keep checking the feed because stuff’s gonna pop up.

Normally i’d say see it tomorrow, but I might see you in five minutes. I have no idea what’s happening anymore. Just keep checking the feed, like once an hour ago, did he put out an episode? And maybe I did

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Featured: Jimmy Kimmel, Jon Stewart, John Mulaney, Amber Ruffin, Chelsea Handler, David Cross, Patton Oswalt, Ronny Chieng

What’s in This Episode

• Jimmy Kimmel Live suspension and return to ABC
• Disney and Jimmy Kimmel thoughtful conversations
• ACLU statement on government pressure against artists
• 400 artists sign ACLU free speech petition
• Jon Stewart returns to Daily Show Monday night

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

Caloroga Shark Media Megan, Jimmy Kimmel’s coming back on Tuesday. I’m doing this cold from deadline. Jimmy Kimmel is back ABC, returning Late show on Tuesday after quote thoughtful conversations with parent company Disney. A spokesperson said last Wednesday, we made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country. It’s a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill timed and thus insensitive.

We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday. So all eyes and ears will be on Jimmy Kimmel on Tuesday nights. Let me see what other news has come in in this last hour. This happened right in the three pm hour Eastern time on Monday. Yeah, that looks like all that is bring now.

The ACLU earlier on Monday put out a statement. The opening paragraph there, we the people must never accept government threats to our freedom of speech, Efforts by leaders to pressure artists, journalists, and companies with retaliations for their speech strike at the heart of what it means to live in a free country, and was signed by four hundred artists. Let me just scan this here and see if I see any comedians. Al Yankovic, Alison Bree, Amber Ruffin, and again, apologies if I’m missing anyone. I’m doing this really quickly.

Anthony Jesslinik Brad Hall. I believe he’s married to Julia, Louis Dreyfus, Chelsea Handler, Chelsea Peretti, David Cross, Gianmarco Soresi Siresi, who, by the way, I’m going to talk with on Wednesday. We’ll have a bonus episode. We can’t bog down on that right now. Jason Alexander, Julia, Louis Dreyfus, Catherine Hahn, Kamil Nan Gianni, Murray, Beth Borone, Maya, Rudolph, Michael Ian Black, Michael Costa, Michael McKean, Numesh Patel, paton Oswalt, Paul Sheer, Rachel Dratch, Rommie Yusef, Ronny Chieng, Roywood, Junior Sammurrel.

He’ll be at the Riyadh Comedy Festival, by the way, while he’s signing this thing for the ACLU I Digress, Taylor Thompson, Tignazaro, and w camal Bell. My apologies if there are other comedians or comedic actors on here whose names I missed. Okay, so that’s a quick bonus episode on Monday afternoon. Jimmy Kimmel back on Tuesday. Jon Stewart is in the Daily Show A Chair tonight on Monday night, so that should be pretty interesting.

I have to go teach college class and Jimmy. Sometimes I do other things, man, I can’t do Jimmy Kimble bonus episodes left and right, normal episode in the morning, and then at noon tomorrow. I’ve already recorded with Mark Malkoff from the Inside Late Night podcast, and I’m gonna put a new open on that one nudge nudge, know what I mean, Say no more? All right? By

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Featured: Jimmy Kimmel, Donald Trump, Peter Doocey, Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, Charlie Kirk, Rand Paul, Brendan Carr

What’s in This Episode

• Trump’s Fox News criticism of late night hosts Kimmel, Fallon, and Colbert
• Trump’s speech at Charlie Kirk memorial service
• Jimmy Kimmel suspension and controversial comments about Charlie Kirk shooting
• John Oliver’s defense of Jimmy Kimmel on Last Week Tonight
• FCC chair Brendan Carr threatening action against Disney over late night commentary
• Senator Rand Paul criticizing Brendan Carr’s FCC overreach

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

Caloroga Shark Media. This is the Jimmy Kimmel related bonus episode for Monday, September twenty second. The normal Monday episode is earlier in the feed. Hello, I’m Johnny Mac. President Trump was on Fox Sunday briefing.

The President was framed on the left side of your television. On the right side, host Peter Doocey in between them a framed photograph on the wall. I guess in the White House of President George Washington. If you’re not familiar with Peter Doocey, he is the son of longtime Fox host Steve Doocey. Peter is thirty eight years old and you may know him as the Fox Senior White House correspondent.

President Trump had this to say. When I look at Jimmy Kimmel, he had no talent. He had no talent. He was a crazy I don’t know if you remember, I did a truth before he gave out the Best Picture Award in the Academy Awards. He hosted it.

He did a terrible jam. I said, what a terrible job he did. He’s the worst host in Academy history. And this was during the show and he saw it and just before the climax of the Hoshel like best Picture or Best Actor, whatever it was. He read my truth saying about how bad he was, and then I dispute this.

It was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. His wife was begging him not to do it, his agent was begging him not to do it. There’s something wrong with the guy. When I look at Fallon, he’s the most insecure looking person I’ve ever seen on television. And the other one, Colbert, who just got canceled, as you know, just terrible.

And it’s a hundred to think of this. It’s one hundred percent bad about Trump. They don’t say anything even conservatives. Somebody said they I think in two years, two or three of them, or maybe all three of them, they never even spoke to a Republican or conservative. It’s one of the reasons they do so badly, because they don’t realize what’s happening.

But when you look at these shows, and when you look at how untalented they are, I could get people off the street to do a better job than Colbert. He’s terrible. He’s terrible, and it’s not because he says bad things. I don’t watch it purposely. I don’t watch it, but I don’t find it enjoyable.

I don’t find him good. I don’t find any of the three. I could get people off the street right now, you and I could walk outside of the beautiful White House, walk down the street. I could look at some people and they would do better in ratings, and they would have more talent than any of those three good. It was a busy weekend for the president.

He attended the memorial service for Charlie Kirk on Sunday. During his speech at the memorial service for the assassinated Charlie Kirk, the President of the United States had this to say. Over the last eleven days, we have heard stories of commentators, influencers, and others in our society who greeted his assassination with sick approval, excuses, or even jubilation. You’ve heard that, though if I couldn’t believe it. You know the names.

They’re major losers by the way they’ll be that will be proven out in a short period of time. Some of the very people who call you a hater for using the wrong pronoun were filled with lee at the killing of a father with two beautiful young children, and the same commentators who this week are screaming fascism over canceled late night TV show where the anchor had no talent and no ratings. Last week, we’re implying that Charlie Kirk deserved what happened to him. No side in American politics as a monopoly undisturbed or misguided people. But there’s one part of our political community which believes they have a monopoly on truth, goodness, and virtue and concludes they have also a monopoly on power, thought and speech.

Well, that’s not happening anymore. We’ve turned that corner very quickly. On the flight home from the memorial for Charlie Kirk, the President of the United States said this aboard Air Force One. First of all, he said a terrible thing about Charlie, but he also suffers. From the back.

He’s got no talent and he’s got no ratings, a deadly combination.

Also, I believe that this is from Air Force One on September eighteenth.

The President is on a plane during this, so I’m assuming it’s Air Force One. But the President had this to say. When you have a. Network and you have evening shows and all they do is it Trump that’s all they do. If you go back, I can say I haven’t had a conservative going in years or something somebody said.

But when you go back and kick a look, all they do. Is a trump the license we’ve been allowed. To do that. They’re an arm of the Democrat parties. Thanks everybody.

Senator Ran Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, said that FCC chair Brendan Carr’s comments threatening to take action against Disney last week were quotes absolutely inappropriate. Republican Senator Ran Paul said, Brendan Carr’s got no business weighing in on this, but people have to also realize the despicable comments. You have the right to say them, but you don’t have the right to employment. John Oliver on his show Sunday Night, went in deep about this. I went to pull the clips, but you know how Oliver does this thing.

He’ll make a point, then he’ll tell a joke, then I’ll play a clip. And I started to pull it, and it was just going to be way more efficient if I just tell you the words that John Oliver himself said. Oliver on last week Tonight. A person getting shot is tragic, and a person getting shot for their ideas is horrifying. That is true no matter what those ideas are, and I recognize that for many, especially those who are targets of some of Kirk’s ideas, it’s been hard to stay quiet as they see flags lowered to half staff and claims that he debated things the right way.

But setting all of that aside, it does seem like some are now willing to weaponize Kirk’s death to do things they’ve been wanting to do for years, whether it’s going after liberal groups, trans people, or the remaining critics in the media, and under some shamelessly flimsy pretext, all of which brings us back to Jimmy Kimmel. Oliver then says the comments they got Kimmel in trouble weren’t about Kirk. In fact, Kimmel’s first comments about his murder or a post reading can we just for one day agree that it’s horrible and monstrous to shoot another human on behalf of my family. We send love to the Kirks and to all the children, parents, and innocence who fall victim to senseless gun violence. Again, that was a social media post by Jimmy Kimmel.

Oliver says what got Kimmel in trouble was a passing reference on Monday Night. Now, I’ve played that clip several times in the bonus episodes. I won’t do it again, but in my opinion, it is clearly a President Trump joke and not a Charlie Kirk joke. Possibly, perhaps it could have been phrased even more clearly. Now, this next thing from Oliver is interesting.

John said, Weirdly, I was actually a guest on a show that night, and I didn’t even register that comment. That’s only partly because I wasn’t really paying attention, And I’m not alone in that. After Kimmel’s suspension, many struggle to pick up the offensive line out of his monologue, as YouTube is filled with comments under the video like I’m still waiting for the offensive part I have I mentioned in one of these bonus episodes. Somewhere. As I was putting together the show one day last week, I saw a Newsweek article that said something along the lines of people upset about Jimmy kimmel controversial comments, and I clicked on it to put it into the script for the show.

And as I read it, I was like, I thought it was a nothing story, Like I didn’t read and be like, oh wow, this is going to be a thing. And I’ve got a pretty good sense for this is going to be a thing, So I’m with Oliver there. Oliver continued, The point is Kimmel didn’t denigrate Charlie Kirker make light of his killing. The worst thing you could say is that appears have been wrong about the shooter’s ideology, which okay, but he was pointing out that many on the right seemed desperate to weaponize Kirk’s death, an argument that’s aged pretty well given you know everything that’s happened to Kimmel since. Oliver then went on to call out Next Star and Sinclair.

Oliver says that when one media reporter asked chairman Carr for a comment, he sent back a smiley emoji and sent a gift of the office to CNN. Oliver said, look, I like the office. Who doesn’t like the Office? Sure I could have done without season eight nine, But if it’s not at a hotel, I’m not kicking it out of bed. That’s it.

I want you to run through your friend list in your head right now and pick out the person most likely to text you from the office. Do you have them in mind, very least favorite friend, right, just be honest. Actually that’s me, Thanks a lot, John Oliver. I am the person who’s gonna do that. They’re the one that invite you to stuff just because you’re afraid no one else will show up.

They’re a third string friend. They’re your backup’s backup. But if you’re thinking there’s nothing wrong with office gifts, I’m afraid that person might be you. Okay, busted more from John Oliver. Not because comedians are important, because we are not.

If the government can force a network to pull a late night show off the air and do so in plain view, it could do a bleap of a lot. Worse. It was fun while it lasted, guys, whatever happened next, let me say now it has been the honor of my life to age like a haunted painting before your very eyes. Which should be clear to everyone at the first Amendment is absolutely critical in this country. That is something even Brendan Carr knows, given that he wants tweeted.

Free speech is the counterweight, it’s the check on government control. This is why censorship is the authoritarian’s dream. Oliver. Then up, he directly addressed Disney CEO, Bob Iiger. Hither Bob, we haven’t met yet, but you probably know me as America’s third favorite Zazu.

That is the character John Oliver voice in The Lion King. Congratulations on recasting that role. By the way, it was a fun thing to learn about that after the fact. Anyway, one day, the history of time we’re living through is going to be written. And when it is, I’m not sure it’s those in this administration who are even going to come off the worst.

Now, don’t get me wrong, they’re going to come off terribly, but history is always gonna remember the cowards who definitely knew better but still let things happen, whether it was for money, convenience, or discomfort. And I know this is something of a tough sell. It could be a bit of anathema to reconverse business leaders, but I will say this, if we’ve learned nothing else from this administration’s second term so far, I don’t think we have. It’s that given the bully or lunch money doesn’t make him go away, It just makes him come back hungrier each time. They’re never going to stop.

At some point, you’re going to have to draw a line. So I’d argue, why not try it right here? And when they come to you with ridiculous demands, picking fights that you know you could win in court, instead of rolling over, why not stand up and use four words they don’t teach you in business school. Not okay, you’re the boss, not whatever you say goes, but instead the only phrase that can genuinely make a week bully go away, and that is f you make me. I know I did a lot of reading there and I try not to do that, but just such a major story there.

We do a couple more things here real quick. At eight forty one am on Monday morning Eastern time, I google the phrase Joe Rogan Kimmel. Nothing came up, and I’ve seen a lot of people talking about, oh, they should just bring back Strike Force five. So let me do some analysis here. This is based on my knowledge and I use chat GPT to help me with a math here, so a quick lesson from Professor Mack here.

Podcasts are sold on what’s called a CPM model. CPM means costs per thousand and for a live read for a host read, say a guy in his basement talking about football betting. You know that kind of thing. It is based off a CPM model. As a podcasting executive, when we model shows usually to start with a basic twenty dollars CPM.

So what that means is, if let’s say this podcast gets one thousand listeners, how much would I charge for an AD. I would charge twenty dollars. If I get, say two thousand listeners, I would charge you two times the twenty dollars CPM. So on AD would cost forty dollars. If I get a million listeners, well, then I’m not doing the show from the basement.

I’m doing the show from the French riviera. But that is not the case, okay. So I asked chat GPT, who got back to me and said, here is the full year model for Strikeforce five, with agents, managers, and lawyers included. I’ll use conservative industry typical math, where agent, manager and lawyer each take their percentage from the same commissionable base. Here are the assumptions.

I’m assuming Strikeforce five would get one million downloads per episode. It’s just a number I made up. It might get a thousand downloads, it might get ten million. But the numbers here based on a million per episode. And I’ve worked on some pretty good shows, A million per episode would be a pretty good number.

Do bigger shows do more than that? Sure? For the CPM. For this, I didn’t use twenty dollars. I used thirty dollars, saying a premium CPM model, saying, oh wow, you’ve got Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel and these other guys.

You know, the Strikeforce five guys. So I charged a thirty dollars CPM. I’m gonna put six live reads host reads per episode, okay, six. I’m gonna have the guys put out fifty two episodes per year, so they’re gonna do an hour a week per year. So the people that sell the ads for you normally will take around a thirty percent.

But for this I used ten percent of the gross, which is a number I’ve seen with some pretty big shows. I’ve seen that first hand, one show doing a deal that gave the commercial seller ten percent of the gross. So let’s use ten percent. Let’s let’s say that the Strikeforce five guys are getting a really good deal here, and we’ll pay their agent ten percent, their manager ten percent, they’re layer five percent. Okay, those are all the assumptions.

Rreshoals at a thirty dollars CPM is one hundred and eighty thousand dollars gross. Will do that fifty two times a year. So in advertising, we’re going to generate nine million, three hundred and sixty thousand dollars, or one hundred and eighty thousand dollars per episode. But don’t forget, there’s five guys. I’ll cut to the chase here, after all the commissions and all the other math my napkin sketch math here, says Jimmy Kimmel.

If he did Strike Force five with the other four guys, Jimmy Kimmel would clear about one point three million dollars a year, roughly around twenty five thousand dollars an episode. The same would be true of the other four hosts. Now one point three million dollars a year for working an hour once a week, where the other four hosts are going to help carry the load. Yeah, that’s pretty good money. It is not sixteen million dollars a year or whatever Kimmel’s making hosting a late night show.

It’s a lot better than Daily Comedy News basement money, I’ll tell you that, but it’s not eleven to thirty five money, and I just went back in after the edit. I just want to clear up. So that’s the number. If Jimmy Caky did Strike Force five, if he did a solo show, he would make around nine million dollars, very very rough math, assuming one million downloads. I saw there’s talk of another protest outside of the Kimmel offices on Monday in Los Angeles.

I’ll cover that if that becomes the news. There’s a petition campaign on move On. As of Sunday afternoon, the petition had cornered around one hundred and fifty four thousand signatures demanding ABC and Disney reinstate Kimmel. These petitions usually mean nothing, and I want to remind the boycotters I’m on team Kimmel in case that isn’t clear. But I want to remind you tonight when you’re like, oh, it’s Monday Night football.

I love Monday Night football. Bucket, ap Man, they’re my pals, the Banning Brothers, all that well, all that airs on ESPN, which is owned by Disney. Who are the people that have kicked Kimmel off the air. So you’re either boycotting or you’re not. I’m fine if you’re not I understand.

I’m going to watch Monday Night football today. I’m still going to watch the Empire strikes back. Perhaps I’m a sellout, perhaps I’m weak. I’m just being honest. You do you, but I just want to tell you.

If you’re boycotting, you got a boycott. You can’t be like, oh, I’m boycotting Disney except Monday Night Football. That’s not a boycott. Then you’re just on my team, which is fine. Pull up next to me on the couch.

That’s your bonus for Monday. Keep checking the feed. I’ve got a few interviews scheduled. I’m not sure whether going to be deployed or not, so just keep checking the feed, and of course back on Tuesday morning with a quote unquote normal episode. See you then,

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Featured: Dave Chappelle, Bill Burr, Pete Davidson, Kevin Hart, Andrew Santino, Bobby Lee, Louis C.K., Jimmy Carr, Russell Peters, Chris Tucker, Jeff Ross, Sebastian Maniscalco, Hannibal Buress, Andrew Schulz, Wayne Brady, Jack Whitehall, Joe Cosey, Gianmarco Soresi, Jimmy Fallon

What’s in This Episode

• First-ever Riyadh Comedy Festival lineup and dates
• Comedian Dillon disinvited from Riyadh festival for podcast comments
• New York Times article on optics of comedians performing in Saudi Arabia
• Hollywood Reporter media trust survey results for late night hosts
• Jimmy Kimmel trust ratings and political perception in survey
• Stand Up for Heroes returning for 19th year at New York Comedy Festival
• Gianmarco Soresi’s new YouTube comedy special review and material
• Jimmy Kimmel free speech and government overreach bonus episodes

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

Caloroga Shark Media. Gianmarco Soresi Areisi’s news special is terrific. We’ll talk about that in a second. Hi, I’m Johnny Mac with your Daily Comedy News. This is the normal episode for Monday Morning.

I’ll continue to do Kimmel bonuses. There was one yesterday afternoon, and I know in light of the Jimmy Kimmel story, a lot of people are concerned about free speech and government overreached, and again I’ll cover that in bonus episodes. Totally separate topic. This week is the first ever ri Odd Comedy Festival. Let me tell you who’s heading to Saudi Arabia to perform at the Riyadh Comedy Festival.

Bill Burr he’ll be there on the twenty sixth. Andrew Santino and Bobby Lee they’re there on the twenty sixth and twenty seventh. Whinney Cummings is there on the twenty sixth. Christa Stefano on the twenty seventh. Dave Chappelle he’s there on the twenty seventh.

The not so canceled Disease I’m Sorry on the twenty eighth, Kevin Hart on September twenty eighth, Mesh Pttel also on the twenty eighth. Jessica Curson September twenty ninth, Elisa Dick on the thirtieth, David galasiast on the first, Omid Jelly on the first, Chris Tucker October second, Jeff Ross the roast Master. He’ll be roasting, I guess at the three Odd Comedy Festival on October second. Russell Peters doing three shows on the second, third, and fourth. Zarna garg is heading over there on October second.

Mark Normand one of your favorite comedians. He’s there on October third. Pete Davidson, who tragically his father was killed on nine to eleven. His father was a New York City firefighter. I don’t know if you know that.

Pete Davidson is performing at the Odd Comedy Festival on October third. Darry Spears on October fifth, Jimmy Carr and Louis C.K. Together on October sixth. You know, if that was in New York City, I’d go see that. That’s a pretty good show.

Jack Whitehall on October seventh, Palestinian American comedian Moa. Mayer on October seventh. Wayne Brady, He’s there October seventh. Were doing some improv. Joe Cooy he’s there on October eight.

Maybe he’s going to make some jokes about Taylor Swift. You don’t know. Sam Murrill’s there October eighth. Dillon was going to be the October eighth, but he was disinvited for some he made some comments on his podcast. Tom Sagora He’s going to be there October eighth.

Andrew Schultz, he’s got a couple podcasts that are political. He’s there on October ninth. Hannibal Burris is there in a ninth. Sebastian Maniscalco is there on the ninth. So you can see what a big comedy festival this is coming to Riyadh And by the way, did I promote I’m talking about the old Jimmy Kimmel free speech government depression thing.

I’m doing that as bonus episodes. I forget if I mentioned that at the top. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know what was happening in comedy festivals this week and where all your favorite comedians are heading. Now, I had that in the notes already because I like to let you know what’s happening in comedy festivals. But I saw Jason Zinnemann, friend of the show, wrote in The New York Times.

Starting next week, many of the most popular American stand up stars he mentioned Chappelle, Bill Burn, Kevin Harnt in parentheses, will perform at a huge new festival in Riyadh hosted by a government not exactly known for its openness to dissent. The optics were never great, but the timing is now especially awkward. The Hollywood Reporter had an article about the most trusted people in media. Some of it was focused on newscasters, but in terms of late night host, Jimmy Fallon is the host who gets most often labeled as the least political of the broadcast. Late Nighters has the highest trust, while John Stewart his trust rating is down a little bit.

Greg Gottfeld saw his credibility rise with Americans since the last time the survey was taken in twenty twenty four. Stephen Colbert’s trust numbers are down seven points. And I think this survey was taken before Jimmy Kimmel was removed from the airwaves. But at the time of the survey, forty eight percent of respondents in the Hollywood Porter Morning Consult poll described Jimmy Kimmel as having quote a very liberal or quote somewhat liberal lean, which was higher than all his other late night contemporaries. Stand Up four Heroes is coming back as part of the New York Comedy Festival.

It’s its nineteenth year. It’ll be November tenth at the David Geffenhall and Lincoln Center. Nice lineup including Mike Birbiglia, Alex Edelman, and Jim Gaffigan. Maybe he’ll try and sell you some bourbon, Tom Poppa, John Stewart and Moore. Stand Up for Heroes has raised one hundred and thirteen million dollars to day to help all veterans and military families have successful futures.

I did get to watch Gianmarco Soresi Siresi’s new special on YouTube. It is fanastic, like really good. As I was watching it, I was thinking, Wow, the number of jokes per second is just incredible.

And then I remember Dane Cook had a laughs per metric thing that he used to d…

So I’m gonna quote Bob Hope theory, which was tell a joke like every six seconds, and some of them might land. I mean, Gianmarco Soresi is just joke after joke after joke, and so many of them land strongly. The special is really good. I also appreciate and other reviews have pointed out his physicality, and at first I was like, Oh, his physicalities helped selling those jokes. That’s interesting.

And then I took my eyes off the screen. I’m like, Nope, the physicality is just part of the entertainment. But the material is solid, solid, solid, Plus you get the physicality on top a really strong special. Jermark will tell the Post this was a real amalgamation of chunks from my first year, bigger stories that have been fine tuned over the years, and bits from the last six months. Some people are more familiar with my crowd work, and I think they’ll be pleasantly surprised that this is more of a joke special.

Basically, the idea was, if he didn’t know me, this is your intro to my taste, who I am, how I feel, and a good preview of what you’re gonna get if you ever see me live. Some of it got cut, he told the Post, Yeah, it was originally eighty minutes. We cut a lot. We cut a joke that I’ve been doing since my first year that I worried I’d put out too much. It’s about my father.

He’s Italian. We kiss each other goodbye. One day, my room had asked, do you kiss each other in public? And I said, yeah, it’d be weird if I only kissed him in private. That’s a great joke.

My girlfriend, who’s also my manager, is my guiding light into terms of telling me, I think that’s been done in a way that it would feel like an audience member might think I’ve already heard that part, so I left it out. You know. As I was watching the special, I was like, wait, I’ve heard this chunk. Where do I know this chunk from? And I was just confused, And then I realized, Oh, he had done a little bit of this material back in July up at Montreal, and I was like, oh, okay, okay, that’s where I know that from.

Gianmarco Soresi says, I’m retiring all the material from this special. So right now I’m talking about AI and the ways it feels like AI and robotics have moved past helping human beings. I was just trying to see if I could get him on. I was talking with this publicist. We’re very friendly.

I’m very friendly with that camp. But Gianmarco Soresi’s running around, so this isn’t like one of those like, oh I can’t get to you know whatever comedian. I can’t get to Mark Marron. I would love to get to Mark Marin. I just can’t.

But I was thinking when I was watching it, I’m like, wow, Gianmarco Soresi here is just torching all his material. I was wondering what he had left. So it’s good to hear that answer. Gianmarco Soresi said, I try to paint my dad in a more positive light because I found out he’s been on Ashley Madison and a number of dating apps. Or woman reached out to me and she decided to not date my father partially because of my jokes.

So I had to try and readjust that. So I get a new step Bob. I will do more of that tomorrow. I’m recording this one on Sunday. I normally don’t record on Sunday because everyone’s home and oh my god, right now, both dogs are going at it.

I’ve gone up twice and been like, can you be quiet now? To be fair, this isn’t really a podcast studio. It’s the basement and my family’s allowed to live here. But it’s really hard to focus today, So I’ll save the Gianmarco Soresi stuff people as this thing with Michael Chay, and I’m having trouble understanding the story because the way they wrote it. Their opening paragraph is quoting Michael Chay in a new documentary in Whose Name, and the quote is Michael Chay asking Kanye West, I’m the black comedian that made a joke about Cosby.

That’s fed up? Why do you do that to me? It was backstage at SNL and Kanye West apparently said, you can’t always have every time you have black subject matter like Bill Cosby, that you have to have a black comedian talking about him. He motions to Michael Chay and said, you know what I mean. Kanye claimed he was bullied backstage for his Make America Great Again hat and was told don’t go out there with that hat on.

They bullied me backstage. They bullied me, and then they say, I’m in a sunken place. You want to see that sunken place. I’m going to put my Superman cap on. The documentary then cuts to Cha approaching West backstage, and then Chay says to West, good with me, for real?

That was eft up? So I don’t really understand what’s going on there. I guess i’d have to watch it. On Friday. I shared that thing with Guy Brainam on the airplane while TMZ says, guy says he’s going to bring the man to court.

TMZ happened to be at the airport when Guy Braindam got off a plane. The photographer asked Guy Branham about it. TMZ says, guys show them a bruise from the alleged elbow swing and said he’s going to file a police report and a lawsuit, telling the man you can’t hit somebody because you think they’re fat. Guy says Delta Airlines has called him back to talk about what happened. TMC says guy travels a lot for work and has some Delta status himself.

I want to know how he went up in a middle seat. I mean, it’s not that hard to not get in a middle seat, especially if you’re willing to spend a little money. I don’t know. Hey, here’s a shocker. Johnny Mac remembered to do the Toronto Comedy Festival today.

I almost forgot I’d started to go into the Steve Harvey story, which is the next thing in my script, and then I was like, oh, why don’t you actually do Toronto for one? So you have to get Johnny macbot out for the third day to row. Let’s see what’s happening in Toronto today. David Lynch’s Seinfeld at eight o’clock. What is this?

This sounds amazing. Now I have to actually google this. Since the new people took over at JFL, the websites aren’t as good. Just saying, all right, here’s a review from July. David Lynch’s Seinfeld was at the Toronto Fringe and Porton and Pearl reviewed it.

They wrote, imagine an episode of Seinfeld. Now imagine that there’s a frequently tall faceless man called the Tall Man watching Jerry Do stand up from the audience. That’s how David Lynch’s Seinfeld begins, an entirely original episode of Seinfeld with a lynche and twist. All right, that sounds like a lot of fun at eight o’clock, Matt writes Matre Day right Live nine thirty, another David Lynch Seinfeld also at nine thirty Wheel of Comedy, and then at midnight Madness at eleven thirty. So I’d say pretty quiet night, as mondays, tend to be at festivals.

If we were up there, I’d say, well, let’s definitely do Seinfeld at eight, and then I don’t know. We left comedy at nine thirty, Grab a couple of beers, go to bed. Steve Harvey explained why he has quitch stand up comedy, said it’s too hard to do right now. He’s got that nice family feud gig and apparently that’s what Arizon ABC at eleven thirty at night, so he might be pumping out a lot of more episodes soon. Steve said, I left stand up because I had so many shows.

I had built such a catalog of work. I was making money. I had to let something go, and if a tour on the weekends, I wouldn’t even have a family. So I let stand up go because I saw the change coming. You got to react to participate.

So my participation was to get it away from it because the cancel culture started becoming everywhere. Comedy is too hard to do right now, and all you got to do is look at the way cancel culture works. I believe he had said this before Kimmel Gates did it do this one over the weekend. I’ve recorded so many things I can’t remember. Steve Morton had to cancel the shows over the weekend.

He has COVID. He went on social said, dear Virginia Beach and Richmond sad laugh come down with COVID. I can’t possibly do the shows. He deserves some morning and I must cancel tonight and tomorrow. But we were churned under better circumstances.

Steve Morton is eighty years old, and I don’t think that people of Peoria are too happy with Liz Mealy As she released a video on Facebook and YouTube, Liz says she enjoys traveling, and then said she visited Peoria once and that was enough. We don’t need to do that again. If you’re like, hey, Liz, what’s in Peoria? Nothing? There’s nothing.

They had one coffee shop. It was open thirty five minutes and I never woke up in time. They didn’t have Uber. Everybody has a guy with a truck. How do you not have Uber?

I was losing my mind. I’m freaking out. I feels so isolated. I caught my little sister. She’s like described Peoria and I was like, all right, opening scene of Wally, I’m the robot.

Trash is everywhere, no one’s around. Back in November, Shane gillis Head coincidentally said, I was in Peoria, new number one on the power rankings of blanking town in the entire country. Peoria, Illinois was That was hell, dude, Just me and the bums were the only ones outside walking around minus four and Peoria sucks. That was hell. And that is your comedy news on a Monday.

I’m pretty sure there’ll be a Kimmel bonus episode, so I’ll see it a few hours and then back Tuesday with the normal episode to have a good one.

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Featured: Jimmy Kimmel, Joe Rogan, Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert, Jason Zenman, Bill Carter, Charlie Kirk, Greg Gutfeld

What’s in This Episode

• Jimmy Kimmel pulled from ABC amid boycott calls
• Disney and ESPN ownership implications of ABC boycott
• Sinclair Broadcasting airing Charlie Kirk special instead of Kimmel
• Late night hosts navigating political comedy under Trump administration
• Historical evolution of political comedy on The Tonight Show
• ABC facing pressure from FCC chair over Kimmel situation

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

Caloroga Shark Media. This is the Sunday Jimmy Kimmel bonus episode. The normal episode went out earlier this morning. Hello, I’m Johnny Mac and the ABC would like it to stop complaining. No, not that ABC, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

They say they’re getting complaints about this Jimmy Kimmel thing. It’s not them. Some of the complaints that have gone to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation include one person writing, what you did to Jimmy Kimmel is against the constitution and I will be boycotting ABC. When you bend your niece to the president. You’ve gone too far.

America is not happy with ABC. That’s nice. I will contact and boycott all business that sponsor ABC’s shows. That’s nice. Would you like a vegemite sandwich?

I will never watch ABC again. Free speech is gone. Go Jimmy Kimmel. That’s nice. Put another shrimp on the barbie, will you.

The vast majority of compla sent to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation had expressions of dismay that Jimmy Kimmel show had been pulled off air. Now I know a lot of you are boycotting ABC over this, and I’m on team Kimmel in case that isn’t coming out loud and clear here, But just explain to you the problem with your boycott. Okay, you’re boycotting ABC, right, So you’re boycotting Disney. So you’re not gonna go to the theme parks. Okay, fine, You’re not gonna watch Hulu right because Disney owns Hulu.

So delete your Hulu, delete your Disney Plus all that’s good. Okay. No more Star Wars okay, no more Marvel okay, but here’s where I’m gonna get you. No more Monday Night football, guys. ESPN is owned by Disney, so don’t think you’re watching Joe Buck tomorrow night.

And part of this whole thing ESPN, which is Disney, which is ABC, they’re trying to acquire Red Zone to do a deal with the NFL. So I don’t want you watching Red Zone today. Now, I as a hypocrite, I’m gonna watch Red Zone because I like my football and I’m Scott back in the football pool and the forty nine ers playing the Cardinals at four o’clock, so I’m gonna have Red Zone on. I’m a shill. I’m the worst, but you no Marvel, no Disney, no Star Wars, no Hulu, no ESPN, no Red Zone.

Stay strong. I saw somebody bring up on social media. I forget where I’m stealing this idea from. But if Kimmel doesn’t host a late night show, whereas somebody like Fallon or Colbert, they were comedians, Jimmy is a radio guy who learned the art of the monologue, but he took a different path to the TV chair. So could he just translate his skills into something maybe the same way you know, Jimmy Fallon could just go out on tour, whether or not you find him funny.

We’ll get to that in a second, But I just thought that was an interesting observation that if Jimmy Kimmel’s not a late night talk show host, what does he do? Does he tour as a comedian? I don’t know. Friday Night, remember this whole thing, in part, was that some of the stations were going to air a tribute to Charlie Kirk instead of Jimmy Kimmel’s Friday night show. That never happened.

Well, psych they didn’t air the tribute. Sinclair put out an update on Twitter, saying Tonight Friday night, sint Clair will continue to air ABC Network programming as scheduled in the late night time period. The Charlie Kirk special instead be available on the National News Desk’s YouTube channel during Viewers can continue to enjoy ABC programming while also providing full access to the special online. What are we doing? I thought, what are we even fighting over?

Now you’re not even airing it. ABC aired celebrity Family Feud reruns in case you care this morning on Sunday morning at ten to five Eastern time. I typed the phrase Joe Rogan Kimmel into Google. Nothing new came up in The New York Times. A friend of the show, Jason Zenneman, who I have reached out to.

I think he’s on vacation, but I’m hoping to see if he’s not, if I can get him on here, because I want to talk to him about all this. He also called out Jimmy Fallon. Zenneman quoted Fallon from the monologue the other night when Falan said, to be honest with you, I don’t know what’s going on. No one does, Zennimann wrote, Really, anyone paying attention should have some idea what’s going on, but the temptation to play dumb is surely real. To be fair, Fallen does not portray himself as the kind of man who broods over the responsibilities of the artist in an age of authoritarianism.

He’s never seemed especially interested in politics, but that hasn’t stopped him from becoming entangled in it. He was blamed for helping to usher in the first Trump presidency because he infamously ruffled his hair on The Tonight Show in twenty sixteen. That always struck me as unfair. Trump and here jokes had been a hallmark of popular culture for decades. Fallen was just falling the crowd.

But there have lately been signs that Fallon’s trying to get out of it to avoid attacks on the administration by playing nice and downplaying political comedy, working both sides of the aisle. A recent Tonight Show guest was Greg Guttfeld skipping ahead, Jason writes, as I watched comedians navigate this thorny moment, I’ve been thinking about parallels from the recent past. That hasn’t led me to any American late night controversies, but it did immediately bring to mind a trip to Moscow for one of the first articles I Jason sidim Road for The Times. It was a two thousand and three feature about a spate of Russian artists introducing American musicals to their country for the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union.

And then Jason has a whole section there about what’s going on over there and…

They point out Steve Allen regularly poked fund at political figures in his opening monologues, but in a measured, self deprecating style that was typical of the era. It wasn’t until Carson took over in sixty two that The Tonight Show transformed into a cultural institution where politics was mined for nightly material. Carson resorted to impersonations and satire to highlight the human inconsistencies within politics, and borrowed from Aban Costello’s Who’s On First to parody Reagan’s hetorical double speech. It wasn’t until the nineties, when Carson was heading for retirement and the competition for his crown and ratings was growing more intense that he began to see presidential hopefuls pursuing late night appearances. On Late Nighter Bill, Carter points out that ABC has an import possible choice.

He writes, Jimmy Kimmel does work for ABC and has for two decades. He has been literally the face of that network for some time now as host of the Oscars and other ABC properties like Millionaire. By the way, I had in my notes Mark Maron was supposed to be on Millionaire this week. I mean, it’s already in the can. Is that going to air?

Curter right, Surely ABC would value this vital talent, But now what ABC of course, realizes that Trump in FCC chairperson car will make good on the threat, which Carr stated openly and without any regret about his unabashed abusive power in undermining the Bill of Rights, using terms Tony Soprano would have loved. We could do this the easy way or the hard way, rights Bill Carter. If ABC decides to stand by Kimmel, the hard way may be financially excruciating. Carter points out Sinclaire Broadcasting, but out of statement that they’re not going to carry Kimmel shown no matter what. Even if ABC brings back Carter rights that would seem to leave ABC a little leverage to stave off canceling Kimmel, though that would widely be seen as the most craven capitulation yet to an unjustifiable act of government intimidation.

ABC Disney is in a brutal situation. The administration can inflict enormous damage to its bottom line. If the company defies, it will have to weigh that against the value in defending the principle that the American government has no business dictating who gets to talk on television late night or an incredible resource during these times. You should absolutely check that out, and that is your bonus episode on a Sunday morning. Back tomorrow morning with the normal episode, and I’ve got a lot to say at the beginning of tomorrow’s episodes to make sure you check that out.

See then

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