Most of the late night comedy shows have closed down while everyone tries to learn more about the pandemic and figure out how and when to restart normal life. A few days ago, all the late night shows were talking about remaining in production but doing so without live audiences. Suddenly though, things got worse and now most are shutting down operations for the time being. I believe John Oliver is doing a new show Sunday night, sans audience. Earlier this evening, Bill Maher did one with just the crew and staff there to yuk it up, then he's off for a week and they'll decide if he's back the following week.
But Colbert, Fallon, Meyers, Corden, Samantha Bee, Ellen, Watch What Happens Live, Kimmel and probably a few others I'm forgetting are all on indefinite hiatus and probably have sent most staffers to work at home. I'm not sure what they're waiting for. What does anyone expect will change in the next few weeks?
I wonder if anyone has thought of doing shows from home.
My pal Stu Shostak does a video podcast called Stu's Show from his home out in Chatsworth. Many of you have seen it. Most episodes, he has one or two guests there but he also does them with remote guests. I've been one of them several times, appearing via webcam from my home which is about an hour drive from his…but he also has on other guests in other states. Anyone can be on as long as that person has a good webcam and a reliable Internet connection.
Stu not only hosts but he simultaneously directs, selecting the shot that you see on your screen: One person in a box, two people in two boxes, three in three, etc. The format is not unfamiliar to anyone who watches cable news shows with lots of different talking heads in different boxes, participating from different locations.
Imagine if they installed a really good webcam in Stephen Colbert's home. I would imagine CBS could afford the best and get him the best Internet that money can buy. Imagine if in another location — isolated, unable to infect another guest or himself — you had bandleader Jon Batiste at a keyboard. Then you get a couple of interesting guests in front of webcams in their homes or wherever they are. Everyone's connected and it all feeds into a computer controlled by a director who handles the chore of switching, as Stu does himself, to close-ups, two-shots, the "Brady Bunch" look…whatever.
Everyone chats like they would on any talk show. Batiste plays us in and out of breaks and provides underscore where appropriate. The director could also roll-in prerecorded clips and toss in title cards and credits and such. It would be easy to arrange, incredibly cheap to do, way better than reruns, and I don't know why they aren't setting this up right now. Just when a lot of us are feeling trapped in our homes, the networks could be giving us fresh, topical content that doesn't make us feel so isolated and alone.
So why isn't someone trying to make this happen? Maybe they are.
In the meantime, I thought I'd embed here two amazing hunks of video…Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers doing some of their last fresh content before shutting down. Neither of them had live audiences from outside; just crew and staff members and not a lot of them. Meyers is doing prepared material but working way looser than he does in a normal show. The clip of Colbert was a rehearsal that they decided to air. You'll notice a lot of edits in it and I wonder how much of that was to hit a certain time limit or if he just went off the rails, ad-libbing and rambling. I rather enjoyed both of these…