Cobert and the Late Night Show to be Cancelled in 2026

Cobert and the Late Night Show to be Cancelled in 2026

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Have you been in your life? If you like Letterman, Leno, Kimmel, Carson,
you're not old enough for that.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Not old enough for that. I was so Craig Ferguson lightly.
I'll rank him this way. I was a Letterman over Jenna,
a Letterman over Leno. Guy always thought David Letterman was
a lot funnier, and I thought his silly style of
humor just suited me better.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
And I would say though that as far as late
night hosts go, it's kind of Craig Ferguson and Conan
one A, one B. I don't know which goes where.
I watched more of Conan when I was a kid
because they put it on Comedy Central there for a bit.
That's what really introduced me to late night, because I
wasn't watching it in its time slot. I really probably
watched Late Night most of the time when it was

(00:45):
Conan on Comedy Central. I think Craig Ferguson. Ferguson is
the most underrated late night host of all time. He's
got so funny that sounds right. He was so funny
and irreverent. He brought really good stuff out of his
guests and was able to playfully have fun with them
in ways I feel like other late night hosts just
couldn't do. He's really the one that I feel like

(01:09):
they've never been able to fill that void and was underappreciated.
I think the same thing about Conan two. But other
than that, I don't listen to this generations late night
at all or watch I should say, it's just not
for me, and I don't know. I find better things
to do, usually sleep during that time. If not, find
something more fun to do.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
Okay, so my feelings on this all right, And the
reason this is newsworthy is because they've said that they're
going to cancel the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. It's
going away. The whole thing is going away. It's not
just Stephen Colbert is getting like oh, or they're not
renewing a contract. It's literally they're getting rid of the
show now. I don't know if that's an indictment on
the show itself or just kind of the movement away

(01:50):
from traditional broadcast late night programming. We're inundated with stuff
all the time. I mean, people are doing late night
style shows on like YouTube in a much more palatable
way that isn't necessarily it like if you miss a
show you're doing to five days a week if you're
not watching it live. Yeah, some stuff could get aggregated
and go kind of viral, I suppose if you know

(02:12):
it's done right and maybe with the right guests or
the right bit. But everything so timely because it's Daily show,
so I mean two days later the information on one
of those shows is just like obsolete, So how we
can argue about it or whatever. But Craig Ferguson comes
to mind as like a factor here because they had

(02:32):
a similar arrangement with him supposedly going to be taking
over Letterman slot whenever Letterman decided to hang it up
to call it quits, and then they decided against doing that,
and they brought in Stephen Colbert, who was of Comedy
Central fame, right he what was his show?

Speaker 2 (02:49):
Was it?

Speaker 1 (02:50):
The The Colbert Report? Yeah, that's right, the Colbert Report.
That was because the Daily Show was the other guy,
John Stuart Stewart. Yeah, So they went with a little
bit more of a new zy political kind of vibe
with Colbert. And you know, it's not that David Letterman
was like overtly goofy, but there was just a fun

(03:13):
element about him that I don't know if Colbert brings
that to the table, you know, and to kind of
like push the glasses up the nose and kind of
talk about things and it may be too intelligent for you,
weigh and if you get it, you get it, and
if you don't, you don't and that's your problem kind
of thing. I don't know. It just it stopped being
like a great brand. If Craig Ferguson would have got

(03:35):
the job like he was supposed to based on what
we think the contract kind of negotiations were, if they
would have honored kind of that deal that much like
NBC and Conan moving into Leno's spot, maybe it would
have gone a little bit better. Or maybe Craig Ferguson
was just better off, much like Conan O'Brien was, not
being in that maintime time slot and being in the

(03:55):
later show. Don't know was was when did James Cordon?
Is that that guy's name sounds right? The carpool karaoke guy?
H Was he on CBS? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (04:09):
He was?

Speaker 1 (04:10):
He took over for Craig Ferguson, didn't he?

Speaker 2 (04:13):
Is he not there anymore?

Speaker 1 (04:14):
No? Twenty three he left.

Speaker 2 (04:15):
Okay, See that shows how much I've paid attention to
those shows and those time slots.

Speaker 1 (04:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:20):
I don't know, but I but it's interesting though. Right
you say James Corden, the carpool karaoke guy. He hasn't
been here for a couple of years, but that's what
he's known for, right, the carpool karaoke. Okay, So when
I say Jimmy Fallon, what do you what do you think?
I would think a lot of people think lip sync battles?

Speaker 1 (04:34):
Yeah, right, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:35):
When you say Jimmy Kimmel, what I think of is
the uh the censor. What's the name of the bit
that he does where he like censors people inappropriately unnecessary censorship?

Speaker 1 (04:46):
Yeah? Yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:47):
Like what do you think for Stephen Colbert?

Speaker 1 (04:50):
Is there something? Well?

Speaker 2 (04:51):
Right, I mean I think that's kind of I don't
get a point. I watched Conan, and when you think
it's Stephen Colbert, you just think of his political take.

Speaker 1 (05:00):
Yeah, and he was a political based guy. Not that
he's not funny sometimes I'm sure he is. If that's
you're kind of jam but he's a little too smart
to be slapsticky and like he would do an interview
with somebody, but you know, there wasn't like sometimes Conan
would do an interview and he'd have somebody pretty attractive
on and then they'd do like a little thing that
would be like an Induindo in there or something. And

(05:22):
the way Conan would look with his like big eyes
and like his like hairy, a little disheveled, and him
looking at the camera and him looking around, how awkward
he would make it. Even at like fifteen, sixteen years old,
I was dying laughing.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
But I think that was the genius of Conan, because
he looked like an everyday guy, just like us, and
he was kind of there interviewing these larger than life people,
and he really played that role of like what am
I doing here? Kind of exactly.

Speaker 1 (05:46):
He didn't feel like he was so much bigger or
better than we are, and that's why one of the
reasons his podcast is also very good. Yes, yeah, if
you like Conan O'Brien needs a friend. He transitioned from
doing late night television to a podcast and it works
pretty seamlessly. He's a pretty physical guy, so I do
like you kind of need a little bit of if
you want to watch he puts him up on YouTube too.

(06:08):
You can watch you know, some of his like interactions
and how he moves, but some of the best bits
that he did were very physical. Colbert has none of that.
There's nothing physical about him that makes you laugh, you know.
That's the thing. Fall and not a huge falon guy,
but there's a there's a physicality to what he does
too that can make you laugh. Right, So I get it,
But I just I think we're watching slowly the death

(06:31):
of the traditional late night format with this cancelation. I
don't know if it's, like I said, I don't know
if it's a direct indictment on Stephen Colbert. I think
it's more of an indictment on the kind of status
of network television and it's just not appointment TV anymore,
especially in a daily type format. We talked about Stranger Things, right,

(06:51):
Stranger Things. I think if you told people what are
the most successful TV shows for the last decade, Stranger
Things is going to come up, Matt. Over nine years,
Stranger Things will have I've had thirty four total episodes.
Long gone are the days of like super regular appointment
television on networks. They make good TV still, I think,
you know, like the Equalizer gets good reviews. The TV

(07:13):
show I think, you know, there's a lot of TV
shows that have popped up and people have talked about,
like Abbott, Elementary and stuff like that, that air sitcom
type shows that people say they enjoy. But you know
what they're doing. They're streaming that thing on demand because
they have deals with these streaming services. So the episode
comes out and then you just wait twenty four hours,
go to your streaming service. You can binge three or
four of them in a row and call it good.

(07:34):
People are not watching network television the same way, and
I think that's going to be the first of probably
a domino effect on some of these late night shows,
is these networks reimagine kind of what their lineups look like.
So here's to the Late Show and the legacy that
David Letterman kind of built. But Stephen Colbert, unfortunately is

(07:55):
going to be the last host of that show altogether.
And the son