BY DC CUEVA
The concept of late night television began in the 1950's when NBC began the first incarnation of The Tonight Show, the world's longest-running talk show and the one series that's been on longer than any other entertainment program in U.S. history, joining longtime Peacock stalwarts Today and Meet The Press in having been on since the golden age of TV. It's when Johnny Carson stepped down from his 30-year reign as king of late night that 11:30PM would ultimately become a key time slot of every network's strategy when Jay Leno and David Letterman went from being on after each other after Carson's retirement to when the ladder bolted to CBS as that network's first serious late night player. Soon enough, the likes of Conan O'Brien, Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, James Corden and Seth Myers would join this world, as did someone who got their start in cable land.
When Letterman announced he'd be retiring from hosting The Late Show in spring 2015 - more than three decades after he hosted Late Night on NBC and turned the traditional late night talk format on its head with top ten lists, stupid pet tricks and the like, CBS was left scrambling to find who would take over his desk on the New York stage Ed Sullivan once roamed. Plus, the Eye had several challenges going against them: the oldest median audience of the broadcast networks across the entire day, CBS not appealing much to late night's core young audience of college kids and men 18-34, NBC's longtime late night leadership, and scars of the Eye being the victim of affiliates bolting away after it temporary lost the NFL to FOX in the 90's. And this is during a time when CBS and Viacom were separate companies, just as reports this week suggest their now-almost inevitable reunion.
While he was a kid, Stephen found that those from the South developed a stereotype of being less intelligent than other scripted series' characters, and he decided to imitiate the speech of American TV news anchors... all without knowing that, when he came to Comedy Central in 1998, he would ultimately become one in his mind. Colbert joined Daily when Craig Kilborn was its anchor in its humble beginnings before Jon Stewart took over and turned it into a powerhouse. Stephen played a parody of a network correspondent like those who still plow through in the Trevor Noah era, and where he got to report from political conventions, on religion and sparred with The Office star.
An week of subbing for Stewart after the 2002 Olympics gave Stephen some hosting experience that eventually landed his own 11:30PM spin-off opposite his network talk counterparts as well as ABC's Nightline: The Colbert Report began in 2005 as the Daily Show's answer to cable's primetime political shows, and where he would transform his character from a reporter to a parody of a right-wing pundit focusing on the personalities and on its host than the ordinary news of the day. It, like Daily, would become a ratings winner and helped viewers understand a bit more about its host: one who's well-versed in Catholicism, who is a Sci-Fi nerd and who also loves The Lord of the Rings.
CBS saw and liked what they saw in Colbert, and in spring 2014 - a year before Letterman's last Late Show, they named him as his successor. And in September of the following year, Stephen officially took over the reigns and into hosting the show as himself than a character, with Jon Batiste taking over for Paul Schaffer as bandleader. But it would be in spring 2016 that The Late Show with Stephen Colbert truly began: former MSNBC producer Chris Licht came over from producing CBS This Morning at sunrise to working the swing shift at the other end of the clock, and execs saw his news background as a complement to the host's focuses on news-oriented, topical content -- things that did not go as viral that year as Carpool Karaoke.
It would take for the most controversial presidential campaign and election since Watergate and the lingering consequences of the divisive America we're living in right now to eventually see a night & day power shift in late night TV. Colbert's experience talking, discussing and covering politics -- and it being a principal focus of his show -- would eventually win out among critics and viewers over the vibrancy of a man he eavesdropped on when he visited Fallon's first night of The Tonight Show two months before Stephen was named as his rival and then overtake him at #1 in the late night ratings as Trump has been on everyone's minds. And it sure looks to stay that way this close to the 2020 election, as all other late night hosts have jumped aboard to make it a part of their monologues.
Along the route that would eventually see him take over leadership of the last part of any network's broadcast day, someone who MTV Reality fans followed at the turn of the last decade got to bring his talents to Late Show.
In the clip below from the September 3, 2016 episode of The Late Show during the campaign, Stephen brought in a police officer played by C.J. on a satellite interview from Chicago - or at least a video backdrop of the windy city - as they discussed plans on police cleaning up the crime and the streets of the nation's third largest city. What happens at the end of the bit is the title of this post: a late night cop striptease. No worries to our younger audience - there won't be any Magic Mike-like NSFW moments here (it is, after, broadcast TV).
- I AM DC
#DCBLOG
