The Colbert Report
Months after Comedy Central's announcement, The Colbert Report (neither "t" pronounced) finally aired last night in the block after The Daily Show (TDS). The show is in essence a satirization of Bill O'Reilly's allegedly spin-zone-free hour on the Fox News Channel, The O'Reilly Factor. The demagoguery, the egotism, the bold pronouncements, etc. -- they were all ridiculed soundly. While I found myself laughing at Stephen Colbert, often at O'Reilly's expense, I still had to wonder how long the schtick, if it is indeed the show's schtick, will last.
TDS has a schtick as well -- satirizing network newscasts -- but the target there is broad and serves as a forum to make fun of anything within the political arena. And in any case, TDS has been around since 1996 -- 1999 with Jon Stewart -- but didn't really take off within the mainstream until 2001 (credit goes to the Bush administration). The Colbert Report has much larger coattails to ride, but coupled of course with high expectations. In other words, I have my doubts about its long-term viability, but I can't make up my mind about its worthiness just yet.
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this is only tangentially related - any luck viewing recent torrent-downloaded tv shows using tiger? quicktime 7 seems to be missing key codecs for xvid and i can't for the life of me get 'em in. i thought having a mac was supposed to make this problem go away...
mplayerOSX will solve all your problems. and it only has a graphical interface on the mac.
I've watched parts of each episode that has come out so far.
I agree with you thoughts-- it seems that Colbert will have to
find something he can specialize in to keep him in the game.
His ratings are probably decent out of the gate, but will
drop if he does not bring the laughs-- he's looking like
a one-trick pony in his interview segments... On the other
hand, I think if he stops imitating other newscasters so much
and tries to develop his own persona a little bit more, his
interviews could be quite good. He seems to have the skills
to ask some good questions and think on his toes. I think
the set and graphics are a little rough to look at for
too long... I like having an extra 30 minutes of Daily
Show esque material-- but it's hard to produce quality
programming four times a week with competition from
the Daily Show itself.
Sadly, I think Colbert will barely last through November.
He will have better luck with movies I think (maybe
Strangers with Candy), but I have hope that his show
will morph into something better... I've been
meaning to catch David Spade's show, but haven't
had a chance yet.
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