Conan on Dave
As I wrote recently, when people praise David Letterman as he approaches his final "Late Show," they rarely mention anything he's done in this century -- it's always about the way he revolutionized television comedy on NBC in the 1980s. Here's another one of those,...
David Steinberg on Colbert and Stewart
David Steinberg returned to my radio show to talk about the new season of his Showtime series, "Inside Comedy," which debuts Tuesday night with guests Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart. But before digging into that, I asked him about a story my friend Mark Evanier told...
CBS’ Exploitative New Reality Show
Andy Dehnart of Reality Blurred returned to my radio show to talk about CBS' upcoming reality show, "The Briefcase," which we both find exploitative, and the reaction of the show's producer to his criticism (preview video of the show here). We also discussed the...
Showbiz Show 5/1/15
Here's another edition of the showbiz segment I do each Friday on my KTRS show with Colin Jeffrey. This week, we talked about "Avengers: Age Of Ultron" and whether, with CGI and stunt people, you even need big-name stars for a special-effects blockbuster like this. We...
Letterman Talks
David Letterman hasn't given a lot of interviews in the last decade or so. Whenever he had something he wanted to say, he already had his own network platform from which he could say it. That's why I was surprised he agreed to talk to Dave Itzkoff for this NY Times...
Random TV Thoughts
At the White House Correspondents Association Dinner over the weekend, Obama killed (again) with his standup routine -- particularly with the help of Keegan-Michael Key as Luther, the president's anger translator, a reliably funny bit from "Key and Peele." What made...
Jon Macks On His 22 Years With Jay Leno
Over the course of 22 years, my friend Jon Macks wrote 500,000 jokes for Jay Leno to use on "The Tonight Show." He's also written for Billy Crystal, Chris Rock, Steve Martin and others who hosted the Academy Awards, as well as the Emmys, Tonys, Golden Globes, and...
Best Thing I’ve Read Today
Earlier this week, in discussing the Long Late Night Goodbye of David Letterman and Jon Stewart, I mentioned that the former seems to have been phoning it in for years. In a piece entitled "A Dethroned King Of Comedy," Jaime Weinman correctly points out: People who...