Just started to write a piece about something Stephen Colbert is doing that I don't like one bit. My pal Ken Levine doesn't like it either and I see he's already written pretty much the same thing I would have written. I just might not give Colbert the benefit of the doubt and suggest it's possible he didn't know what his producers were doing.
It is Kosher to require that applicants for comedy writing jobs show you some samples of how they write. What they're asking for here though is way beyond the norm. If I were a wanna-be writer looking to break in, I wouldn't play along even if only a hundred other wanna-bes were invited to submit. The fact that they may get thousands of submissions is all the more reason to not go along with this.
Suppose they get 10,000 entries. Do we think those will all be read by someone with true hiring power? They certainly won't be read by someone who's high up in the show's hierarchy. Those folks are already working night and day to put on five shows a week. What they'll more likely do is have a bevy of interns wade through the stacks and pass on anything they think is outstanding. It doesn't do you any good to submit brilliance if it has to pass muster with someone who can't recognize brilliance. And of course, the show doesn't lose a cent if they find some good prospects in the first 300 submissions someone considers and then they just dump the rest.
I can imagine a good agent suggesting it might be worth a client's time to whip up a package like the Colbert folks are demanding. That good agent would only do that though if he or she had reason to believe the submission might be one of only a dozen or maybe two dozen and that they would all be read by Colbert or the show's Head Writer or one of its producers.
But one of the points I try to make to aspiring authors is this: Most institutions (magazines, publishers, producers, etc.) that you want to have hire you or buy your writing have some version of what's commonly called a Slush Pile. If you want to be a professional writer, you need to stay out of the Slush Pile. It's called that for a reason. Those are the submissions that no one seriously solicited…the stuff sent in by (mostly) amateurs. Much of it is never read, at least by anyone important. That it's in that pile at all renders it suspect because most of what's in that pile is pretty lousy.
Most of what the Colbert Show will get will be pretty lousy. Yes, they may hire a couple of writers because of this process but, you know, a couple of people do win the lottery now and then. That doesn't mean that the odds are good you will.