Late-night audiences are a tough crowd. If they don’t love you, they don’t come back. (Just ask the dozens of aspiring talk-show hosts who didn’t last.)
We’ve been waiting more than a year — although it seems like two — for the debut of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” which premieres Tuesday night on CBS. And we have some pretty high expectations. It’s not a matter of “He’ll probably be great.” He has to be great. Or we’ll just go back to watching Jimmy Fallon act like the class clown or Jimmy Kimmel producing another of his viral videos.
Here are the five things Colbert must do in his first week:
He needs to remind viewers that he’s the smartest person on the air at 11:35 p.m.
It’s impossible to imagine Fallon or Kimmel holding a conversation with the likes of Vice President Joe Biden or Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, both of whom are scheduled to appear on “Late Show” in Colbert’s first two weeks.
He needs to let people see and love the real Stephen Colbert, now that he’s abandoning his smarmy “Colbert Report” persona.
This needs to happen in the first show.
He needs to keep the CBS audience tuning in.
Have the CBS superstars — Mark Harmon, Jim Parsons, Tom “My avocado trees are dry” Selleck and even Julianna Margulies — on as guests, so the AARP demographic that keeps the CBS lineup humming along thinks he’s one of the family.
He needs to think of content for the show that can really translate to social media.
This has been a key factor in Fallon’s rise to the top.
He needs to give unknown talents the “Colbert bump.”
Most of the acts booked on late night have lots of exposure and huge publicity teams behind them. Colbert is smart enough to take a risk and invite to his stage artists in all fields who could benefit from his benevolence. Just listen to the musical lineup for the first two weeks: The Dead Weather, Run the Jewels (performing with TV on the Radio) and Troubled Waters are not exactly household names.