Okay, so Stephen Colbert will do his last Colbert Report on December 17 and then some time in January, that slot will be filled by The Minority Report starring Daily Show correspondent Larry Wilmore. This will reportedly be in the format of a panel show, though scripted. All right. That could work. Wilmore's a pretty funny guy.
Before anyone asks what will fill the time between the last Colbert program and the first Wilmore offering, I would guess Comedy Central will use that plum spot to showcase some of their other shows…or maybe rerun old Colbert Reports. They may not even have decided that yet.
They haven't announced yet when Colbert will replace Letterman but I'll give you a guess: My birthday.
Letterman's last few weeks figure to attract mucho viewers. So will Colbert's first shows as people tune in to see what he's going to do. If CBS had some huge event like the Olympics early in '15, they'd probably time things to use that to promote Colbert's debut. The Olympics helped to get Jimmy Fallon off to a good start.
I don't think CBS has anything comparable so they'll probably just concern themselves with timing the ratings heat to occur during one of the "sweeps" periods. That's when networks want to get the highest numbers to use in setting future ad rates.
The February 2015 ratings sweeps period runs from Thursday, February 5 until Wednesday, March 4. That leads me to think Dave will do his last show on Friday, February 27 and then Stephen will start on Monday, March 2, which happens to be my birthday. Johnny Carson did his last Tonight Show on May 22, 1992, which was the end of the last full week of that year's May sweeps and then Jay Leno debuted before they were over. (The sweeps period following the February 2015 one begins April 28. I don't think Colbert would be taking himself off the air on Comedy Central on 12/17 if he wouldn't be starting his new show until the end of May.)
A lot of folks, self included, have been wondering if Colbert would move into the Ed Sullivan Theater. I'm thinking not. Colbert will spend a month or three assembling a staff and setting up offices and pre-taping segments and rehearsing and doing test shows…and if he moved into the Ed, it would probably be necessary to do a lot of renovations. CBS will not want to leave a month of Letterman reruns or other programming between Dave's last show and Stephen's first. So my guess is Colbert will do his show from somewhere else, at least at first. That way, Dave and his crew — some of whom have been there for more than twenty years — can take their own sweet time about packing up and getting out. Dave, of course, could keep offices there for whatever else he may do.
Lastly for now, there's still no news on who's going to replace Craig Ferguson…or what's going to become of Geoff Peterson (the gay robot skeleton) and the horse suit. I hope they put one or both in the Smithsonian right next to Archie Bunker's chair, Fonzie's leather jacket and Bob Barker.