Colin Jost

Colin Kelly Jost (born June 29, 1982) is an American actor, comedian, screenwriter, and writer for the TV program Saturday Night Live. On March 1, 2014, he joined the show's cast as a featured player and succeeded Seth Meyers as the co-anchor of Weekend Update. As of October 17, 2015, Colin Jost has stepped away from his duties as the NBC sketch show's head writer.

Early life

Colin Jost was born and raised on Staten Island in New York. He has one brother, Casey Jost. His mother, Kerry J. Kelly, is the chief medical officer for the New York City Fire Department and a physician on Staten Island, and his father, Daniel A. Jost, is a former teacher at Staten Island Technical High School. Jost was raised Catholic. He attended Regis High School in Manhattan and Harvard University, where he was president of the Harvard Lampoon.

Career

Shortly after graduating from Harvard, Jost was hired as a writer at Saturday Night Live (SNL) in 2005 at 22 years old and later became SNL's writing supervisor from 2009-2012, before becoming co-head writer from 2012 to 2015. He often collaborates with fellow SNL co-head writer Rob Klein. During the summer hiatus following the 2012-2013 season, he was asked by producer Lorne Michaels if he could do the "Weekend Update" feature, as co-anchor Seth Meyers would soon be leaving to host Late Night with Seth Meyers. Jost accepted and replaced Meyers with the March 1, 2014 episode. Jost names Norm Macdonald as a primary influence for his "Update" anchor work, as Mcdonald's tone was the one Jost grew up with in high school. He also names Tina Fey as an influence.

Late Night

Late Night is shorthand for several different things:

See also

Seth Meyers

Seth Adam Meyers (born December 28, 1973) is an American comedian, writer, producer, television host, actor, and voice actor. He currently hosts Late Night with Seth Meyers, a late-night talk show that airs on NBC. Prior to that, he was a head writer for NBC's Saturday Night Live (2001–2014) and hosted its news parody segment Weekend Update.

He also hosted the 66th Primetime Emmy Awards in 2014, starred in the animated Hulu series The Awesomes (2013–2015), appeared in Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008), and is the co-creator, co-writer, and executive producer of Documentary Now! (2015–present)

Early life

Meyers was born in Evanston, Illinois, and was raised in Okemos, Michigan from ages 4–10 and Bedford, New Hampshire after that. His mother, Hilary Claire (née Olson), was a French teacher, and his father, Laurence Meyers, Jr., worked in finance. His younger brother is actor Josh Meyers. His paternal grandfather was Jewish, and although Meyers has performed at several Jewish Community Centers, he does not consider himself Jewish. His other ancestry is Czech-Austrian (from his paternal grandmother), Swedish, English, and German. Meyers attended Edgewood Elementary in Okemos and later graduated from Manchester High School West in New Hampshire. He then attended and graduated from Northwestern University in Evanston, where he became a member of the fraternity Phi Gamma Delta.

Late Night with Seth Meyers

Late Night with Seth Meyers is an American late-night talk show hosted by Seth Meyers on NBC. The show premiered on February 24, 2014 and is produced by Broadway Video and Universal Television. It is the fourth incarnation of NBC's long-running Late Night franchise. The show also stars bandleader Fred Armisen and the 8-G Band, the show's house band. Late Night is produced by former Saturday Night Live producer Mike Shoemaker and executive-produced by Lorne Michaels. The show records from Studio 8G at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City.

The program airs Monday through Thursday nights at 12:37 a.m. ET/PT. The show opens with Meyers' topical monologue, which he delivers from his desk. The program also contains comedy bits, sketches, interviews with a myriad of guests, and occasionally a musical or comedy performance. The show attracts an average of 1.5 million viewers nightly.

Format

The show opens with Ron McClary proclaiming "From 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York, it's Late Night with Seth Meyers!" and announcing that night’s guests and The 8G Band with Fred Armisen, or guest musicians, including Jeremy Gara, Jon Theodore, Chad Smith, etc. Ron introduces Seth with "Ladies and gentlemen, Seth Meyers." Previously, the introduction to Seth was "And now here he is, Seth Meyers!". Meyers performs a monologue from his desk based around recent news, punctuating jokes with on-screen images and video. For the first year and a half of the program, Meyers performed a traditional stand-up monologue, before changing to a format he felt more comfortable in. His opening monologue has been described as reminiscent of his tenure hosting the Weekend Update segment of Saturday Night Live. The show's guests often include celebrities and actors, literary figures, people in fashion, artists, athletes, and politicians.

TMZ

TMZ is a celebrity news website that debuted on November 8, 2005. It was a collaboration between AOL and Telepictures Productions, a division of Warner Bros., until Time Warner divested AOL in 2009. The name TMZ stands for thirty-mile zone, the historic "studio zone" within a 30-mile (50 km) radius centered at the intersection of West Beverly Boulevard and North La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles, California.

TMZ's managing editor is Harvey Levin, a lawyer-turned-journalist who was previously a legal expert for the Los Angeles television station KCBS-TV. The site claims that it does not pay for stories or interviews; however, Levin has admitted that TMZ does "sometimes pay sources for leads on stories". Levin has stated that "everything is researched and vetted for accuracy." A companion television series, TMZ on TV, debuted on September 10, 2007.

Development

Seven months prior to the official launch of TMZ, America Online (AOL) had hinted that it was planning to launch a Hollywood and entertainment-centric news site that would be produced in conjunction with Telepictures Productions and had shown interest in launching a website featuring a focus mainly on celebrities. At the time of the launch, AOL confirmed that the site would primarily feature and consist of Hollywood gossip, including interviews, photos and video footage of celebrities and information pertaining to industry news on movies, television shows, etc. The site was described as "an effort to further feed the current American obsession with celebrities". Mike Shields of MediaWeek.com wrote, "the site also boasts of an expansive collection of archived star photos and videos", allowing fans to "trace changing hairlines and waistlines of their favorites performers over the years".