When news stories fall through the cracks, we here at Colbert News Hub find them for a post we call, In The Press.
Now that we are well into the second week of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, let’s take a look at what the media had to say about the first week.
The truth is, it’s hard to draw any conclusions from the first week—let alone the first episode—of a late-night talk show. But it has already given us so many reasons to be excited!
And as Erik Adams wrote in his A.V. Club article, “like the 2016 U.S. presidential election, talking about The Late Show With Stephen Colbert is too much fun to abstain from.”
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert – Premiere
Colbert managed that rare thing in television: seeming terribly clever to clever people without seeming too unreachable by the segment of the audience genuinely more interested in hearing from George Clooney than anything else.
The self-referencing was laid on thick, but American Talk Shows 2.0 are living in a very “meta” age.
There was even a pre-taped cross to Fallon over on NBC, in which the pair traded guest lists and Fallon wished the new entrant in the talk show stakes good luck.
The point? Oh, there’s always a point. In this case, that Fallon and Colbert are playing a gentle game with each other, and are unlikely to rekindle the kind of rivalry which their predecessors Leno and Letterman indulged in.
The new Colbert is different from the old Colbert, but he is still a part of him. With Colbert there will always be a distance between the performance and the intelligence of the performer, and it’s in that space that the audience is meant to luxuriate.
The amped-up, expansive premiere of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert was not so tightly focused. Befitting the difference between a niche cable half-hour and a network variety hour, it was not a rigidly composed plate but a groaning board, built less around a concept than around a vibe of smart fun and an urge to show off its host’s many skills.
[P]art of why politics has become so polarized […] is likely that we’ve come to see the workings of government as things that exist separately from the rest of our lives. The sociologist Pablo Boczkowski talks about the reluctance many people have to talk about politics in a work environment, where such discussions can create unnecessary acrimony; instead, we silo ourselves, discussing the issues of the day, for the most part, with people we know will pretty much agree with us.
That’s not a good thing, for people or for democracy. And Colbert’s latest debut suggested that late-night comedy might actually play a role in fixing it.
Stephen Colbert and The Late Show enjoy an overwhelmingly positive sentiment online. Brandwatch found that positive tweets outnumbered negative tweets at a rate of 6.3 to 1. Also, Amobee found that only 14 percent of the tweets in the two-hour period around the show were negative in sentiment, implying that fans are digging Colbert as the new host. The sentiment was 33 percent positive and 53 percent neutral.
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert – Premiere Week
7. Colbert Nation Some things never change. Colbert still loves his audience, and they love him right back. It’s possible there’s never been a late-night host with such an immediate and devoted following, as evidenced by the Colbert Nation’s dutiful chanting of “Stephen, Stephen” at the top of the show. Colbert’s fanbase is so intense, he once had a shot at the presidency so legitimate, he had to rescind his satirical candidacy. He doesn’t have a sidekick, but he clearly doesn’t need one. The cult of personality around Stephen Colbert acts as his co-host. And, if the premiere episode was any indication, it’s only about to grow.
- Stephen Colbert’s ‘Late Show’: Joe Biden and Wonky Guests Are Great But Celebrity Chats Could Be Improved – The Hollywood Reporter
The Hollywood Reporter’s Tim Goodman likes the show’s eclectic guest lineup, but insists that in order to succeed Stephen will need to improve his celebrity interviews. Keep in mind that this article was written after the third episode. I personally wasn’t too fond of the George Clooney and Scarlett Johansson interviews either, but have enjoyed pretty much everyone else since—Emily Blunt, Amy Schumer, Jake Gyllenhaal, Kevin Spacey and Carol Burnett.
Right now, in these early days, Colbert has more working than not. He’s got the best and most original opening sequence on late night television; he’s got a fabulously renovated set; he’s backed by a tremendous talent in band-leader Jon Batiste, and he’s got what he’s always had — a wickedly fast intellect and an even faster sense of comic timing. The Biden interview let out a bit of his other strong suit — empathy and compassion and a sense of how to handle emotional topics. And that resulted in one of the most fascinating and talked-about interviews in late night in some time.
So a lot is working. What needs fine tuning are his celebrity interviews because those — not witty asides with the secretary of energy or a thoughtful discussion with a Supreme Court justice — are what will determine if Colbert can keep robust ratings or not.
Colbert’s program remains a bit of a work in progress, but he brought enormous goodwill with him to the job, and further cemented his reputation last week with an interview with Vice President Joe Biden that was touching and funny all at once. And while Fallon rebounded from Colbert’s big sampling numbers to reclaim the top spot ratings-wise, his woefully thin encounter with Donald Trump the next night fed the perception that his is the “safe” choice for candidates, perhaps, but also less likely to win the admiration of peers and pundits.
It’s not really my standards that I’m judging Colbert by; it’s his own. And by that measure — playing with his interlocutors, improvising based on their answers and letting himself be led by sincere interest — Colbert hasn’t quite found his groove. You don’t have to be an investigative journalist to ask follow-up questions, and being direct or pressing for a follow-up is not necessarily the same thing as being mean. This is an area where Colbert’s new sincerity ought to protect him; it’s harder to brush aside true curiosity than an obvious set-up.
- Unlike its Competition, The Late Show With Stephen Colbert Has a Host That Matters – A.V. Club
“The Late Show With Stephen Colbert has a host that matters” is a very nice title—though, probably not for the other hosts. The point is that The Late Show With Stephen Colbert seems to actually be not only with, but about Stephen Colbert. Not that anyone could tell from the “Stephen! Stephen!” chanting, or from the dozens of Stephen Colbert faces projected on the Ed Sullivan Theater’s dome and on its walls.
But it also goes beyond that:
And with the exception of the vice president upstaging Colbert on Thursday, the host was the No. 1 reason to watch these first five episodes. And in this late-night era, that’s notable. Jimmy Fallon and James Corden draw the most eyes and the loudest buzz because of what other people do on their shows; Jimmy Kimmel has made some of his deepest talk-show impacts by staying out of the frame until the very last second. Launching off of his own program to take over for the most influential talk-show host of a generation, Stephen Colbert is in a prime spot to push his personality as the main draw of his Late Show. In these first five episodes, he demonstrated again and again that the bulletproof confidence of his Colbert Show persona wasn’t a put-on. As sincerity becomes his default mode, the most sincere part of Stephen Colbert is his belief in himself as a performer.
- Stephen Colbert wants to give millennials their own Letterman – The Verge
Because the show relies so much on Stephen himself rather than on celebrity guests or on specific sketches, the viewing experience differs from that of other late-night shows today. I don’t know about you guys, but like Sean O’Kane I, too, get the feeling that the show seems to be “built to be watched as a whole.”
The headlines about Colbert’s first week on The Late Show came not from funny bits and wacky antics, but from his interviews. Compared with his NBC analog Jimmy Fallon — or even Colbert’s own summer of weird internet blurbs — The Late Show’s early “breakout” moments were more substantive. But while we’re only one week in, it’s clear that CBS and Colbert are building something less intent on gaming the internet and more focused on the traditional TV experience. And it looks like Colbert will have to use this stage to prove whether or not his success with millennials can be distilled into something that works on network TV.
- Jimmy Fallon Trumps Stephen Colbert In Nightly Ratings Again – Deadline
On its first night, The Late Show drew an impressive 6.6 million viewers, beating its competition by a significant margin. But The Tonight Show took the lead back the very next day. We’ll see how the “ratings war” settles over time, but, so far, it seems that the traditional Tonight Show–Late Show dynamic will persist.
The Trump episode marked Fallon’s biggest total-viewer margin (28%) over CBS’s four-day-old The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (Colbert’s Tuesday night debut beat Fallon by 55%, then slipped each night to second place by margins of 11%, 10% and Friday’s 28%. Friday’s Colbert, with guest Amy Schumer, was watched by 3.5 million.
In the Press – 'The Late Show' Premiere Week
Now that we are well into the second week of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, let’s take a look at what the media had to say about the first week.
The truth is, it’s hard to draw any conclusions from the first week—let alone the first episode—of a late-night talk show. But it has already given us so many reasons to be excited!
And as Erik Adams wrote in his A.V. Club article, “like the 2016 U.S. presidential election, talking about The Late Show With Stephen Colbert is too much fun to abstain from.”
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert – Premiere
Colbert managed that rare thing in television: seeming terribly clever to clever people without seeming too unreachable by the segment of the audience genuinely more interested in hearing from George Clooney than anything else.
The self-referencing was laid on thick, but American Talk Shows 2.0 are living in a very “meta” age.
There was even a pre-taped cross to Fallon over on NBC, in which the pair traded guest lists and Fallon wished the new entrant in the talk show stakes good luck.
The point? Oh, there’s always a point. In this case, that Fallon and Colbert are playing a gentle game with each other, and are unlikely to rekindle the kind of rivalry which their predecessors Leno and Letterman indulged in.
The new Colbert is different from the old Colbert, but he is still a part of him. With Colbert there will always be a distance between the performance and the intelligence of the performer, and it’s in that space that the audience is meant to luxuriate.
One interesting thing that James Poniewozik points out in his article is that, while The Colbert Report had “a fully formed thesis statement” from day one, The Late Show—being more broadly themed—will need more time to define itself.
Read the whole review if you want to get excited all over again without even watching an episode!
The amped-up, expansive premiere of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert was not so tightly focused. Befitting the difference between a niche cable half-hour and a network variety hour, it was not a rigidly composed plate but a groaning board, built less around a concept than around a vibe of smart fun and an urge to show off its host’s many skills.
[P]art of why politics has become so polarized […] is likely that we’ve come to see the workings of government as things that exist separately from the rest of our lives. The sociologist Pablo Boczkowski talks about the reluctance many people have to talk about politics in a work environment, where such discussions can create unnecessary acrimony; instead, we silo ourselves, discussing the issues of the day, for the most part, with people we know will pretty much agree with us.
That’s not a good thing, for people or for democracy. And Colbert’s latest debut suggested that late-night comedy might actually play a role in fixing it.
Stephen Colbert and The Late Show enjoy an overwhelmingly positive sentiment online. Brandwatch found that positive tweets outnumbered negative tweets at a rate of 6.3 to 1. Also, Amobee found that only 14 percent of the tweets in the two-hour period around the show were negative in sentiment, implying that fans are digging Colbert as the new host. The sentiment was 33 percent positive and 53 percent neutral.
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert – Premiere Week
“Has there ever been a more effortless, joyful premiere than that of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert?” — Now, that’s a good lead!
Vulture lists some elements of The Late Show that might remind viewers of The Colbert Report. These “report-isms” are not surprising knowing that “CBS Entertainment chief Nina Tassler’s main advice to [Stephen] was to simply continue what he had been doing on The Colbert Report. […] “Add. Don’t take away.””
7. Colbert Nation Some things never change. Colbert still loves his audience, and they love him right back. It’s possible there’s never been a late-night host with such an immediate and devoted following, as evidenced by the Colbert Nation’s dutiful chanting of “Stephen, Stephen” at the top of the show. Colbert’s fanbase is so intense, he once had a shot at the presidency so legitimate, he had to rescind his satirical candidacy. He doesn’t have a sidekick, but he clearly doesn’t need one. The cult of personality around Stephen Colbert acts as his co-host. And, if the premiere episode was any indication, it’s only about to grow.
The Hollywood Reporter’s Tim Goodman likes the show’s eclectic guest lineup, but insists that in order to succeed Stephen will need to improve his celebrity interviews. Keep in mind that this article was written after the third episode. I personally wasn’t too fond of the George Clooney and Scarlett Johansson interviews either, but have enjoyed pretty much everyone else since—Emily Blunt, Amy Schumer, Jake Gyllenhaal, Kevin Spacey and Carol Burnett.
Right now, in these early days, Colbert has more working than not. He’s got the best and most original opening sequence on late night television; he’s got a fabulously renovated set; he’s backed by a tremendous talent in band-leader Jon Batiste, and he’s got what he’s always had — a wickedly fast intellect and an even faster sense of comic timing. The Biden interview let out a bit of his other strong suit — empathy and compassion and a sense of how to handle emotional topics. And that resulted in one of the most fascinating and talked-about interviews in late night in some time.
So a lot is working. What needs fine tuning are his celebrity interviews because those — not witty asides with the secretary of energy or a thoughtful discussion with a Supreme Court justice — are what will determine if Colbert can keep robust ratings or not.
Colbert’s program remains a bit of a work in progress, but he brought enormous goodwill with him to the job, and further cemented his reputation last week with an interview with Vice President Joe Biden that was touching and funny all at once. And while Fallon rebounded from Colbert’s big sampling numbers to reclaim the top spot ratings-wise, his woefully thin encounter with Donald Trump the next night fed the perception that his is the “safe” choice for candidates, perhaps, but also less likely to win the admiration of peers and pundits.
It’s not really my standards that I’m judging Colbert by; it’s his own. And by that measure — playing with his interlocutors, improvising based on their answers and letting himself be led by sincere interest — Colbert hasn’t quite found his groove. You don’t have to be an investigative journalist to ask follow-up questions, and being direct or pressing for a follow-up is not necessarily the same thing as being mean. This is an area where Colbert’s new sincerity ought to protect him; it’s harder to brush aside true curiosity than an obvious set-up.
“The Late Show With Stephen Colbert has a host that matters” is a very nice title—though, probably not for the other hosts. The point is that The Late Show With Stephen Colbert seems to actually be not only with, but about Stephen Colbert. Not that anyone could tell from the “Stephen! Stephen!” chanting, or from the dozens of Stephen Colbert faces projected on the Ed Sullivan Theater’s dome and on its walls.
But it also goes beyond that:
And with the exception of the vice president upstaging Colbert on Thursday, the host was the No. 1 reason to watch these first five episodes. And in this late-night era, that’s notable. Jimmy Fallon and James Corden draw the most eyes and the loudest buzz because of what other people do on their shows; Jimmy Kimmel has made some of his deepest talk-show impacts by staying out of the frame until the very last second. Launching off of his own program to take over for the most influential talk-show host of a generation, Stephen Colbert is in a prime spot to push his personality as the main draw of his Late Show. In these first five episodes, he demonstrated again and again that the bulletproof confidence of his Colbert Show persona wasn’t a put-on. As sincerity becomes his default mode, the most sincere part of Stephen Colbert is his belief in himself as a performer.
Because the show relies so much on Stephen himself rather than on celebrity guests or on specific sketches, the viewing experience differs from that of other late-night shows today. I don’t know about you guys, but like Sean O’Kane I, too, get the feeling that the show seems to be “built to be watched as a whole.”
The headlines about Colbert’s first week on The Late Show came not from funny bits and wacky antics, but from his interviews. Compared with his NBC analog Jimmy Fallon — or even Colbert’s own summer of weird internet blurbs — The Late Show’s early “breakout” moments were more substantive. But while we’re only one week in, it’s clear that CBS and Colbert are building something less intent on gaming the internet and more focused on the traditional TV experience. And it looks like Colbert will have to use this stage to prove whether or not his success with millennials can be distilled into something that works on network TV.
On its first night, The Late Show drew an impressive 6.6 million viewers, beating its competition by a significant margin. But The Tonight Show took the lead back the very next day. We’ll see how the “ratings war” settles over time, but, so far, it seems that the traditional Tonight Show–Late Show dynamic will persist.
The Trump episode marked Fallon’s biggest total-viewer margin (28%) over CBS’s four-day-old The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (Colbert’s Tuesday night debut beat Fallon by 55%, then slipped each night to second place by margins of 11%, 10% and Friday’s 28%. Friday’s Colbert, with guest Amy Schumer, was watched by 3.5 million.