Stephen Colbert’s ‘Late Show’ Premiere nearly Didn’t Happen Because CBS

Colbert, opening his second program on Wednesday night, said that a combination of an overstuffed show that needed to be edited and a technical glitch temporarily prevented producers from sending the finished product to the network.

But, as expected, by night two, Colbert’s numbers had come back down to earth, while Fallon saw his numbers rise thanks to a star-studded Wednesday night show featuring both Justin Timberlake and Ellen DeGeneres.

CBS said its web site for the “Late Show” “experienced its highest premiere day traffic ever and streams of the full episode are up triple digits compared to a year ago to date”.

CBS announced that Trump will be one of Colbert’s guests during his third week as Late Show host, appearing Tuesday, September 22. At the moment, Fallon consistently has the best ratings in the latenight game, and it’ll be interesting to see if Colbert keeps pace with him after the initial enthusiasm over his debut lags.

“The show premiered last night, and I’m happy to say we made it to Show 2”, the New York Daily News quoted Colbert as saying. His speedy monologue delivery is still the same – not taking long pauses and the conversational tone of many other late night hosts – and the format of his jokes is still the same. All I know is that we need somewhere to get biting and truthful commentary on the world today, and it doesn’t seem like the old Colbert will be delivering, not even in the slightest.

“We all are friends”.

So exactly what was the difference between “The Late Show” and “The Colbert Report?” For that matter, it’s also worlds away from the intent of the Colbert Report as well.

“Replacing Dave is impossible, because he’s too big, there is no such thing as ‘Late Show, ‘ there was only Letterman”, said Colbert.