Stephen Colbert Featured on the Cover of 'Adweek'

Stephen Colbert is featured on the cover of the February 1, 2016 edition of ‘Adweek‘ Magazine. In the special Super Bowl issue, Stephen discusses why ‘The Late Show’ will air live from New York following Super Bowl 50, and not from San Francisco where the match is taking place, what’s in store for the live episode, how the show has changed since its debut last September, if there is pressure to create viral content, and are there any plans to collaborate with James Corden and ‘The Late Late Show’ in the future.

Plus, check out this fantastic interactive Google map of the Ed Sullivan Theatre.

Interview highlights:

What do you have planned for the show?
Everything’s about Super Bowl. We’ll do our live analysis, and we’ll have our live analysis of the most important thing: who won the commercials. And we’ll have our own Super Bowl commercial. We’ll be watching the game and writing the show as we go. We practiced doing the Patriots-Broncos [AFC Championship game] because that’s something we’ve never done before. We’ve written jokes live about an election, but how do you write jokes about a Super Bowl? We’ve got to turn the jokes around in 20 minutes.

For many of those viewers, it will be the first time they’ve seen your show.
Oh, yeah. It’s 10 times our audience, and I want people to see an indicative show because I really like our show. And I don’t want to bait and switch. If you like what you saw, tomorrow is going to be a different subject, but this is what you’re going to get.

This will likely be the largest audience you’ll ever have. Are you nervous?
Doing a show for 3 million people or doing the show for 25 million people, we can’t feel the difference—it’s doing it live that’s the difference. We did one just for schnicks [last month] because no one had ever done The Late Show live. The energy is fantastic. If I didn’t have to stay up until 11:35 to do it, I would do it every day. Now we’re doing the show absolutely to the second, live to tape because we love that energy so much and don’t want to lose it.

That’s a huge switch from your early shows last September, where tapings ran long and you had to quickly edit the shows down.
We were super-long because doing an hour instead of doing a half-hour and working with 90 people as opposed to 210 people, that’s a huge difference. We slowly wrestled Goliath to the ground here. Now we start at 5:35 p.m. exactly—the bell rings, I go out. At 6:35, I’m done.

When were you finally able to take a breath and say, OK, I’ve got a handle on the new show?
There wasn’t really much time for reflection until Thanksgiving when we had our first dark week. That was our chance to go, OK, what the hell just happened? We spent about an hour and a half every day for the first three days watching game tapes. We took notes and every department head was allowed in, and that’s when the show took a turn for me. I went, oh yeah, we know how to do the show. Now, do we know how to change it? Because the imperative of [taping] every day and having no Fridays [off] makes it very hard to make the changes.

How have you changed the show since then?
Those next two weeks after Thanksgiving were a totally different approach to the guests. We changed the way we shot it. We changed the rhythm of the performance. We pulled the graphics out because I can’t improvise with graphics—I can’t play with my script if there’s an OTS [over-the-shoulder graphic] here. It’s improvising with a robot; it won’t let me change the subject. I understand why you have an art card now. It seems old-fashioned—Carson held up an art card—but I can put it down or hold it up if I want. You’re in control.

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Having clips go viral has become such an essential part of late night. Do you feel pressure to deliver those viral moments?
No. It’s nice when that sort of thing happens, but CBS hasn’t asked for it. For me, putting that cart before our horse as we’re finding exactly what we want to do, that way lies madness. You can’t create something for distribution; you have to create something because you like it.

What else do you hear from CBS?
They’ve been very supportive. The notes from the network have been practically nonexistent. I thought I would go from cable—where it was like we were putting out a college newspaper where they gave us paper and ink, and at the end of the year they said this is your budget for paper and ink next year—and I’d come over here and I feared I would be a dog on a leash. Dave owned the show; I don’t own the show. Dave was his own entity, an island unto himself; I’m not. But regardless of their promises, I was afraid somebody would yank my chain. No one has yanked my chain. Now that I think of it, that actually was my biggest fear.

CBS really likes you and The Late Late Show host James Corden as a late-night team. You’ve done promos together. Is more collaboration planned?
We’re going to do some live tosses. I would do more with him if I had Fridays [off]. He doesn’t do shows on Fridays. Man, I look at the things that he’s able to do and I’m so jealous because I remember what it was like to be able to go out into the field. His Carpool Karaoke is fantastic. I’m like, Jesus, I wish I had that time. I remember that guy!

Full Interview: Adweek.