NYT article ...

boing

Moonves is attending tapings now? :) If this were baseball, I'd say the bases are loaded and the manager is heading out to the mound. As with many manager/pitcher interactions, they might try as they can to be inscrutable, and Moonves might not be pulling him immediately, but, believe me, if he keeps failing, he's done.

As far as the rest of the article goes, the author completely misses the mark. He makes the implication that CBS hasn't been letting Stephen be himself, or the equally egregious conclusion that he hasn't been given enough time to settle in. Both are preposterous. Until Licht stepped in, Stephen had 100% creative control, and there's not a host in late night history who hasn't found their groove in 8 months.

The author, like many here, in a desperate effort to avoid the cold hard truth, is pulling theories out of his patootie. Mr. Rutenberg, the answer is staring you in the face. Just admit it, you prefer fake Stephen to the real thing, and that, when given the chance to actually be himself, he isn't someone that you (or most viewers) want to watch. The arch liberal you fell in love with was only an illusion, a facade, foisted upon a nitwit who resented the forced detour from his far more middle of the road political paradigm.

@dvd123

The arch liberal you fell in love with was only an illusion, a facade, foisted upon a nitwit who resented the forced detour from his far more middle of the road political paradigm.

http://www.avclub.com/article/read-8-months-stephen-colberts-late-show-tries-reb-236116

Stephen Colbert, host of CBS’ nightly chatfest The Late Show, began his latest “Wheel Of News” segment last week with this apt pronouncement: “There are so many decisions to make on a show like this.” Up until very recently, according to an article by Jim Rutenberg in The New York Times, Colbert was making too many of those decisions himself. Rutenberg writes that the host insisted on “personally orchestrating details big and small—lighting, script approval, budgets.” Now, however, CBS chairman Les Moonves has convinced Colbert to let newly hired showrunner Chris Licht, a veteran of CBS This Morning, handle that kind of thing so he can simply focus on being funny. Eight months into its run, Colbert’s Late Show is consistently running second to NBC’s The Tonight Show in the overall ratings, but ABC’s third-place Jimmy Kimmel Live! is scoring more of those coveted younger viewers than Colbert. More troubling, says Rutenberg, there is a “growing consensus that things just aren’t clicking.” In the middle of an election season ripe for satire, The Late Show has not emerged as a comedic powerhouse. Colbert’s new show is still operating in the shadow of his old one, Comedy Central’s much-missed The Colbert Report.

With Licht on board to handle the show’s day-to-day hassles, Colbert can now “concentrate on being himself.” But that, too, is a potential problem, Rutenberg writes. The comedian became a television sensation by portraying the character of a right-wing blowhard who used his show as a bully pulpit. Now, he is tasked with proving that he can carry a nightly show as himself. “The great irony,” Rutenberg says, “is that Mr. Colbert is still learning how to be himself on television after nine years of pretending to be someone else.” For now, Moonves and CBS are behind him all the way. After all, they have too much corporate pride and money tied up in The Late Show to give up on it now.

Mr. Moonves says that his visit was a social call on a fledgling show in which he has great faith. “We each had a drink and it was nice,” he told me. “Just three guys.”