Stephen Colbert explains how his first Late Show almost didn't air…
Colbert mentions the Broadcast Center of a network. Those are secretive places of power — the point from which transmission is sent out and the technicians there make sure a show goes out properly as they fine-tune the signal and are at the ready for any possible emergency. Twice in my life I have been in such foreboding places — once at the NBC Broadcast Center in New York and once at the CBS one in Los Angeles.
In both locations, the tech folks were ultra-cool and they had one eye on the show they were transmitting to the world and one eye on a monitor where they were watching a video of something else just for fun. And in both instances, which were a couple years apart, the non-broadcast video they had running was a compilation reel from The Price is Right of clips where the models were in swimsuits. I'm going to guess they didn't dare watch anything racier for fear of what might happen if someone pressed the wrong button.