Well, that was fast. A week after David Letterman announced he was stepping down as host of Late Show with David Letterman, CBS announced that his replacement: Stephen Colbert, who signed a five-year contract to take over for the talk-show veteran.
First of all, congratulations to Colbert.
Second of all, this is not gonna go well.
On paper, it's a shrewd move by CBS. NBC and ABC have already doubled down on the "youth market" by signing the Duelin' Jimmies (Fallon and Kimmel, respectively), and now Colbert has a shot at overhauling CBS' image as That Network For Old People and Dummies.* He's also proven time and time again that he generates online buzz, draws heavyweight guests, and can even dredge up some gravitas when need be.
But that's the Stephen of the Colbert Report, a blowhard persona who allowed Colbert to skewer dogmatic thinking in an Andy Kaufman-level act of character immersion. The man who signed a contract to host the CBS 11:30 p.m. talk show is not that guy. Instead, he's smart and genial fellow who's a good enough actor and improviser to pull off breathtaking satire, but has never spent any appreciable time on camera.
Is he a good talk-show host? Quite possibly. And the fact we don't know him isn't a problem—but the cognitive dissonance is. That first time the theme music plays, and the lovely and thoughtful Colbert walks out and begins to speak, the odds are good that thousands and thousands of people will look at each other in their living rooms and ask: "Hey, where's that desk-pounding jerk we used to watch on Comedy Central?"
Make no mistake, I'm rooting for the guy. I didn't think he could pull off The Colbert Report in such grand fashion, and he proved me wrong. I hope he proves me wrong again. But, again, he's not the problem. We are.
*Yes, yes, they're all networks for dummies. But how many procedural dramas can you throw at the wall?
