According to Deadline, Colbert’s special election coverage for Showtime will pre-empt the regularly scheduled episode of The Late Show, Showtime programing chief Gary Levine said. Stephen wants to do it, I want to do it, the studio wants to do it.
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Showtime chief David Nevins said Thursday that he’s in talks about a probable election-night special with the CBS late-night host, whose regular Late Show gig will be pre-empted November 8 by the network’s election coverage. Those live convention shows generated Late Show’s most viral clips to date: Jon Stewart taking over the host desk, which has more than 14M YouTube views to date, and Laura Benanti’s appearance as Melania Trump defending herself against charges she plagiarized portions of her RNC speech from Michelle Obama, which has clocked more than 8M Youtube views. “The Circus had way more impact than I expected, and … in political circles, is an important part of the conversation”, he said. It’s something I’ve been trying to get him to do for a while; he sort of woke up and said, ‘Yeah, that’s something I’d like to do.’ He’s not on CBS that night anyway. But doing “The Late Show” live after the Democratic and Republican conventions has returned some of that edginess.
On Wednesday, CBS announced that Colbert will take his show live again for two of the three debates between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, on September 26 and October 19, and for the vice presidential debate between Mike Pence and Tim Kaine on October 4. “We want to have stuff we feel is culturally relevant”.
This is the second straight day an election-centric live program featuring Colbert has been announced.
The concept: “Colbert unfettered”, Nevins continued, adding, “He’s promised he will say a couple of curse words”.
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Showtime’s direct-to-consumer service, which launched last summer, now has more than 1 million subscribers “with no cannibalization of the base business”, said Nevins.
