CBS is going to the bullpen to pump up “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” which has struggled to keep pace against its late-night competition.
The network announced today that it is moving news veteran Chris Licht into the role of executive producer and showrunner on the program. Licht has been executive producer of “CBS This Morning” and VP of Programming for CBS News since 2011.
Along with his new role on “The Late Show,” Licht becomes Executive Vice President of Special Programming for CBS Corp., where he will consult on content for divisions across the company
Ryan Kadro will succeed Licht as executive producer of “CBS This Morning.”
Please click here for details in the full announcement from CBS.
Chris Licht
Rearrange the deck chairs and ask the band to play louder.
Let me save you lots of time & money CBS… replace the host, rename the show & start over. Colbert works for lefty political humor based shows on cable/internet. When you selected Colbert tor replace Letterman, I immediately said “wrong move”. Low and behold, I was right. Heck, if you even stole Conan from TBS your ratings would be in the right direction right now.
Mr. Wonderful hits it on the nose. Another leftist political humorist is not what is going to bring CBS late night ratings. The transition from cable to broadcast networks is not as simple as it sounds. Although the network intervention this early sounds an awful like what happened with the CBS version of “The Merv Griffin Show.”
Colbert struggles with celebrity interviews and isn’t able to bring in A-list celebrities. So the celebrities they get are CBS second tier promoting CBS shows. People don’t turn it on because there is nothing to see. Maybe the restructuring will start to bring A-list stars that will interest people into turning it on. Then they need to be sure that he has the questions on his desk that should be able to get those stars talking.
Who knew that smarmy, juvenile political humor would not translate into late night ratings?
Anyone paying attention and able to live and breath outside the NYC/Hollywood bubble, knew.