The ‘Late Show’ will premiere Tuesday, September 8, CBS Entertainment chairman Nina Tassler announced Monday morning at the Television Critics Associations’ semi-annual press tour.
“With an election year, it’s going to be nice to have the smartest guy in the room on at 11:30 p.m.,” she said. Last April, CBS announced that Colbert would succeed David Letterman.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter.
“I have nine months to make a show, just like a baby. So first, I should find out how you make a baby,” Colbert said in a statement.
In that time, Tassler added, decisions will be made about Colbert’s format, which in the end will be a mix of traditional elements and “some things he’s going to try to do differently.” She fully anticipates him, however, remaining as “topical” as he was on his Comedy Central program and deal with current events.
The final episode of the Colbert Report aired back in December, with an episode that saw Colbert’s famous character cheat death after many expected to see him killed off.
After a ten season run on Comedy Central in-character, Tassler said Colbert “clearly he knows he’s introducing himself as the real Colbert to audiences,” but she’s confident the transition will be easy for the host. “He’s a real student of media; he knows the format better than everybody.”
Source: Mashable.
As for what format the new Late Show will take, CBS boss Nina Tassler said at the Television Critics Association’s winter TV previews that Colbert’s team has only just begun to work things out. “They’ve actually just moved into their offices,” she said. “They’ve just started working. He will have music on the show. He said, ‘I have to be entertaining as my guests,’ so he’s going to have guests on the show. Whether or not he’s going to start with a monologue, he’s working on that right now. Clearly he knows that he’s introducing himself, the real Stephen Colbert to his audience. He’s really putting a lot of attention on making sure that the show is still topical and still relevant.”
Source: TIME.com
“Part of the opportunity of being in business with brilliant talent like Stephen Colbert is really letting him do what he wants to do,” she insisted. “We’re really sitting back and waiting for him to come to us and say what he has in mind. He’s a real student of media. He knows the format better than anybody. It’s really a discovery process for him. It’s still in development. I think there’ll be parts that will be traditional in some contexts, and then there will be things he’s going to want to try to do.”
Source: Hit Fix.
'Late Show with Stephen Colbert' to Premiere in September