David Letterman Announces Retirement

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Jasper
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Re: David Letterman Announces Retirement

#26 Post by Jasper » Mon Apr 21, 2014 9:12 pm

Matz wrote:and you take things too literally.
Or perhaps YOU perceive that people are taking things too literally when they're not, smart guy. :banana:

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Hype
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Re: David Letterman Announces Retirement

#27 Post by Hype » Tue Apr 22, 2014 4:39 am

:confused:

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Re: David Letterman Announces Retirement

#28 Post by Essence_Smith » Tue Apr 22, 2014 8:26 am

Great example of how easily context can get screwed up while communicating on the interwebs... :dunce:

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Re: David Letterman Announces Retirement

#29 Post by Hype » Tue Apr 22, 2014 9:20 am

Even if Ferguson spoke without a foreign accent, his show is even zanier than any of Conan's have ever been. It's the sort of show that is only really worth watching if you're drunk or stoned... and clearly that's not the sort of demographic that a network would want for its main nightly variety show... Colbert works because outside of his satirical character, he's a Christian, very broad, comic... fits right in with the next generation's version of Letterman and Leno. He can be ascerbic, or witty, or kind of a jerk to the guests, like Letterman, but he has to be comprehensible. Unfortunately, as much as I love Ferguson (he had philosopher Jonathan Dancy on the show at least once, and it was amazingly weird and interesting...), and Conan... they're just not meant for the sort of show that's Carson's legacy.

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Re: David Letterman Announces Retirement

#30 Post by clickie » Sun Jun 01, 2014 2:06 pm

Anyone heard any rumours who might be being groomed for Craig Ferguson's slot?

I'll give all these new replacements a chance, because when Conan took over for Dave no one probably thought he'd last longer than a year..

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Re: David Letterman Announces Retirement

#31 Post by Hype » Sun Jun 01, 2014 2:42 pm

clickie wrote:Anyone heard any rumours who might be being groomed for Craig Ferguson's slot?

I'll give all these new replacements a chance, because when Conan took over for Dave no one probably thought he'd last longer than a year..
Norm MacDonald *wants* Ferguson's slot... but I think even the people who love Norm (like Conan), are pretty sure that would be suicidal, either for the show, or for Norm...

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Re: David Letterman Announces Retirement

#32 Post by JOEinPHX » Tue Jun 03, 2014 11:23 am

They should give it to Chris Hardwick.

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Re: David Letterman Announces Retirement

#33 Post by chaos » Thu Jun 05, 2014 4:52 pm

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/0 ... 31713.html

We're Learning More From Stephen Colbert Than The Actual News, Study Says
The Huffington Post | By Katherine Fung

Posted: 06/02/2014 10:50 am EDT Updated: 06/03/2014 11:59 am EDT Print Article

Want to be more informed about what's going on in the world? The findings of a new study suggest that watching Stephen Colbert might help you more than actual news programs.

A recent study concluded that "The Colbert Report" did a better job of teaching people about campaign finance in the last presidential election than MSNBC, CNN, Fox News or broadcast evening news. The study — published in Mass Communication and Society and led by a senior researcher at the University of Pennsylvania — surveyed 1,232 adults and tested respondents' knowledge of campaign finance from a variety of sources.

"['The Colbert Report'] not only increased people’s perceptions that they knew more about political financing, but significantly increased their actual knowledge, and did so at a greater rate than other news sources," the university's Annenberg Public Policy Center wrote in a statement.

The study is not the first that concludes viewers of fake news shows like "The Colbert Report" are more informed than those of other news sources. In 2012, another study found that people who watch "The Daily Show" are more informed than people who watch Fox News.

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Re: David Letterman Announces Retirement

#34 Post by Essence_Smith » Thu Jun 05, 2014 5:12 pm

I'm not gonna front...I'm kinda pissed Arsenio got cancelled... :no:

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Re: David Letterman Announces Retirement

#35 Post by Hype » Thu Jun 05, 2014 5:17 pm

Essence_Smith wrote:I'm not gonna front...I'm kinda pissed Arsenio got cancelled... :no:
I liked the idea of his show coming back, but after watching a few episodes it was hard to see it as anything other than "Me too, again!"... There are more very talented late-night guys on formats that didn't exist 20 years ago... and while it's true that there are no black voices among them, and that Arsenio could have been that, again (remember his interview with Easy-E and NWA back in the day?...), but to hook the right demographic (i.e., young viewers... since older viewers, even ones who remember Arsenio and used to watch him, won't necessarily drop all the other shows they now watch), he had to do things differently, and he didn't really do that... it was just another variety show. There's nothing wrong with that, but the format is dying anyway.

Frankly, I thought the Wanda Sykes show was awesome... and that didn't last either. :confused:

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Re: David Letterman Announces Retirement

#36 Post by creep » Thu Jun 05, 2014 6:00 pm

Six7Six7 wrote:They should give it to Chris Hardwick.
i don't get the appeal of this guy. he isn't funny.

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Re: David Letterman Announces Retirement

#37 Post by JOEinPHX » Thu Jun 05, 2014 9:50 pm

creep wrote:
Six7Six7 wrote:They should give it to Chris Hardwick.
i don't get the appeal of this guy. he isn't funny.
Really? His standup special is really good. @Midnight is funny. He's clever and quick witted on the "Talking..." Shows.

I like him.

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Re: David Letterman Announces Retirement

#38 Post by Essence_Smith » Fri Jun 06, 2014 7:19 am

Adurentibus Spina wrote:
Essence_Smith wrote:I'm not gonna front...I'm kinda pissed Arsenio got cancelled... :no:
I liked the idea of his show coming back, but after watching a few episodes it was hard to see it as anything other than "Me too, again!"... There are more very talented late-night guys on formats that didn't exist 20 years ago... and while it's true that there are no black voices among them, and that Arsenio could have been that, again (remember his interview with Easy-E and NWA back in the day?...), but to hook the right demographic (i.e., young viewers... since older viewers, even ones who remember Arsenio and used to watch him, won't necessarily drop all the other shows they now watch), he had to do things differently, and he didn't really do that... it was just another variety show. There's nothing wrong with that, but the format is dying anyway.

Frankly, I thought the Wanda Sykes show was awesome... and that didn't last either. :confused:
I don't disagree with your assessment of the show itself...I'm more upset about the fact that the kinds of guests he had on his show won't have the forum anymore. I loved him back in the day and yes there are definitely funnier people, etc, but he holds a LOT of respect in Hollywood...Eddie Murphy, Snoop, Magic Johnson, Bill Cosby, Prince, they don't tend to pop up on everyone's show with the type of vibe they did on Arsenio's...Prince did the entire hour...he had Dick Gregory on; just a lot of people who wouldn't normally get the attention or respect...I have a childhood friend Helen Hong who aside from Margaret Cho is the only korean female I've ever seen do decent stand up comedy...guess who had her on her first national TV appearance. If the other shows booked the kinds of guests he had on I'd have less of an issue...and back to the obvious, yeah it's pretty sad he was the only black guy on late night that made any noise in all these years...

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Re: David Letterman Announces Retirement

#39 Post by Hype » Fri Jun 06, 2014 9:04 am

I just noticed that Wanda Sykes is a producer/writer for Last Comic Standing, which isn't a late night show, but it's pretty good... Roseanne, Russell Peters, and Keenan Wayans have been judging but I think Wanda will be on in the next round. I like her.

Also, I guess the only thing close to a black late night guy was that really short-lived talk show that Wayne Brady did... but I'd guess he's not exactly the best candidate for a representative black voice on TV. :scared: (Also he's not funny or interesting, so there's that...)

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Re: David Letterman Announces Retirement

#40 Post by Essence_Smith » Fri Jun 06, 2014 10:19 am

Adurentibus Spina wrote:I just noticed that Wanda Sykes is a producer/writer for Last Comic Standing, which isn't a late night show, but it's pretty good... Roseanne, Russell Peters, and Keenan Wayans have been judging but I think Wanda will be on in the next round. I like her.

Also, I guess the only thing close to a black late night guy was that really short-lived talk show that Wayne Brady did... but I'd guess he's not exactly the best candidate for a representative black voice on TV. :scared: (Also he's not funny or interesting, so there's that...)
Wanda Sykes is very underrated and very funny...Wayne is ok and has his audience, but I don't think he'd be aiming at the same audience Arsenio did. Arsenio was for people like me who generally wouldn't even watch a late night show like that...I miss him more because I can't see them putting Tyler the Creator or Kendrick Lamar on Letterman or Ferguson, etc...you're just not going to see it...forget about spoken word artists or guest DJ's sitting in with the band...forget about Martin Luther King JR tributes or any of that. If you want to say he catered to black people so be it, but why not? Is Jimmy Fallon the only host smart enough to realize that there's an audience there too?

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Re: David Letterman Announces Retirement

#41 Post by Hype » Fri Jun 06, 2014 10:55 am

Yes. I've been very surprised by how savvy Fallon has been. I noticed his writers seem to be stealing or "paying homage" to some things I'd thought were more associated with Conan, but he seems to have figured out how to go as broad as he can with that show (which is exactly where the Tonight Show should be).

What about someone like Wyatt Cenac doing a more "black" oriented version of something that combines what Arsenio used to do with the more modern Daily Show influenced stuff? It looks like Wyatt's doing a sitcom for AMC, but if (when) that falls through, maybe eventually he'll get into that kind of position, not unlike the way John Oliver has.

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Re: David Letterman Announces Retirement

#42 Post by perkana » Fri May 08, 2015 8:23 am


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Re: David Letterman Announces Retirement

#43 Post by clickie » Sun May 10, 2015 5:15 am

I'm gonna miss Dave. once he retires.

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Re: David Letterman Announces Retirement

#44 Post by mockbee » Thu May 14, 2015 7:11 am

Really liked this, especially the end bit. Prime time late night is not where it's at....
David Letterman Knew How to Talk

By RICHARD ZOGLINMAY 14, 2015

THE imminent end, on May 20, of David Letterman’s 33-year run as a late-night TV host is a sad event for a number of reasons. Mr. Letterman’s “Late Show” monologues are still the gold standard in an increasingly crowded field. His Top 10 lists remain the most durable running gag in late-night television. (“Top 10 Things Overheard in Hillary Clinton’s Van”: “Polling indicates we should take the Taconic.”) He virtually invented the age of irony, and his self-mocking style has kept him a paragon of cool, even as his competitors have grown younger and his audience older.

But it’s easy to overlook the most important thing Mr. Letterman has nurtured in his three-plus decades as a nightly talk-show host: talk.

Talk — relatively spontaneous, genuine, unrehearsed conversation — was, of course, the main point of the genre when the “Tonight Show” was pioneered by Steve Allen back in 1954, redefined by Jack Paar when he took the helm in 1957, and turned into a national institution by Johnny Carson in the ’60s and ’70s. Here was a place where show-business celebrities could drop at least some of their public persona and give us a glimpse of what they were “really” like. Sure, that glimpse was always a little stage-managed — the conversational topics screened, the anecdotes carefully baked. But those nightly sessions on the “Tonight Show” guest couch were a relaxed, human-scale refuge in a hype-filled showbiz world.

Mr. Letterman, like Mr. Carson before him, understood this. He never shirked his publicity duties (“let’s show the clip”), and he valued guests like Martin Short and Steve Martin, who came primed with fresh material. But he took the interviews seriously. He asked real questions and actually listened to the answers. He rarely fawned, or let his guests off the hook. He poked their sensitive spots and cut through the phoniness.

When he talked to politicians and other newsmakers, he was informed, even passionate. (As the years went on, he did less and less to hide his liberal political views.) When he baited guests like Donald Trump and Bill O’Reilly, his quips couldn’t totally hide the disdain. When he talked to ordinary civilians — dog owners with their stupid pet tricks, kids showing off their science projects — he was naturally curious, engaged and winning. Whenever a star came on and tried to play him — Joaquin Phoenix in his sullen faux-rap-star phase, for example — Mr. Letterman showed no patience. He didn’t want a performance; he wanted people.

How times have changed. The late-night world that Mr. Letterman leaves behind is almost all performance. Jimmy Fallon has turned the “Tonight Show” into a festival of YouTube-ready comedy bits — lip-syncing contests, slow-jams of the news, musical impressions, games of Pictionary and egg Russian roulette. His interviews, meanwhile, have resurrected the kind of Merv Griffin-style celebrity gush that Mr. Letterman thought he had stamped out years ago.

Mr. Fallon is setting the pace for the new, performance-dominated late-night scene. James Corden, who has taken over the post-Letterman spot on CBS, introduces his guests with a peek into their dressing rooms — where we “discover” them hanging a picture or making a toast. The guests then are brought out together so Mr. Corden can interview them en masse, a group grope that almost guarantees nothing intimate will emerge.

Jon Stewart’s decision to leave “The Daily Show” later this year is another unsettling sign. What separates Mr. Stewart from all the sidekicks and special correspondents he has featured is that Mr. Stewart, for all the layers of sarcasm and mockery, speaks in his own voice, while the correspondents are doing put-ons. He’s venting; they’re acting.

Mr. Fallon, Mr. Corden and the rest are certainly talented performers. But that’s part of the problem. The nasty little secret is that almost all the good talk-show hosts have no talent — or at least make a good-faith effort to keep it hidden. Mr. Letterman never acted in sketches, except to make fun of how bad he was at it.

“I never thought I’d retire,” Mr. Letterman cracked on his show a few months ago. “I always thought I’d be impeached.” The self-deprecation was part of the package — like his frequent “savers,” the comebacks when a joke falls flat. It was a way of drawing the audience in, sharing the star’s insecurity and desperation.

Jimmy Fallon isn’t insecure; he’s just a happy, well-paid TV star having a ball. There’s no distance between the frenetic host and the Hollywood hypefest, no space on his show for anything authentic. He is always on, running at top speed.

Maybe he’ll eventually calm down and realize that he’s got the job. (His ratings are No. 1 by a mile.) But I can’t help admiring the “Conan” writer who a few weeks ago tweeted his disgruntlement at celebrities doing comedy bits on late-night TV. “You’ve let the popular kids appropriate the very art form that helped you deal,” he chided his fellow comedy writers.

His boss, Conan O’Brien, alas, responded with a public slapdown of the writer, and the offending tweets were quickly removed. It’s a new world, folks. The popular kids have taken over. And boy, can they lip-sync.

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Re: David Letterman Announces Retirement

#45 Post by Hype » Thu May 14, 2015 7:44 am

It's because talk shows are a dead format. 30 years of the same people will do that to a genre. Conan and Letterman might have inspired genuine, talented, interesting people to get into comedy 25 years ago, but if those people don't take over for the kings quickly enough, you lose a generation, and we're left with corporate scrambling to maintain revenue streams. (Compare this to the label-driven music industry from about 2003-2010.)

The "you let the popular kids take over" sentiment is basically right, except it's not the popular kids, it's the brands the popular kids like... the shills for those brands are just whatever the brands can manage to cobble together before something of real substance hits the next generation's sweet spot.

(Inside) Amy Schumer is currently being touted as that next big thing (tm). I think for good reason, but we'll see if she can sustain the momentum she's got going now. Her show was originally conceived as a talk show... but the kids want more of the Key & Peele style of comedy. They don't care about news yet. Jon Stewart was too old for them (he's some thing you discover in college).

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Re: David Letterman Announces Retirement

#46 Post by creep » Sat May 16, 2015 3:21 am

this was good.


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Re: David Letterman Announces Retirement

#47 Post by Matz » Sat May 16, 2015 4:33 am

Adurentibus Spina wrote:
(Inside) Amy Schumer is currently being touted as that next big thing (tm). .
really?! she seems like a moron to me....bring back Mitch Hedberg from the dead please and let him show everybody how its done

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Re: David Letterman Announces Retirement

#48 Post by Hype » Sat May 16, 2015 7:26 am

Matz wrote:
Adurentibus Spina wrote:
(Inside) Amy Schumer is currently being touted as that next big thing (tm). .
really?! she seems like a moron to me....bring back Mitch Hedberg from the dead please and let him show everybody how its done
I had the same initial thought as you about her, but I checked out older episodes of her show and I think she's really doing some pretty subtle satire/social commentary.

I love Mitch, but he wasn't that original... just another in the vein (no pun!) of Steven Wright, Henny Youngman, etc...

Norm MacDonald is a savant.

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Re: David Letterman Announces Retirement

#49 Post by perkana » Sat May 16, 2015 8:16 am

mockbee wrote:Really liked this, especially the end bit. Prime time late night is not where it's at....
The guests then are brought out together so Mr. Corden can interview them en masse, a group grope that almost guarantees nothing intimate will emerge.
One of my favorite talk shows is The Graham Norton Show and he does interviews en masse. Guests can swear and they can drink alcohol.

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Re: David Letterman Announces Retirement

#50 Post by clickie » Sun May 17, 2015 6:15 am

Tell you the truth, I kind of abandoned Dave's show once he swithched to CBS.

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