When news stories fall through the cracks, we here at Colbert News Hub find them for a post we call, In The Press.
Hello again hubsters! As we are watching the two final weeks of shows this year (I know, I know—aren’t they just coming out of yet another break?), here are some of the articles you might have missed in November.
This month we have more stats, a survey of late-night audiences by The Hollywood Reporter, and some of the reaction that survey generated. Also, Splitsider weighed in on Trevor Noah’s performance since taking over The Daily Show.
Stephen Colbert
- The Boss List 2015 Edition – Ask Men
Stephen was featured in Ask Men‘s first (annual?) “The Boss List.” In case you were wondering, “bosses” are “the guys that are not only killin’ the game in their respective field but spreading the love so that everyone wins. These guys earned their spot on the list because they affect the way the rest of us live. … They are the men you look to when you decide to ‘boss your life up.’” There are no doubt some questionable choices in there, not least of which is Stephen being No. 49 and not No. 1.
Since taking over for Letterman, Stephen Colbert has found his sweet spot among the titans of late-night TV, and, let’s face it, he should just stick around, Letterman-style, for as many decades as possible. Now that all the hosts are officially of the new school, we can say it: Letterman and Leno hadn’t been funny for ages. Thank God for the new era.
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
Stephen Colbert’s Late Show may have settled in as the clear No. 2 to NBC’s The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, but there’s no doubt that CBS’ new late-night host has revived his 11:35 p.m. time slot.
Two months in, Colbert’s ratings are still up 50 percent from where David Letterman was at the same time last season among adults 18-49 — and pulling double in the network’s more elusive demographic of adults 18-34. Those stats, combined with a big jump in the target demo for 12:35 a.m. companion James Corden over Craig Ferguson, were enough for CBS Corp. CEO Leslie Moonves to say he’s “extremely pleased” with late-night ratings during a Nov. 3 earnings call.
“I don’t think anyone expected him to compete with Jimmy Fallon,” says media analyst Brad Adgate. “He’s found a niche, and CBS has got to be very happy that.”
For “Colbert,” CBS only makes full episodes available on CBS.com, CBS All-Access and VOD platforms from its pay-TV partners. According to the company, Colbert’s show has increased total digital viewership by more than 2,000 percent when compared to his predecessor, David Letterman. …
What Colbert has also succeeded in doing is reach a much younger audience than Letterman. According to CBS, 72 percent of the host’s YouTube viewers are between the ages of 18 and 34. …
Two months in, Colbert has established a strong footprint on these platforms, though still has work to do gaining ground on his direct competitor at NBC, Jimmy Fallon, who has more than 8.7 million subscribers on YouTube alone. For instance, when measured by engagement (likes, comments, etc.), Colbert averages 82,000 engagements per video post across YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter; Fallon averages 284,000, according to marketing tech company Zefr.
Granted, Colbert’s “Late Show” is only two months old. Where Colbert is besting Fallon is in driving viewers to CBS platforms versus just YouTube. According to marketing analytics company Jumpshot, 22.9 percent of global viewers who watched “Late Show” content online did so on CBS sites. In comparison, 9 percent of Fallon’s online viewers watched show content on NBC-owned platforms.
- Stephen Colbert’s Late Show Has Something Other Late-Night Shows Don’t: A Rich Humanity – Vox
This article points out what is perhaps my favorite thing about The Late Show: Stephen’s willingness to and agility in carrying out substantive conversations, and bringing a little bit of humanity, a little bit of soul into every aspect of the show. I like the way the writer puts it, “his legacy will rest on the rich humanity he brings” — I’m leaving out the rest of the sentence because it clearly doesn’t just come from the guests.
What we’ve seen on the new Late Show so far is an animated host who falls somewhere between a zany, sitcom-style dad and an intuitive interviewer who isn’t afraid to steer the conversation into more serious, straightforward, and sincere territory when the opportunity presents itself. …
With Colbert at the helm, Late Show hopes to convey a seamless combination of satire and intellectualism, attributes that made The Colbert Report so successful for so long. Colbert’s natural charisma might draw the raucous chants of “Stephen, Stephen, Stephen” every night from the audience. But his legacy will rest on the rich humanity he brings to his wide variety of guests.
The late-night landscape has recently changed, viewers want to be entertained and informed, which would expand the influx of political guests, Penn added.
In this regard, Stephen Colbert, who took over the Late Show, has benefited because he was able to retain a good chunk of his core audience acquired from his former Comedy Central stint.
“Colbert Nation is filled with wealthy, socially liberal men who overwhelmingly support legalizing marijuana and want Bernie Sanders to be president,” Penn said.
According to the poll, 47 percent of Colbert’s audience are Democrats, among their favorite shows are Family Guy and Game of Thrones, and Atheist leads the religion category with 30 percent.
For the week of Nov. 16-20, Kimmel averaged a .58 among adults 18-49. That put him just a hair above Colbert’s .56 rating. Tonight led both shows handily, with a 1.0 rating in the key demo. It also stood as Fallon’s biggest margin of victory to date over Colbert, a whopping 79 percent. …
No. 2 status for total viewers still belongs to Colbert. He beat Kimmel by more than 200,000 viewers for an average 2.62 million for the ninth week of the season. (Fallon boasted 3.32 million viewers.)
- Colbert’s ‘Late Show’ Has Become Propaganda for Democrats – New York Post
And here’s the backlash from the THR poll. The New York Post revels in the fact that The Late Show’s ratings have declined since September, says it is “propaganda for Democrats,” and calls Stephen an “a-hole” in the very first sentence. Apparently “Colbert is so unremittingly hostile to Republicans that he will shortly find conservative invitees declining to appear.” … *sigh* … On a related note, did you guys know that The New York Post was founded by Alexander Hamilton? Yep. Breaks my heart, too.
The pattern is familiar: When a Democrat is the guest, Colbert is Barbara Walters. When a Republican is on, he turns into Tim Russert.
Gosh, whoever could have predicted that?
“Because comedy doesn’t work unless the underlying premise rings true, just about no conservative finds Colbert funny,” a Post columnist opined on April 11, 2014.
“So, though he will be dropping the faux-con shtick when he takes over Letterman’s chair, millions of conservatives won’t be watching. CBS is essentially writing off half the potential audience before the first show even airs.”
I’m just telling you the prediction I made has come true. With this hiring, CBS basically was flipping the bird to the middle-American population in the country, the Republican base, what have you. And they’re responding in kind by not watching. Exactly as I knew would be the case.
The really interesting question for me is, why is Colbert getting painted with the he’s-too-liberal brush? Look at the history of television. Colbert isn’t nearly as outspokenly political as a couple of beloved late-night hosts of yesteryear. Two previous Tonight Show hosts, Steve Allen and Jack Paar, were out-liberals. Allen — before and after his time on Tonight — promoted progressive causes, and booked people like comedian Lenny Bruce (shown below on The Steve Allen Show) and Beat novelist Jack Kerouac as guests at a time when both were considered radical choices. Paar had a platonic love affair with John F. Kennedy’s Camelot, heaping praise upon JFK, Jackie, and Robert Kennedy. Both hosts were extremely popular, and you’d be hard-pressed to find coverage, let alone criticism, of their politics. (Paar did receive criticism of his 1959 interview with Fidel Castro in Cuba.)
- Is Stephen Colbert Too Smart For Late Night? – MediaPost
But it’s not just about Stephen’s overt political leanings. What might also contribute to Fallon’s clear dominance ratings-wise is that The Late Show may be “too smart” for (more) mainstream success. People already suspected Stephen and Jimmy Fallon would settle into their own version of the Letterman-Leno dynamic, but Stephen has gone much further than Letterman in giving the show an intellectual bent. It’s a real pleasure to watch and I wouldn’t want it any other way, but it probably means that CBS will have to be OK with not being No. 1.
Perhaps the biggest throwback to the pre-Carson late-night show of Jack Paar and Steve Allen is the guest list. There’s a sense that here you can experience the huge smorgasbord of American culture. Yes, there are plenty of stars from CBS TV series and upcoming movies, but at least Colbert engages them intelligently. When Carey Mulligan turned up to plug her movie “Suffragette,” the ensuing conversation focused on the actual substance of the movie — the womens’ suffrage movement in Great Britain — and not an irrelevant story about Mulligan’s latest vacation.
… As much as I love Colbert on “The Late Show,” I worry that he might be too brainy. When discussing memoir-writing with Elvis Costello, he casually dropped a quote from the late David Carr. How many people in the audience could identify Carr as a New York Times media columnist, or understand the reference? That’s a very small thing, but it shows that Colbert is operating on a much higher plane than most of us.
Frankly, I like it that Colbert doesn’t talk down to his audience and assumes we’ll enjoy listening to Yo-Yo Ma as well as Darlene Love. Nielsen’s ratings roll in every day, so we’ll know soon enough whether this experiment in intelligent programming will pay off in the long term.
Late Night
- The Disappointing Shallowness of Trevor Noah’s ‘Daily Show’ – Splitsider
To be completely honest, I have not watched much of The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. I miss Jon Stewart way too much and watching the show with another host is just weird and sad (yep, I’m one of those people who did not watch when John Oliver was hosting). Based on the little, very biased viewing I have done of The Daily Show with Trevor Noah I’d say article makes some very good points. I also like that it mentioned Trevor’s great standup, though. No matter what issues critics have with him right now, he clearly has great potential, and two months on the job is no time at all.
Stewart ripped into his subjects; Noah seems to be studying them from a museum-appropriate distance. Where Stewart dug, Noah gestures, pointing toward various grotesque but amusing artifacts in the National Gallery of Political Absurdity, and then smirking on our behalf: aren’t those people ridiculous? … I can’t help but wonder if his still-baffling tendency to laugh at his own jokes is related: just when he edges up to really making a point, he backs off with his trademark winning smile, undercutting any principled investment he seemed to have. But the show desperately needs his anger, or at least his emotion, and right now, his slick charm walls off any glimpses of vulnerability or earnest and uncool caring. Even when Noah is responding to international tragedy — the moments when Stewart might have dropped his standard performance persona for something more raw — he feels just one step removed, like he’s responding from behind glass.
In the Press – November 2015
Hello again hubsters! As we are watching the two final weeks of shows this year (I know, I know—aren’t they just coming out of yet another break?), here are some of the articles you might have missed in November.
This month we have more stats, a survey of late-night audiences by The Hollywood Reporter, and some of the reaction that survey generated. Also, Splitsider weighed in on Trevor Noah’s performance since taking over The Daily Show.
Stephen Colbert
Stephen was featured in Ask Men‘s first (annual?) “The Boss List.” In case you were wondering, “bosses” are “the guys that are not only killin’ the game in their respective field but spreading the love so that everyone wins. These guys earned their spot on the list because they affect the way the rest of us live. … They are the men you look to when you decide to ‘boss your life up.’” There are no doubt some questionable choices in there, not least of which is Stephen being No. 49 and not No. 1.
Since taking over for Letterman, Stephen Colbert has found his sweet spot among the titans of late-night TV, and, let’s face it, he should just stick around, Letterman-style, for as many decades as possible. Now that all the hosts are officially of the new school, we can say it: Letterman and Leno hadn’t been funny for ages. Thank God for the new era.
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
Stephen Colbert’s Late Show may have settled in as the clear No. 2 to NBC’s The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, but there’s no doubt that CBS’ new late-night host has revived his 11:35 p.m. time slot.
Two months in, Colbert’s ratings are still up 50 percent from where David Letterman was at the same time last season among adults 18-49 — and pulling double in the network’s more elusive demographic of adults 18-34. Those stats, combined with a big jump in the target demo for 12:35 a.m. companion James Corden over Craig Ferguson, were enough for CBS Corp. CEO Leslie Moonves to say he’s “extremely pleased” with late-night ratings during a Nov. 3 earnings call.
“I don’t think anyone expected him to compete with Jimmy Fallon,” says media analyst Brad Adgate. “He’s found a niche, and CBS has got to be very happy that.”
For “Colbert,” CBS only makes full episodes available on CBS.com, CBS All-Access and VOD platforms from its pay-TV partners. According to the company, Colbert’s show has increased total digital viewership by more than 2,000 percent when compared to his predecessor, David Letterman. …
What Colbert has also succeeded in doing is reach a much younger audience than Letterman. According to CBS, 72 percent of the host’s YouTube viewers are between the ages of 18 and 34. …
Two months in, Colbert has established a strong footprint on these platforms, though still has work to do gaining ground on his direct competitor at NBC, Jimmy Fallon, who has more than 8.7 million subscribers on YouTube alone. For instance, when measured by engagement (likes, comments, etc.), Colbert averages 82,000 engagements per video post across YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter; Fallon averages 284,000, according to marketing tech company Zefr.
Granted, Colbert’s “Late Show” is only two months old. Where Colbert is besting Fallon is in driving viewers to CBS platforms versus just YouTube. According to marketing analytics company Jumpshot, 22.9 percent of global viewers who watched “Late Show” content online did so on CBS sites. In comparison, 9 percent of Fallon’s online viewers watched show content on NBC-owned platforms.
This article points out what is perhaps my favorite thing about The Late Show: Stephen’s willingness to and agility in carrying out substantive conversations, and bringing a little bit of humanity, a little bit of soul into every aspect of the show. I like the way the writer puts it, “his legacy will rest on the rich humanity he brings” — I’m leaving out the rest of the sentence because it clearly doesn’t just come from the guests.
What we’ve seen on the new Late Show so far is an animated host who falls somewhere between a zany, sitcom-style dad and an intuitive interviewer who isn’t afraid to steer the conversation into more serious, straightforward, and sincere territory when the opportunity presents itself. …
With Colbert at the helm, Late Show hopes to convey a seamless combination of satire and intellectualism, attributes that made The Colbert Report so successful for so long. Colbert’s natural charisma might draw the raucous chants of “Stephen, Stephen, Stephen” every night from the audience. But his legacy will rest on the rich humanity he brings to his wide variety of guests.
The late-night landscape has recently changed, viewers want to be entertained and informed, which would expand the influx of political guests, Penn added.
In this regard, Stephen Colbert, who took over the Late Show, has benefited because he was able to retain a good chunk of his core audience acquired from his former Comedy Central stint.
“Colbert Nation is filled with wealthy, socially liberal men who overwhelmingly support legalizing marijuana and want Bernie Sanders to be president,” Penn said.
According to the poll, 47 percent of Colbert’s audience are Democrats, among their favorite shows are Family Guy and Game of Thrones, and Atheist leads the religion category with 30 percent.
For the week of Nov. 16-20, Kimmel averaged a .58 among adults 18-49. That put him just a hair above Colbert’s .56 rating. Tonight led both shows handily, with a 1.0 rating in the key demo. It also stood as Fallon’s biggest margin of victory to date over Colbert, a whopping 79 percent. …
No. 2 status for total viewers still belongs to Colbert. He beat Kimmel by more than 200,000 viewers for an average 2.62 million for the ninth week of the season. (Fallon boasted 3.32 million viewers.)
And here’s the backlash from the THR poll. The New York Post revels in the fact that The Late Show’s ratings have declined since September, says it is “propaganda for Democrats,” and calls Stephen an “a-hole” in the very first sentence. Apparently “Colbert is so unremittingly hostile to Republicans that he will shortly find conservative invitees declining to appear.” … *sigh* … On a related note, did you guys know that The New York Post was founded by Alexander Hamilton? Yep. Breaks my heart, too.
The pattern is familiar: When a Democrat is the guest, Colbert is Barbara Walters. When a Republican is on, he turns into Tim Russert.
Gosh, whoever could have predicted that?
“Because comedy doesn’t work unless the underlying premise rings true, just about no conservative finds Colbert funny,” a Post columnist opined on April 11, 2014.
“So, though he will be dropping the faux-con shtick when he takes over Letterman’s chair, millions of conservatives won’t be watching. CBS is essentially writing off half the potential audience before the first show even airs.”
I’m just telling you the prediction I made has come true. With this hiring, CBS basically was flipping the bird to the middle-American population in the country, the Republican base, what have you. And they’re responding in kind by not watching. Exactly as I knew would be the case.
The really interesting question for me is, why is Colbert getting painted with the he’s-too-liberal brush? Look at the history of television. Colbert isn’t nearly as outspokenly political as a couple of beloved late-night hosts of yesteryear. Two previous Tonight Show hosts, Steve Allen and Jack Paar, were out-liberals. Allen — before and after his time on Tonight — promoted progressive causes, and booked people like comedian Lenny Bruce (shown below on The Steve Allen Show) and Beat novelist Jack Kerouac as guests at a time when both were considered radical choices. Paar had a platonic love affair with John F. Kennedy’s Camelot, heaping praise upon JFK, Jackie, and Robert Kennedy. Both hosts were extremely popular, and you’d be hard-pressed to find coverage, let alone criticism, of their politics. (Paar did receive criticism of his 1959 interview with Fidel Castro in Cuba.)
But it’s not just about Stephen’s overt political leanings. What might also contribute to Fallon’s clear dominance ratings-wise is that The Late Show may be “too smart” for (more) mainstream success. People already suspected Stephen and Jimmy Fallon would settle into their own version of the Letterman-Leno dynamic, but Stephen has gone much further than Letterman in giving the show an intellectual bent. It’s a real pleasure to watch and I wouldn’t want it any other way, but it probably means that CBS will have to be OK with not being No. 1.
Perhaps the biggest throwback to the pre-Carson late-night show of Jack Paar and Steve Allen is the guest list. There’s a sense that here you can experience the huge smorgasbord of American culture. Yes, there are plenty of stars from CBS TV series and upcoming movies, but at least Colbert engages them intelligently. When Carey Mulligan turned up to plug her movie “Suffragette,” the ensuing conversation focused on the actual substance of the movie — the womens’ suffrage movement in Great Britain — and not an irrelevant story about Mulligan’s latest vacation.
… As much as I love Colbert on “The Late Show,” I worry that he might be too brainy. When discussing memoir-writing with Elvis Costello, he casually dropped a quote from the late David Carr. How many people in the audience could identify Carr as a New York Times media columnist, or understand the reference? That’s a very small thing, but it shows that Colbert is operating on a much higher plane than most of us.
Frankly, I like it that Colbert doesn’t talk down to his audience and assumes we’ll enjoy listening to Yo-Yo Ma as well as Darlene Love. Nielsen’s ratings roll in every day, so we’ll know soon enough whether this experiment in intelligent programming will pay off in the long term.
Late Night
To be completely honest, I have not watched much of The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. I miss Jon Stewart way too much and watching the show with another host is just weird and sad (yep, I’m one of those people who did not watch when John Oliver was hosting). Based on the little, very biased viewing I have done of The Daily Show with Trevor Noah I’d say article makes some very good points. I also like that it mentioned Trevor’s great standup, though. No matter what issues critics have with him right now, he clearly has great potential, and two months on the job is no time at all.
Stewart ripped into his subjects; Noah seems to be studying them from a museum-appropriate distance. Where Stewart dug, Noah gestures, pointing toward various grotesque but amusing artifacts in the National Gallery of Political Absurdity, and then smirking on our behalf: aren’t those people ridiculous? … I can’t help but wonder if his still-baffling tendency to laugh at his own jokes is related: just when he edges up to really making a point, he backs off with his trademark winning smile, undercutting any principled investment he seemed to have. But the show desperately needs his anger, or at least his emotion, and right now, his slick charm walls off any glimpses of vulnerability or earnest and uncool caring. Even when Noah is responding to international tragedy — the moments when Stewart might have dropped his standard performance persona for something more raw — he feels just one step removed, like he’s responding from behind glass.