A lot of folks are writing me to say that John Oliver's show has its first airing each Sunday night at or around 11 PM, which is late night. Someone else wrote me that while that's true, so many HBO viewers have access to an earlier feed that Oliver is only a late night host by a technicality. It's really not worth worrying about.
Nor really is the exclusion of Chris Hardwick, though one person wrote to say, "Hardwick doesn't count as a late night host because he doesn't interview celebrities and he plays games." Uh, well, I don't recall us all agreeing on that as the definition of a late night host. I think it's that he hosts and is on late at night. Besides, John Oliver doesn't interview celebrities and Jimmy Fallon plays games. (By the way, I think Chris Hardwick would do great in a talk show format.)
We have another one of those cases where someone is about to be put to death for a murder on pretty flimsy evidence that many do not believe. Here's the story of Richard Glossip in Oklahoma. Years ago, I heard someone on TV say, "The State has a compelling interest in seeing that murderers are executed…and once they're executed, the State has a compelling interest in not letting anyone cast doubts on their guilt."
Rick Perry dropped out of the race for the G.O.P. presidential nomination because he was polling at around 1%. How must that make you feel if you're Chris Christie (polling at around 1%), Rick Santorum (polling at around 1%), Bobby Jindal and Lindsey Graham (polling under 1%) or Jim Gilmore (not even listed in most polls)? How do you get up at a podium and tell your supporters — what few you have — "We're going to win this thing!" And how do you brag about your experience when the two guys clobbering you have none?
Scott Walker was once at around 11% or 12% and now he's down to about 4%. I'm trying to imagine the meeting where someone on his staff said, "We have to do something to stop this bleeding" and Walker said, "I've got just the thing! I'll announce that as president, I'll abolish labor unions!"
Yes, yes…I know Neil Patrick Harris's new show which debuts tonight is based on a British TV series called Saturday Night Takeaway. I'm just hoping it's not too based on it because I watched a little of the Brit version on YouTube and I think the pitch that sold it was, "What if we did a show designed to make sure that Mark Evanier couldn't make it past the first five minutes?" This is not to say you couldn't have a pretty successful show built on such a premise.
More later.