Jim Gaffigan looks like he’s going to have a pretty fun week at the helm of The Late Late Show on CBS.
Just check out his kids opening up the show just like they’ve been doing for some of his stand-up shows and his monologue from last night.
This week of The Late Late Show’s interim period between Craig Ferguson and James Corden is definitely one worth checking out.
The one and only Jim Gaffigan is filling in as host for most of this week. That fact alone should make you clear out 12:35AM to watch.
On top of that, Michael Ian Black, Sarah Silverman, Kumail Nanjiani, Dave Koechner, Justin Willman, Lena Dunham, Maria Bamford, Garry Shandling, and more are all going to be guests that sit down with Gaffigan.
So, make a reminder for 12:35AM at CBS and let’s see if Jim has The Gaffigan Five worked into the show at all.
“Late Show With Stephen Colbert” will debut on Sept. 8, CBS announces. Colbert’s comment below: pic.twitter.com/IPJX0xBD2a
— Dave Itzkoff (@ditzkoff)
So, one of the very final dates in the beginning of this new era of late night is set. Sept. 8th, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert will premiere on CBS at 11:30PM (via @ditzkoff).
You read that right. We all have to wait nine months until Colbert resumes his role as a host on the legendary Late Show. As he has said himself, "I have nine months to make a show, just like a baby. So first, I should find out how you make a baby.“
That’s a long time, especially considering what’s going to be happening in the meantime.
For one, David Letterman is signing off from The Late Show on May 20th.
James Corden, who will be following Colbert with The Late Late Show, starts his hosting duties several months earlier on Mar. 23rd.
…and…
Larry Wilmore will be starting next week on Jan. 19th with The Nightly Show at Comedy Central.
…then…
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver returns for its second season Feb 8th at HBO.
…then…
Grace Helbig will be headlining her own talk show on E! ostensibly replacing Chelsea Handler starting in April, though it will air in primetime.
…then…
Conan O’Brien will tape a week of episodes at Comic Con this summer, which should be one of the most fun things to happen this year in late night.
The only other thing that is going to happen in the late night realm after Colbert takes over in the latter part of 2015 is the aforementioned Chelsea Handler doing a talk show on Netflix in 2016.
All of this is in addition to Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Conan O’Brien, and Jon Stewart, continuing to build their late night empires both live on TV and online.
So, with all of those dates set, that leaves four months at CBS where 11:30PM is vacant. Apparently, there will be reruns (via THR) playing in that slot during that time leading in Corden. All other late night programs will be more than happy to play against reruns at 11:30PM at CBS.
What interests us is what exactly will Colbert be up to in these nine months. The format for his tenure at The Late Show is set to be much more traditional than The Colbert Report, which, we think, wouldn’t necessarily need nine months of pre-production and retooling.
Is there something else that Colbert is up to for most of this year? Maybe it’s just some well deserved time off?
Either way, we definitely want 2015 to go way faster now.
Now that we’re into the interim period of The Late Late Show between Ferguson and Corden, it would seem that there are going to be a lot more comedians doing sets on the show over the coming weeks.
We’re definitely happy about that.
Already, Lachlan Patterson has done a set this week. Now, you can enjoy the delightful Esther Povitsky who notched in a set on The Late Late Show last night.
More so than Jan. 1st, Jan. 5th better marked the new year as everyone seemed to get back to work. That includes late night talk shows and stand-up comedians doing sets on said late night talk shows.
So, with that said, we’re off to the races for late night sets with Lachlan Patterson, who you saw on Last Comic Standing last year, on The Late Late Show with (for the week) Drew Carey.
Craig Ferguson has given his last monologue, interview, and obligatory big musical number to say goodbye as host of The Late Late Show at CBS.
However, The Late Late Show isn’t going on hiatus waiting for the new host, James Corden, to take over. CBS has guests hosts lined-up to fill in each week for the interim.
This interim period of The Late Late Show begins tonight with Craig’s good friend and The Price Is Right host Drew Carey as the first guest host. Also, please note that Eric Idle, Lachlan Patterson, Jessica St., Clair, and Esther Povitsky are all scheduled to appear as guests this week as well.
So, maybe you’ll want to tune in 12:35AM on CBS?
Craig Ferguson has always been noted for how radical of a departure he takes for a monologue, often going on tangents that range from incredibly sincere to the downright absurd and everything in between.
His final monologue for The Late Late Show is a perfect example of that and why he’ll be missed for however long he’s off the air as talk show host.
Watch it here and watch the whole episode here.
Craig Ferguson will, in a few hours, leave The Late Late Show at CBS as its third host leaving it to a myriad of guest hosts and, eventually, James Corden. Tom Snyder and Craig Kilborn came before him, but neither had the nine year run that Ferguson had.
In one of the most rigid formats on television, the late night talk show, Ferguson managed to oscillate between the tropes of the form and also start making delightful cracks in the veneer of late night’s shiny suit and tie. Doing a monologue however he feels like doing, ripping up pre-interview questions, awkward pauses, having a robot sidekick and Secretariat, and other small things about Ferguson’s tenure at The Late Late Show made Ferguson absolutely stand out at 12:35AM.
With the end of The Colbert Report and Ferguson leaving tonight, this is a pretty historic week in TV, especially in regards to comedy. The gravity of both Colbert and Ferguson leaving probably won’t be felt for a bit due to the focus on Sony and The Interview, but we’ll feel it when they’re both gone next week.
Hopefully, we won’t have to wait too long before he’s back as a free wheeling host of something. For now, you’ll just have to watch Craig Ferguson’s final episode at 12:35AM at CBS with Jay Leno as his guest.
The Colbert Report and Craig Ferguson’s run at The Late Late Show come to their end this week. The final episodes air Thurs. and Fri. on Comedy Central and CBS at 11:30PM and 12:35AM respectively.
Whether you’ll be able to feel it or not, this is the end of an era in late night televised comedy. Colbert’s shift from cable to network is big, going from a very successful, but very atypical late night show in The Colbert Report to the most traditional one at The Late Show, though many of us believe Colbert will be able to update it for his current fan base.
Craig Ferguson claims that he’ll go walk the earth and solve crimes with his robot skeleton sidekick Geoff Peterson after he leaves his show. However, we think that it’s only a few months to a year off before Ferguson is back hosting a show. Again, for our money, he’s one of the best interviewers in late night history. That’s why it’s particularly painful to see that CBS uploaded very few, short, out-of-context clips of his show on his YouTube channel. Ferguson could easily get in on the same demographics as late night Internet kings like Fallon, Kimmel, and Conan, but alas, you would have to watch a whole episode at CBS.com just to watch a whole interview or a clip of stand-up, which is something very few people, especially in key demos, want to do.
No matter how you feel about it, both shows have always been worth tuning in for and you definitely should tune in for their swan songs this week.
What might be most fascinating is that the final guests of The Late Late Show and The Colbert Report will be Jay Leno and The Grim Reaper AKA Grimmy, respectively. Somehow, that’s a very fitting contrast between old and new late night.
(via Deadline/@scottaukerman)
Originally, James Corden was supposed to take over The Late Late Show from Craig Ferguson on Mar. 9th, but CBS has opted to move the start date two weeks back to Mar. 23rd.
We’re not sure the exact reasoning behind that, but, perhaps, it might have something to do with getting the one and only Reggie Watts, who is the current bandleader on Comedy Bang! Bang! at IFC, to come over to pair up with Corden.
At first, we thought that he might split his time between the two shows like Fred Armisen does at Late Night with Seth Meyers, but Comedy Bang! Bang! host Scott Aukerman confirmed in a series of tweets that Watts will be leaving as his bandleader in the second half of 2015.
Reggie is sticking around thru the first half of 2015, during which he have planned a very fitting goodbye for him.
— Scott Aukerman (@ScottAukerman)
Aukerman also added that we all should be listening for shouting in the streets in regards to who the exciting new bandleader for Comedy Bang! Bang! will be soon.
Who will be the new bandleader? I can’t say yet but it’s very exciting. Please listen for newsies shouting on street corners in early 2015.
— Scott Aukerman (@ScottAukerman)
On top of all of that, Corden has gotten a team of veteran producers who have run the gamut in late night including The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, The Late Show with David Letterman, Last Call with Carson Daly, Lopez Tonight, and more. One of these producers, Mike Gibbons, has even been noted to be the co-creator of Tosh.0.
All of this makes for a much more intriguing beginning to Corden’s start at 12:35AM here in America.
As you’ve probably have already read plenty of times over, probably plenty right here at The Comedy Bureau, Stephen Colbert and James Corden will be the duo that take over The Late Show and The Late Late Show, respectively, at CBS next year.
When they take the reins to CBS’ late night line-up, they will be facing off against Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, and Carson Daly at NBC, Jimmy Kimmel at ABC, and Jon Stewart, Larry Wilmore, and Chris Hardwick at Comedy Central.
It’s a crowded field to be sure, but know that very few, if any, can harmonize like Colbert and Corden. Watch them sing a Christmas tune as well as Colbert giving some precautionary measures to Corden about what he’s getting into.
(via Deadline)
We’re on the threshold of the tectonic plates of the late night talk show world shifting.
Next week, Craig Ferguson will end his run at The Late Late Show and James Corden will take over three months later on Mar. 9th at CBS.
Also, next week, Stephen Colbert will end his run at The Colbert Report and Larry Wilmore will premiere The Nightly Show on Jan. 19th at Comedy Central.
Today, CBS announced that David Letterman’s final day as host of The Late Show will be Wed. May 20th, which is oddly a Wednesday rather than the usual end of the week send off.
So, this only leaves one date left for the next era of late night and that is when Stephen Colbert officially starts at The Late Show.
Though he had already taped a comedy special that will be coming out in the not so distant future, Jermaine Fowler, somehow, still had yet to perform stand-up on a late night talk show.
Luckily, that changed last night when he got to perform on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson and got to tell the world of how his brother got put in Special Ed by mistake.
Watch it here (starting around 35:08) or at CBS.com (around 35:40).
(via Deadline)
While Craig Ferguson is set to end his run of The Late Late Show on Dec. 19th and James Corden isn’t taking over the role of host until Mar. 9th, CBS will still continue The Late Late Show with a grouping of guests hosts.
Announced today, Jim Gaffigan, Judd Apatow, Will Arnett, Thomas Lennon, and more will fill in during the winter at The Late Late Show.
As John Oliver’s run as host at The Daily Show ended up being a test run for his own show, perhaps the very same thing could happen during any of the weeks that any of the aforementioned interim hosts.
However, there is no word on whether there will be interim Geoff Petersons.
It would be a little premature to say that there’s writing on the wall, but comedy definitely seems like it is playing second fiddle (or almost no fiddle at all) to hour long dramas at NBC, ABC, CBS, and Fox. Comedy is currently flourishing on cable and online and, perhaps, that is where episodic comedy, wholly, is headed.
This TV season alone, freshman comedies Selfie, A to Z, Manhattan Love Story, and Bad Judge have been canceled along with relative new comers The Millers.
Community, Arrested Development, and now The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, which had a series order from NBC but didn’t even make it to air, have moved from TV networks to online streaming services.
Just yesterday, it was announced ABC also scrapped a sitcom they had already ordered to series, Members Only starring John Stamos.
Bloggers and John Mulaney alike keep talking about whether Mulaney will last on Fox. On top of all of that, there are rumors that NBC has halted production on Last Comic Standing after it already had brought it back from the dead.
We’re not saying broadcast networks have drawn a hard line on in the sand (yet) prohibiting comedy from their airwaves. Cristela, black-ish, and Brooklyn Nine-Nine have found success just starting out and the networks have a few comedy mainstays like Modern Family, The Big Bang Theory, and Two and Half Men. New Girl and The Mindy Project have also seemed to fared well in their tenure at Fox. Also, cable networks TBS and TNT have recently canceled Sullivan & Son and Franklin & Bash, respectively.
Still, this last couple of years have seen an unprecedented shift of the comedy genre as an aggregate on TV from going live on air to every household with a TV on a weeknight to niche cable networks and various online entities ranging anywhere from Netflix to YouTube to Amazon. Key & Peele, Louie, Portlandia, Veep, Transparent, and Children’s Hospital are all just a few perfect examples of this new paradigm.
The future for comedy on TV and the behemoths of television does have yet to be decided. The highly anticipated Last Man on Earth from Chris Miller and Phil Lord starring Will Forte is premiering next year. Networks, like CBS, are starting to get on board with their own streaming service.
What is clear in the current TV landscape, above all, is that the Internet isn’t going away and, because of that, viewers can watch whatever they want whenever they want to watch it. Thus, people will watch their favorite Key & Peele sketch as many as times as they can stand, binge watch The Simpsons via The Simpsons World app/site, consume as much media that exists online of their favorite comedians (i.e. web series, podcasts, stand-up clips, etc.), and do so at any time of any day in any place versus Thursdays at 8 at home,
In such an environment, it’s much harder than it used to be to launch a broad franchise sitcom that lasts 10 seasons and lives on in syndication, which has been the network TV model for comedy for decades. So, for now, as NBC chairman Bob Greenblatt poignantly remarked during Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt’s move to Netflix, “…we have a very drama-heavy midseason schedule.”
(via The Washington Post)
While The Colbert Report comes to a close on Dec. 18th, you’ll have a chance to see Stephen Colbert host once more not too long after that. Of course, Colbert is set to take over The Late Show, but he’s also now going to host the annual Kennedy Center Honors set to broadcast on Dec. 30th on CBS after taping on Dec. 7th.
Lily Tomlin and Tom Hanks are among the honorees and will undoubtedly be fun to see next to or around Colbert, post-Colbert Report.
We’ve made it no secret around here at The Comedy Bureau that one of our favorite things in comedy is Steven Wright chatting with Craig Ferguson. The unique weirdness of each of them melds into something special and, of course, damn funny every single time.
Yet, as Craig is ending his run at The Late Late Show, Wright’s last conversation with Ferguson on the show happened last night and it was just as great as all the other ones they’ve had over the years.
Hopefully, what they have going on here will keep going and maybe turn into “Wright In Conversation with Ferguson” because we most certainly would obsessively watch that.
Watch Craig Ferguson and Steven Wright’s last chat on The Late Late Show here or on CBS.com here starting around 15:34.
Craig Ferguson is a very good late night talk show host.
Perhaps, you’ve not had your TV tuned to CBS at 12:35AM after Letterman to find that out over the last decade, but Ferguson, for our money, excelled at the hardest part of hosting the traditional late night talk show format, the interviews. The skill of making a fun, intriguing conversation with people whether they be crazy or dull is one that Ferguson has honed better than almost anyone currently working in late night.
So, the prospect of his exit from The Late Late Show is one that we’re having difficulty getting used to and Jimmy Kimmel feels much the same way.
Craig explains his reasons to Jimmy and the rest of us on The Late Late Show during Jimmy’s appearance on the show this week. Watch it here or here on CBS and start at 18:01 because CBS doesn’t want to put this vastly interesting interview in an easily accessible, user-friendly format online.
(via The Hollywood Reporter)
The final days of Craig Ferguson’s hosting of The Late Late Show over at CBS are coming soon. In anticipation of that, the guests for the final episodes have been teased, which include many of Craig’s favorite guests such as Thomas Lennon, Tim Meadows, Henry Winkler, Rashida Jones, Steve Carell, Lisa Kudrow, Mila Kunis, and more.
For the final send-off, Ferguson will have late night host compatriot Jay Leno as he joins him in late night host retirement.
We hope amidst this cavalcade, one of our favorite guests on The Late Late Show, Stephen Wright will also be stopping by to wish Ferguson bon voyage.
(via TV Guide Magazine)
The dates have been made official for the departure of The Late Late Show’s current host Craig Ferguson and his upcoming predecessor James Corden.
Ferguson’s final show will air Dec. 19th and Corden will have his debut on Mar. 9th.
There is rumor, according to The Wrap, that there will be guest hosts throughout that winter gap. If this does indeed happen, there’s a treasure trove of comedians for those spots here in LA and around the country, not to mention the other folks that were in talks for The Late Late Show earlier this year, that would do splendidly.
(via NY Times)
It’s only a matter of time before TV and the Internet merge completely. One can already see the signs as HBO finally setting to offer a stand alone streaming option marks the already inevitable shift of television online.
CBS is now joining in on this movement with the launching of CBS All Access, which offers thousands of episodes of your favorite CBS programs as well as new episodes the very next day.
We hope this makes watching something like a comedian’s set on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson or an entire interview from The Late Show with David Letterman after it has aired a lot easier (i.e. being able to watch it all) than it currently is.
For now, CBS is offering a one week free trial of CBS All Access.
In case you haven’t heard, Stephen Colbert is set to leave The Colbert Show after almost a decade at the end of 2014 in order to replace David Letterman at The Late Show.
In fact, there’s only 32 episodes left of The Colbert Report as was announced last night by Stephen himself. They should all be a doozy or, as he says, “instant classics”.
So, on the final episode, you guess is as good is ours as to what might happen. We’re guessing something in the realm of the Colbert going to switch out his glasses, perhaps take off a espionage grade latex mask off his own face to signal the end of the “character” Stephen Colbert.
On Letterman, Keegan Michael-Key and Jordan Peele explain their dynamic on Key & Peele that they divvy up between brains and the ability and willingness to take on an attack dog.
Wanna guess which one is which? Well, take a guess then see if you’re right and watch the clip here.
(via Deadline)
The first look deal that Will Arnett’s production company Electric Ave. has at CBS has just paid its first dividends. CBS has bought their project that would adapt Johanna Stein’s How Not To Calm a Child on a Plane into a comedy series.
No talent is attached as of yet and the format (single camera or multi-cam) is still up for discussion, but perhaps this and Tommy Johnagin’s sitcom is the start of a new vein in comedy in development at CBS.
(via TV Line)
Community is losing another one of its cast members as Yvette Nicole Brown announced earlier this week that she will be leaving the show in order to care of her father who has fallen ill.
Luckily, her fans won’t be left hanging as she has joined on to CBS’ reboot of The Odd Couple with Matthew Perry, beefing up their supporting cast.
Hopefully, she’ll drop by Greendale every now and again.