Stephen Colbert

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Newcomers top the TCA awards

Two first-year shows jumped to the top of this year’s Television Critics Association awards.
“Heated Rivalry” (shown here) was named program of the year; “Widow’s Bay” won for best comedy and for best new show.
Freshman shows also won the awards for individuals in a comedy (Kate O’Flynn in “Widow’s Bay”) and drama (Rhea Seahorn in “Pluribus”).
The list does have some familiar names, however: “The Pitt” repeated as best drama; “Traitors” had its third straight reality-show win. And for the fifth time, a Ken Burns film — this time “The American Revolution” — won for news and-information. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / August 20, 2026
Stories

Late-night: Networks coveted it; CBS abandoned it

Strolling through a broadcast museum recently, I was struck by:
1) The immense role of late-night TV; and
2) How odd it is that CBS shed its late-night role. By dumping Stephen Colbert, it abandoned a slot it had struggled to get.
For CBS, late-night had long been a serious void. It was the “empty piece of the jigsaw puzzle that’s glared at us over the decades,” Howard Stringer, the network president, once told reporters.
That void was filled by David Letterman in 1993 and then by Colbert in 2015. For 33 years, CBS had a piece of what NBC has had almost forever. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / May 28, 2026
Stories

Late shows return … with a lot to talk about

The late-night TV world boomed back Monday and everyone seemed excited to be there.
How excited? “More excited than the guy who went to see ‘Beetlejuice’ with Lauren Boebert,” Jimmy Fallon said. “More excited than the Jets fans for the first three plays of the season.”
Yes, they had a lot to talk about.
Boebert (a congresswoman from Colorado) and her guy were ejected from a theater, after being accused of vaping, groping and yelling. Jets fans were giddy until their new quarterback was injured on the third play. There was much more.
At 6:17 a.m. Monday, Jimmy Kimmel (shown here) said, one of his writers received this text from his mother: “Please don’t make tonight’s monologue all about Trump.” Kimmel shared that text with the audience and then … well, had a long chunk of the monolog that was all about Trump. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / October 3, 2023
News and Quick Comments

“Daily Show” revises; latenight adjusts

A fresh version of “The Daily Show” will debut Monday (March 23), with a catchy title.
“The Daily Social Distancing Show” will be 11 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays on Comedy Central. It’s the latest answer to latenight’s effort to stay topical, yet stay safe.
As the coronavirus shutdown set in, latenight shows retreated to reruns. ABC even nudged Jimmy Kimmel back an hour, at least temporarily, to 12:35 a.m. weekdays; “Nightline,” with its virus reports, moved up to 11:35 p.m. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / March 22, 2020