The Late Show

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Stephen Colbert

Stephen Tyrone Colbert (/koʊlˈbɛər/, né: /ˈkoʊlbərt/; born May 13, 1964) is an American comedian, writer, producer, actor, media critic, and television host. He currently hosts the late-night television talk show The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on CBS.

Colbert had originally studied to be an actor, but became interested in improvisational theatre when he met Second City director Del Close while attending Northwestern University. He first performed professionally as an understudy for Steve Carell at Second City Chicago; among his troupe mates were comedians Paul Dinello and Amy Sedaris, with whom he developed the sketch comedy series Exit 57. Colbert also wrote and performed on the short-lived Dana Carvey Show before collaborating with Sedaris and Dinello again on the cult television series Strangers with Candy. He gained considerable attention for his role on the latter as closeted gay history teacher Chuck Noblet. His work as a correspondent on Comedy Central's news-parody series The Daily Show first introduced him to a wide audience.

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert is an American late-night talk show hosted by Stephen Colbert, which premiered on September 8, 2015. It is the spiritual successor of The Colbert Report. Produced by Spartina Productions and CBS Television Studios, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert is the second iteration of CBS's long-running Late Show franchise. Stay Human, led by bandleader Jon Batiste, serves as the program's house band.

The program is taped at the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York City; unlike predecessor series during its final decade, new episodes are produced five nights a week (as such, The Late Show and its NBC competitor The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon are the only daily late-night network talk shows that produce and air first-run episodes on Fridays), which air at 11:35 p.m. Eastern and Pacific Time on Monday through Friday evenings.

Background

Prior to Colbert's assumption of hosting duties, David Letterman had been host of the Late Show for 22 years, dating to his arrival at CBS in 1993. CBS had not had a regular late-night talk show for most of its existence prior to that point, with only one attempt (the short-lived Pat Sajak Show in 1990) between 1972 and Letterman's arrival. Letterman, who joined CBS from NBC after ending his eleven-year run as host of Late Night and losing out on being Johnny Carson's successor on The Tonight Show to Jay Leno, was initially competitive with his show's bitter rival, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno; Letterman's Late Show, however, slowly experienced a decline in ratings over the course of the 1990s and 2000s, dating back to an affiliation agreement between New World Communications and Fox that resulted in all nine CBS-affiliated stations it owned or recently acquired switching to Fox between September and December 1994, relegating the network to lower-rated former Fox affiliates and independent stations in many major cities.

Show

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Music

People

CBS

CBS (an initialism of the network's former name, the Columbia Broadcasting System) is an American commercial broadcast television network that is the flagship properties of CBS Corporation. The company is headquartered at the CBS Building in New York City with major production facilities and operations in New York City (at the CBS Broadcast Center) and Los Angeles (at CBS Television City and the CBS Studio Center).

CBS is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network", in reference to the company's iconic logo, in use since 1951. It has also been called the "Tiffany Network", alluding to the perceived high quality of CBS programming during the tenure of its founder William S. Paley. It can also refer to some of CBS's first demonstrations of color television, which were held in a former Tiffany & Co. building in New York City in 1950.

The network has its origins in United Independent Broadcasters Inc., a collection of 16 radio stations that was purchased by Paley in 1928 and renamed the Columbia Broadcasting System. Under Paley's guidance, CBS would first become one of the largest radio networks in the United States, and eventually one of the Big Three American broadcast television networks. In 1974, CBS dropped its former full name and became known simply as CBS, Inc. The Westinghouse Electric Corporation acquired the network in 1995, renamed its corporate entity to the current CBS Broadcasting, Inc. in 1997, and eventually adopted the name of the company it had acquired to become CBS Corporation. In 2000, CBS came under the control of Viacom, which was formed as a spin-off of CBS in 1971. In late 2005, Viacom split itself into two separate companies, and re-established CBS Corporation – through the spin-off of its broadcast television, radio and select cable television and non-broadcasting assets – with the CBS television network at its core. CBS Corporation is controlled by Sumner Redstone through National Amusements, which also controls the current Viacom.