It’s Official: Stephen Colbert to take Over Late Show Helm

CBS has officially named Stephen Colbert to succeed David Letterman as host of “The Late Show,” handing the reins of its flagship latenight program to a cable host who has found success in attracting young male viewers by playing a character, rather than himself.

According to Variety:

david-lettermanThe decision comes about a week after Letterman announced during a taping of his program that he would retire from the program – and the longest tenure as a late night host on broadcast TV – sometime in 2015. In doing so, Letterman will turn the time period over to an entirely new generation of hosts, severing TV’s last link to the days when Johnny Carson dominated the daypart. These days, latenight is a splintered environment, with three broadcast programs as well as wee-hours bastions in place on Viacom’s Comedy Central, Time Warner’s TBS and NBC Universal’s Bravo and E!

When Colbert sits behind the desk of the CBS program, as he is set to do at a currently undetermined date in 2015, he will likely do it with a new presentation –  not as the right-wing caricature he plays in his current perch on Comedy Central. CBS said creative elements, producers and even the location of the show will be announced at a later date. “He is not going to play that character,” said Nina Tassler, chairman of CBS Entertainment, in an interview.

And yet, it is Colbert’s inventiveness CBS is likely banking on to help it gain in the ongoing late-night wars. “It has usually been our policy that when you hire the right person, you let them be creative and let them do their job,” said Tassler. “We are extremely excited about what he’s going to bring to the time slot.”

Colbert will be the Eye’s entry into a race that has already started. Both ABC and NBC have already turned their latenight programming over to younger hosts – Jimmy Kimmel for the Alphabet and Jimmy Fallon at the Peacock. Colbert will have to hit the ground running, mastering a broadcast venue that demands mainstream appeal while trying to maintain the current fan base that has made his “Colbert Report” a mainstay for the Viacom-owned network.

But his appeal to younger viewers is hard to ignore. Viewers of Comedy Central’s “Colbert Report” had a median age of 41.9 in the last seven weeks, according  to Nielsen. Meantime, the median age of “Tonight Show” viewers since the Jimmy Fallon-led version has launched is 53.3, while that for viewers of ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel” is 55.8. Colbert will have to build his base, however: In the last seven weeks,  “Colbert Report” attracted an average of 633,000 viewers between 18 and 49, the demographic most coveted by advertisers, according to Nielsen. Fallon’s “Tonight Show” lured an average of 2 million, while “Kimmel” attracted an average of 852,000 and Letterman’s “Late Show” notched an average of 710,000.

Tassler kept any thoughts what Colbert’s “Late Show” might look like to a minimum. “It’s really important he be given the opportunity to develop and create his show,” she said.

While one might think CBS would have had conversations with various Letterman replacements prior to the current “Late Show” host’s decision last week, Tassler said CBS only reached out to Colbert once the “starting gun” of Letterman’s desire to retire was clear. “One name just stood out above the rest,” said Tassler. She cited his background in the Second City improv comedy troupe and his “extraordinary intellect” as factors in his appeal to CBS executives.

“Stephen Colbert is one of the most inventive and respected forces on television,” said Leslie Moonves, chief executive of CBS, in a prepared statement. “David Letterman’s legacy and accomplishments are an incredible source of pride for all of us here, and today’s announcement speaks to our commitment of upholding what he established for CBS in late night.”

“Simply being a guest on David Letterman’s show has been a highlight of my career,” said Colbert in a statement. “I never dreamed that I would follow in his footsteps, though everyone in late night follows Dave’s lead.”

In a statement, Letterman blessed the succession: “Stephen has always been a real friend to me. I’m very excited for him, and I’m flattered that CBS chose him,” Letterman said. “I also happen to know they wanted another guy with glasses.”

The current incarnation of “The Late Show” is owned and produced by Letterman’s Worldwide Pants production company, but ownership of the show and the name will be CBS’ once the transition is made, Tassler said.

She declined to speak in great detail about the potential future of Craig Ferguson, who has been holding forth at 12:37 a.m. after “The Late Show” since 2005.  CBS has been looking at its latenight schedule “one hour at a time,’” Tassler said. “We have a very good relationship with him. He’s our 12:30 guy.” She declined to comment on whether the host would stay with CBS or move on, given the Colbert decision.

According to people familiar with the situation, Ferguson’s discussions with CBS continue and he has not decided whether to stick with his show or leave. The host is supposed to tape two episodes of his show today and is likely to address the issue in the one set to air tonight, these people said. In a tweet, Ferguson congratulated Colbert and said, “Welcome to the CBS funhouse.”

Comedy Central is expected to take some time to devise a replacement for “Colbert Report,” which, given its focus on a character originated by its host, cannot continue. According to a person familar with the situation. a bevy of options are up for consideration, including creating a new program with talent from “The Daily Show,” the 11 p.m. mainstay that precedes “Colbert Report,”  giving the slot to “@midnight,” the new program hosted by Chris Hardwick recently launched at 12 a.m.; or something new entirely.

“Comedy Central is proud that the incredibly talented Stephen Colbert has been part of our family for nearly two decades,” the network said in a statement. “We look forward to the next eight months of the ground-breaking Colbert Report and wish Stephen the very best.”

In his perch on Comedy Central, Colbert has proven more willing to embrace advertisers than many of his peers, devoting minutes-long segments to discussions of PepsiCo’s Doritos or Mondelez International’s Wheat Thins. At the same time, he makes fun of the products, and not always in a good-natured way. Will CBS let the practice continue? “That’s a bridge we’ll cross at some later point,” said Tassler.

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So what do you think? Will you watch the new Late Show? Are you happy with the choice? Let us know in the comments below!

Legendary Actor Mickey Rooney, Dead at 93

Variety.com Author Carmel Dagan:

Mickey Rooney, the pint-sized actor who was one of MGM’s giant box office attractions in the late ’30s and early ’40s, has died, sources confirm. He was 93.

As adept at comedy as drama and an excellent singer and dancer, Rooney was regarded as the consummate entertainer. During a prolific career on stage and screen that spanned eight decades (“I’ve been working all my life, but it seems longer,” he once said), he was nominated for four Academy Awards and received two special Oscars, the Juvenile Award in 1939 (shared with Deanna Durbin) and one in 1983 for his body of work.

He also appeared on series and TV and in made for television movies, one of which, “Bill,” the touching story of a mentally challenged man, won him an Emmy. He was Emmy nominated three other times. And for “Sugar Babies,” a musical revue in which he starred with Ann Miller, he was nominated for a Tony in 1980.

Both in his professional and personal life Rooney withstood many peaks and valleys. He was married eight times and filed for bankruptcy in 1962, having gone through the $12 million he had earned. And until middle age, he was never able to quite cast off his popularity as a juvenile. Nonetheless, Rooney’s highs more than compensated for his lows. Via his “Andy Hardy” series of films, the five-foot-three Rooney came to embody the virtues of small-town American boyhood. Those films and a series of musicals in which he co-starred with Judy Garland made him the nation’s biggest box office attraction for three years running.

mrooneyBorn Joseph Yule Jr. in Brooklyn, Rooney made his stage debut at age 15 months in his family’s vaudeville act, Yule and Carter, as a midget in a tuxedo. His first film role in the silent “Not to Be Trusted” also found him playing a midget. Even as a child he demonstrated the ability to be a consummate clown and to move audiences with his sentimental renditions of songs like “Pal of My Cradle Days.” After his parent’s divorce, his mother Nell answered an ad placed by cartoonist Fontaine Fox, who was looking for a child actor to play the comicstrip character Mickey McGuire in a series of silent comedy shorts. Rooney appeared in almost 80 episodes of the popular serial, which continued to be churned out by Standard Film Corp. until 1932. His mother wanted to legally change his name to McGuire, but when Fox objected, she chose Rooney instead.

As a teenager, Rooney appeared in many popular films including Tom Mix Western “My Pal the King” and, memorably, as Puck in Max Reinhardt’s 1935 adaptation of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” In 1934, MGM signed him to a week-to-week contract; his first success was playing Clark Gable as a boy in “Manhattan Melodrama.” He slowly climbed up the star ladder, appearing in an adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s “Ah Wilderness” and in “Little Lord Fauntleroy,” “Captains Courageous” and “Boy’s Town,” the latter two alongside Spencer Tracy.

But it was “A Family Affair,” a B-movie adaptation of the minor Broadway play “Skidding,” that first brought the world the Hardy family and its irrepressible son Andy, “the perfect composite of everybody’s kid brother,” according to critic Frank S. Nugent. With the surprise success of “A Family Affair,” the Hardy family, which included Lewis Stone (replacing Lionel Barrymore) as Judge Hardy and Spring Byington as his wife, embarked on a 15-film series of adventures in Americana. As star of one of the most successful series in film history, Rooney was earning $150,000 a year before his 20th birthday. In 1939, he was voted a special Oscar by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences.

The following year he was nominated for best actor in the film musical version of “Babes in Arms” with Judy Garland. “Mickey Rooney can act the legs off a centipede,” wrote the critic for the Sunday Times in London. It was the first of several memorable pairings with Garland including “Strike Up the Band,” “Babes on Broadway” and “Girl Crazy.”

His performance in the 1943 version of William Saroyan’s “The Human Comedy” brought a second nomination, and he played his first adult role opposite Elizabeth Taylor in “National Velvet.”

From 1944-46, Rooney served in the U.S. Army in the Jeep Theater, travelling 150,000 miles entertaining the troops and acting as a radio personality on the American Forces Network.

But after the war, Rooney’s attempt to make the transition from overaged teenager to full-fledged adult was rocky at best. MGM tried to give him a new image, casting him as a boxer in “Killer McCoy”; the musical version of “Ah Wilderness,” called “Summer Holiday,” also failed to please. The very qualities that had made him an appealing child star now began to grate. His energetic cockiness seemed forced and egotistical in an adult. The vaudeville-style humor and sentimentality were deemed annoying and precious by post-war audiences.

After settling his contract with MGM in a dispute over not being cast in the all-star war drama “Battleground,” Rooney made nightclub appearances as he rebuilt his career. His freelance movie assignments, such as “Quicksand,” sank without a trace. Only “The Bold and the Brave,” a WWII drama that brought him a third Oscar nomination, met with any success. The final Andy Hardy drama, 1958’s “Andy Hardy Comes Home,” found him as a successful lawyer and new head of the family. It was the final and least successful film in the series.

Rooney also tried directing, helming 1951’s “My True Story,” with Helen Walker as a jewel thief, and 1960’s “The Private Lives of Adam and Eve,” a complex comedy in which he also starred.

He experienced somewhat more success in television: He was nominated for Emmys for dramatic work on “Playhouse 90” effort “The Comedian,” considered a classic of golden-era television, and “Eddie” on “Alcoa Theatre.”He also appeared, less felicitously, in the mid-’50s series “The Mickey Rooney Show: Hey, Mulligan” on NBC and “Mickey,” which ran for a few months on ABC in 1964-65.

But in 1962, after filing for bankruptcy (the money had dwindled through his many divorces and because of his fondness for betting on “the ponies”), he embarked on a career as a character actor in films including “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” “Requiem for a Heavyweight” and “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.” His controversial “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” role as Mr. Yunioshi, a buck-toothed broadly comic caricature of a Japanese man, did not draw much ire when the film was first released but has since been condemned as racist.

Off the bigscreen, he toured the country on a double bill with singer Bobby Van and in summer stock.

In 1963, he appeared as the very first guest on “The Judy Garland Show” upon Garland’s insistence. And he appeared occasionally during the ’60s on comedy/variety shows such as “The Dean Martin Comedy Hour,” “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” and “The Carol Burnett Show.” He guested on “Hollywood Squares” in 13 episodes between 1969 and 1976, and made 15 appearances on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” from 1970-73.

Norman Lear considered him for role of Archie Bunker, but Rooney rejected the project just as Jackie Gleason had. Perhaps he felt the role of Santa Claus fit him better: Rooney did the voices for four Christmas TV animated/stop action specials over the years. He played Santa in “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town” (1970), “The Year Without a Santa Claus” (1974), “Rudolph and Frosty’s Christmas in July” (1979) and “A Miser Brothers’ Christmas” (2008) and also played St. Nick in a 1982 episode of “The Love Boat.”

In later years, Rooney continued to work hard and sometimes found notable success. He received an Oscar nomination for supporting actor in 1980 for “The Black Stallion.” He won an Emmy for “Bill” in 1982 and drew an Emmy nom for reprising the role in another CBS telepic two years later.

In addition to his success in the musical “Sugar Babies,” he made popular stage appearances in “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” and on Broadway in “The Will Rogers Follies.”

Mickey_Rooney_in_Babes_in_ArmsIn 1982 he starred in a short-lived sitcom, “One of the Boys,” with Dana Carvey and Nathan Lane. He guested on “The Golden Girls” in 1988, on “Murder, She Wrote” in 1993 and on “ER” in 1998; he starred in “The New Adventures of the Black Stallion,” based on the film, for 57 episodes from 1990-93.

As he approached and then surpassed his 90th birthday, he labored on, appearing in 2006 in “Night at the Museum” and in 2011 in “The Muppets” feature, among several other films.

In 1993 he published autobiography “Life Is Too Short”; the next year he came out with a novel, Hollywood murder mystery “The Search for Sonny Skies.”

Rooney had battled the major studios and the Screen Actors Guild seeking TV residuals for his screen appearances before 1960 without success. In 2011 he revealed he had suffered another form of victimization. He was granted a temporary restraining order against his stepson, who was accused of withholding food and medicine and interfering in Rooney’s personal finances, which was subsequently replaced by a confidential agreement.

In March 2011 he testified before a special Senate committee considering legislation to curb abuses of senior citizens.

Rooney voyaged, as a special guest, as part of the TCM Classic Cruise in January 2013.

Rooney was married eight times, first and most famously to his MGM co-star Ava Gardner.

Son Tim Rooney died in 2006.

Mickey Rooney is survived by wife Jan Chamberlin, a singer he married in 1978; son Mickey Rooney Jr. from his marriage to singer Betty Jane Rase; son Theodore Michael Rooney from his marriage to actress Martha Vickers; daughters Kelly Ann Rooney, Kerry Rooney and Kimmy Sue Rooney and son Michael Joseph Rooney from his marriage to Barbara Ann Thomason; and daughter Jonelle Rooney and adopted son Jimmy Rooney from his marriage to Carolyn Hockett.

Pat Sajak: “Wheel of Fortune’s Most Amazing Solve” in 30+ Years

Last night’s “Wheel of Fortune” (airing March 19, 2014) featured what host Pat Sajak called the “most amazing solve” in his career as the show’s host … for over 30 years! This solve is akin to a last second hail Mary play. Only two letters popped up on the final puzzle for Emil and his 3 consonants and a vowel brought nothing new to the board. The guess and solution will impress you, not only because he solved the puzzle but he did so using a word that many may not have used in many years! Check it out below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BobNg1-CSH4

What If Disney Characters Sang “Let It Go” From Frozen?

In the latest cover of Frozen’s Oscar winning song “Let It Go,” one man brilliantly gives us a taste of how the song might end up if Lumiere from Beauty and the Beast or Minne Mouse gave it a whirl! How would Timon and Pumbaa do? Check out the video below and let us know what you think!

Orphan Black to Stream Exclusively on Amazon Prime

Amazon has made a deal with BBC to exclusively carry the Orphan Black series starring Tatiana Maslany for Amazon Prime Customers. Season one is already available to stream and future seasons will be added as they air.

If you haven’t yet watched the first season of the series, now’s the time as season 2 starts April 19th.

The deal is the latest in the Amazon/Netflix/Hulu war to get exclusive shows in the hopes of gaining more customers. Amazon is already the exclusive subscription streaming home of PBS’ Downton Abbey, FX’s The Americans, CBS’ Under the Dome and upcoming Extant as well as hit shows like Veronica Mars and Justified. Prime Instant Video also has an exclusive collection of kids shows from Nickelodeon and Nick Jr. including SpongeBob SquarePants, Dora the Explorer and Blue’s Clues.

In addition, Amazon has also recently gotten into the ‘original series’ market adding many shows created exclusively for the service. If you haven’t yet checked them out, it’s a good time to do so. We recently watched the whole series of Alpha House (starring John Goodman, Clark Johnson, Matt Malloy, Mark Consuelos with cameos by Bill Murray) and loved it.

Are you planning on catching up on Orphan Black? Have you watched Alpha House? Let us know in the comments below!

How I Met Your Mother: A Bitter End?

If you don’t want to speculate (or be spoiled if this is true) don’t read this article.

After last nights episode, it appears we may now know how this story ends, and it isn’t so sweet. It would however be a great ending to this long running show.

This speculation has been around for awhile, with little innuendos throughout the story. However, after last nights episode, it seems inevitable how this story may come to a close. For years, people have wondered why Ted was telling this long story to his children about how he met his mother. Well, it looks like the reason may be because she died.

The shows creators have never deviated, in it’s long history, about how this show would end. It’s not like Friends, who filmed multiple endings to the show, or for goodness sake St. Elsewhere (who could forget that crazy ending?) The creators and writers knew all along how this story was going to end they say, and the show has been filled with innuendo to this end. Such as in an episode in Season 8, Ted runs to his future wife’s apartment and makes a speech about how they will be together in 45 days… He says ““Exactly 45 days from now, you and I are going to meet. We’re going to fall in love and we’re going to get married, and we’re going to have two kids. We’re going to love them and each other so much. All that is 45 days away, but I’m here now, I guess because I want those extra 45 days with you. I want each one of them … I am always going to love you. Until the end of my days and beyond.”

Now of course this could be just an expression of his undying love for her, but it appears that he just wants more time with her than he will get.

The mother wasn’t cast until recently, however they also never refer to her, show her, in future seasons. Yes, this could be because she was not cast yet, but there are things unspoken that says a lot more. Like in one scene, flashing forward many years, Ted supposedly high on a sandwich says “Where’s my wife?” His friends standing around say nothing.

Fast forward to last night’s episode. If you haven’t seen it yet, prepare for spoilers. In this flash forward episode, Ted and his wife return to the Inn where Barney and Robin get married to spend time which one another away from the kids. In this episode, Ted tells the stories about Barney and Robins wedding, ending with Robin’s mother showing up for the event (which Robin thought she wouldn’t.) Ted’s wife then asks “How is that a surprise? What mother wouldn’t show up for their daughter’s wedding?” This is when Ted begins to cry. She says “Oh hey… ” and distracts him from the topic with another story. The episode ends with Bob Dylan’s song “If You See Her, Say Hello.”

Now of course this is all speculation. If this is so, it is sure to be a very emotional ending to a great run. We could of course spin it positively, that she WILL show up to her daughter’s wedding, but after last night, I’m not real optimistic of that. Maybe she does have a serious illness, but beats it? Maybe the reason he starts the story is because she is in and out of the hospital at those times? Who knows, maybe there is a happy ending.

Personally though, as sad as it is, as depressing as it is, it may just be the perfect end to the perfect story. What do you think? Let us know in the comments below.