A friend of mine who claims familiarity with Craig Ferguson's deal at CBS called to congratulate me on my prediction of Colbert as Letterman's replacement. Actually, you may recall I initially said it should be him but predicted it wouldn't be. Then I switched and said it probably would be. My friend also agreed with me that Ferguson was never in the running.
My guess would be that no one else was in the running. There's a story on the 'net that says…
Mr. Moonves said Mr. Colbert, whose contract with Comedy Central expires at the end of this year, was long at the top of his wish list. He started discussions with the 49-year-old comedian just a week ago, after Mr. Letterman announced his retirement, finalizing a deal in the corner of the arena at the Final Four of the NCAA basketball tournament over the weekend.
Well, maybe. But I can't shake the feeling that what we're looking at is an understanding between Moonves and Letterman: If Dave would exit gracefully now, CBS would give him a royal send-off and make sure that when the history is written, whether by Fate or Bill Carter, it would be said that the decision to leave was 100% Dave's. He wasn't kicked-off — twice! — like Jay. People wouldn't say he was elbowed aside like Johnny. (I don't think Johnny was, by the way, but I heard from someone close to him that he was pissed some people thought he was.)
The decision of exactly when to retire may indeed have been Dave's…but that doesn't mean that they weren't already talking to Colbert. And if they were, I would think they'd deny it, rather than risk the charge that Dave was pressured out by CBS lining up his replacement. We may never know for sure but I don't think CBS would decide on something as important as their new 11:35 host quickly enough to have a deal in place in one week. Conan's deal to displace Jay took months to hammer out. I also don't think Les Moonves, being a smart planner, would have risked that while they were waiting for Dave to pick the date to announce, they might discover Colbert had signed for another year at Comedy Central or something else, thereby becoming unavailable.
In any case, if this whole thing succession planning did start with Dave calling Les and saying, "It's time," Les must have hopped on the other line and made an offer to Colbert ten seconds later. All this talk about Chelsea and Louis C.K. and Ellen and Jay and Conan and Sarah Palin (!) was just the press generating a story where there wasn't one.
There were reports that Mr. Ferguson had it in his contract that he would take over for Letterman while other reports said that there was no such clause. My friend clarifies and says Ferguson had a clause that said he'd get a huge cash payment (something like eight million $$$) if someone else succeeded Dave. So it was the same as the deal Letterman had back when he followed Carson. It said that he [Dave] would succeed Johnny and if he didn't, he'd get a sum of money that his network wouldn't have balked at paying out if he wasn't their choice for the job. So he (and Craig) kind of had it both ways. They had deals that said they would get the earlier time slot…unless the network wanted someone else.
Says my informant, CraigyFerg has long known he wouldn't be moving up, which is why he signed on for that new game show he'll soon be hosting in addition to his Late, Late Show duties. I hadn't thought of that but, yeah, that should have been a dead giveaway. I sure would not be shocked if (a) Ferguson decided this would be a good time to explore other career possibilities and/or (b) CBS decided this was a good time to see if they could find a host who would do better in that time slot.
So let's see how this is being orchestrated. Dave put out a statement congratulating Colbert and blessing him as a replacement. I'm sure those are true sentiments but Dave had to do that no matter who they picked. And I don't think it's coincidence that the announcement of Colbert came just when Letterman's going on vacation for ten days. He'll have Colbert on before long, and Stephen will do the other late night shows to shake hands and demonstrate friendship and sportsmanship. In a few weeks, they'll announce an end date for Dave, an earlier end date for Colbert's Comedy Central show, Stephen's start date on CBS, and a new show on Comedy Central which, it is hoped, will keep the Jon Stewart watchers watching.
I'm eager to see what The Late Show with Stephen Colbert is like. My TiVo no longer has season passes to any hour-long late night talk show but I'll be taking one for this. And I guess I'm even more eager to see what Colbert does to promote his new gig and how he uses the opportunity for silly routines and appearances. He's really good when he has something to play with and I think CBS has just handed him a very big sandbox and a whole lot of toys.