At least, don't count on a Season Pass getting you what you want tomorrow night.
That's the night of the State of the Union address and several of the late night shows will be broadcasting live after it. This means they may not start and end when your TiVo or DVR thinks they'll start and end. I thought I'd take a look at the pages where one gets tickets to sit in their audiences and see when they're doing each show. Remember, the speech is at 6 PM Pacific Time, 9 PM Eastern…
In New York, the website for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert wants its audience there at 9 PM. They usually "tape" (that is no longer the right word) at 4:30 PM. In the past, most of the shows they've done "live" have only been partially live. They brought in two audiences and pre-recorded some segments of the program with the first, then did only some parts of the show live. Looks like they're doing the whole thing live this time.
The Daily Show with Trevor Noah usually records at 5 PM but according to its ticket website…
PLEASE NOTE: The taping on Tuesday, January 30th, will be a LIVE SHOW starting with a viewing of the State of the Union followed by the taping. Check-in for General Guaranteed reservation holders will open at 6:30pm and close at 7:30pm.
…which I don't understand. To get a good seat, you have to be there at 6:30, wait around to watch Trump speak at 9 PM and then still be there for the live telecast starting at 11 PM or later? I thought for a moment the website was converting to Pacific Time for me but they wouldn't want people to get there at 9:30 to view a speech that starts at 9. So I dunno what's up there.
Meanwhile, the same company's website for The Opposition with Jordan Klepper, which usually wants people there at 5:30 for a 6:30 recording tomorrow wants them there at 10:30 PM for an 11:30 broadcast. Which makes sense.
(By the way: I didn't know this but apparently, Mr. Klepper's show — which further by the way, I like a lot — is done from the Hotel Pennsylvania on 7th Avenue, across from Penn Station. Weird.)
The website for The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon doesn't have ticket listings for this week and I don't see anything online about doing his show live tomorrow night. His lead guests however are Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, who will undoubtedly talk about Trump. It would seem odd to record that conversation before the speech. Late Night with Seth Meyers is recording at its usual time of 5:30 PM according to its ticket website.
What about the two late night shows from Los Angeles? Jimmy Kimmel Live!, which I don't think has been live in many years, usually gets the audience there at 4:15 PM. According to its website, tomorrow night they convene at 6:45. James Corden is doing his show at its usual time of 4 PM.
Call me crazy but I have this odd feeling that the speech will be an awful lot about how everything is going as great as it possibly could and if it isn't, it's because of those damned Democrats — and did I mention there was no collusion, no collusion, no collusion? I'm hoping someone will take the whole speech and put it on YouTube captioned with fact-checking but of course, that could take a while…like until the next State of the Union speech. We can only wonder who'll be delivering that one.