As this article notes, the viewership for late night talk shows is way, way down…in some cases, on a par with daytime soap operas, which are thought to be a kind of programming on the endangered species list. So will late night talk shows go away?

At most, I can imagine them eventually going away from late night. With more and more people time-shifting their viewing these days, time slots don't matter as much as they once did. We might very well wake up one morning and find that the most-watched talk show on television is broadcast at 3:00 in the afternoon and viewed at all hours according to the viewers' convenience. But to the extent a large part of the audience is still watching shows when they're transmitted, I think talk shows will endure at 11:35 because that does seem to be a kind of programming people enjoy just before bedtime.

And I sure don't think talk shows will ever go away. They're cheap to produce, easy to launch and unlike soap operas, they have promotional value for their networks. They also have a little more rerun value than soaps…not a lot but some. I do think we're going to see more cases where a show that initially airs at 11:35 is rebroadcast several times the next day the way Comedy Central runs each Daily Show umpteen times. No one has ever tried to do that with soap operas.

I also think — and this is not so much a prediction as something I think is likely — that Stephen Colbert is going to be a real game-changer. I think his selection to succeed Letterman is the smartest programming decision CBS could have made. The guy has every single skill you need these days to be a successful late night host: He's funny. He's likeable. He can do characters and sketches. He can improvise. He can sing. He's smart, which matters especially in an interview situation. He also understands the Internet and has shown he can generate buzz on social media.

Want more? He's respected in the business — the kind of star that other stars want to appear with not just because he has an audience to receive their plugs but because they want to be seen alongside someone they think is brilliantly talented. He's also very up on current authors, current shows, current music, current movies, etc. Also, someone once said that one of the secrets of Carson's appeal was that men found him funny but whereas women didn't want to look at a Buddy Hackett or a Don Rickles, they thought Johnny was cute. I think Colbert probably has some of that, too.

This is not to say I'm certain the U.S. viewing public will embrace him. I don't think Conan O'Brien (a performer I used to love) ever found the right note to strike on his Tonight Show and Colbert could have the same problem. But I still think he was the smartest gamble CBS could have made. If anyone can bring new viewership to late night TV, that's the guy.

I like Larry Wilmore's show, especially when it's just Larry talking to the camera, but it has largely become a two-issue program. One issue is Bill Cosby and the other is cops killing black people with insufficient provocation. I don't think it's a coincidence that these are two issues that The Daily Show hasn't done much on.

Fortunately/unfortunately, there is much to say about these two issues, especially the last one. I'm embedding a good piece they did the other night on the recent killing by a University of Cincinnati campus officer. Even a local prosecutor who is apparently not disposed to give minorities the benefit of any doubts is calling it murder. Watch what Larry has to say about it all. This is important stuff…

We have more than fifty weeks before the Republicans convene in Cleveland to formally nominate their nominee for president. Let me give you that number again in boldface and all caps: MORE THAN FIFTY WEEKS!!!

Much can change in that time so I'm not taking Paul Waldman's scenario as a prediction so much as an outline of how Jeb Bush becomes the nominee if he becomes the nominee. If you pointed a crossbow at me today and forced me to say who I think it'll be, I'd probably say Bush. (It's intriguing to imagine the whole election as a replay of 1992 with that year's Republican nominee's son versus that year's Democratic nominee's wife…and Donald Trump in his greatest role ever as Ross Perot…)

But like I just boldfaced, it's MORE THAN FIFTY WEEKS!!! We don't know what the economy will be like then. We don't know what the situation with Iran or any foreign troublespot will be like then. We don't know what scandals will erupt or where there might be terrorist attacks or how the Supreme Court may change our lives. By that date, the consensus about the Obama Administration will have gone up or down, John McCain will have found nine more countries he thinks we should invade and there'll be at least three major issues that are presently not even being discussed, perhaps because they don't yet exist.

Forty-five years ago this morning, my friend-partner Steve Sherman picked me up outside the house where I lived with my parents. In the car also were Steve's brother Gary and our brother Bruce Simon, and we freewayed down to the U.S. Grant Hotel in San Diego. There, we attended Day One of the Golden State Comic Con which has since morphed into Comic-Con International.

It was in the basement of the Grant which was then undergoing serious reconstruction. The attendees had to navigate around workers and temporary walls but we didn't care. We had a great time.

The number of attendees has since been estimated at 300. It felt like more to me but I'm not saying that number is wrong. Even 300 felt like a lot even though at today's con, 300 is about the number of people on the premises dressed as Harley Quinn. I remember everyone being very excited that the event had happened at all and that it attracted as many people as it attracted.

The big Guest of Honor that day was Jack Kirby. I wrote the tale back here of how I was supposed to introduce his speech and didn't. At the time, Jack had left Marvel but his new work from DC had not yet begun appearing…so some of the fans who showed up to get his autograph on Marvels were a little puzzled. One even asked me if he was allowed to sign issues of Fantastic Four now that he was no longer the book's artist.

I just started to write that no one who was there that day imagined what the convention would become…but I realized that is not a true statement. Jack knew. I don't know how he knew but he knew.

In any case, it was quite a day. The high point was probably Jack's talk. The low point was…well, there were two. On the way back, we stopped off in San Clemente because none of us had had anything to eat all day. You'd think a lot of restaurants would be open on a Saturday night in a city that was then the second home of the President of the United States but somehow, we wound up at a Jack-in-the-Box. And then when I got home, I found out that my father's car had been stolen out of our driveway and somehow, rushing out that morning to climb into Steve's, I hadn't noticed it.

But there were no low points at the con itself. The con itself was a wonderful thing and I can't believe it was 45 years ago.

A combination of business and personal responsiblities here (plus knee problems) have kept me away from New York for quite a few years now. I hope to change that soon.

Among the shows I regret not seeing back there is the recently-closed production of On the Twentieth Century with Kristin Chenoweth and Peter Gallagher. That's a great play and I'm sure Ms. Chenoweth was superb in the role originated — but not played for long — by Madeline Kahn.

Here's an entire number from the revival — "Veronique." Ms. Chenoweth played Lily Garland, a great star of the stage and screen (though lately, only screen). This song is a flashback to her discovery in a musical mounted by theatrical empresario Oscar Jaffee. She was plain ol' Mildred Plotka when Jaffee cast her as a French street singer whose refusal to sleep with Prussian chancellor Otto von Bismarck caused the entire Franco-Prussian War. Here is Chenoweth making the transformation from Plotka to Diva…

A person who doesn't seem to want to be quoted by name wrote…

I have a question about your July 16th post on the unknown assistant of Carl Barks, and the self-help mantra that all dreams can come true. Clearly, the person in question lacked talent and a desire to work hard.

But I'm wondering how many people you've known with exceptional talent and focus…who spared no effort or perseverance or sacrifice over decades of working toward their goal…only to be disappointed repeatedly. How do we know if a setback should motivate us to try even harder…and when it's a sign that we're following the wrong path?

I'm curious if you've known anyone who was a complete failure despite a lifetime of working tirelessly to achieve their dream.

Sure…and it gets back to that thing I keep saying about finding the sweet spot between idealism and pragmatism. I've also known people who never got anywhere due to personal problems. There are people whose careers get derailed by illness or marital problems or parental dilemmas and I certainly crossed paths with some who destroyed their own chances via drugs or drink.

I've even seen people who've ruined promising careers by being unreliable or difficult. "Unreliable" is bad. "Difficult" can be lethal. A few years back, I was talking with an agent and he mentioned that a certain writer we both knew had decided to give it up and get into non-writing work. "He was good," the agent said. "But he wasn't good enough to get away with being that big an asshole."

The "pragmatism" part of my little aphorism kind of demands that you recognize the marketability of your output. Yes, you have to be able to create good work but you also have to be able to create that which someone wants to buy and you have to find some way to get it to the people who might want to buy it. You know all those jokes about bad investments?

"My financial advisory got me into a great deal. I've invested everything I own in a chain of Big Man's shops in Tokyo!"

"I've invested everything I own in a chain of tuxedo stores in Tijuana!"

"I've invested everything I own in a chain of Radioshacks in Amish country!"

Those jokes. There are unmarketable ideas out there. Right now, there's probably some guy shopping around an idea for a new version of The Dating Game starring Bill Cosby. I think a lot of beginners are told, "Write what you want to see" or "Write what matters to you" and they take that way too far and, in effect, open a restaurant selling pulled pork sandwiches in a Kosher neighborhood. Those could be the greatest pulled pork sandwiches in the world but, you know, it isn't just the quality that matters or even the effort.

A few years ago, a writer acquaintance steamrollered me into reading his pitch for a new western TV show that was very much like Bonanza in terms of setting and tone. He asked me what I thought it needed and I said, "A time machine." I wished him well but I think he'd have better luck with the chain of Big Man's shops in Tokyo.

How do you know if a setback should motivate you to try even harder? I think you have to look at what kind of setback it is and how often it happens. You might be trying to sell something that nobody wants, period. Or you might be trying to sell something that's so much like what everyone else is trying to sell that you get lost in the herd.

Back when the movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High was just coming out, I was hired by a producer to write a teen comedy that, God willing, would have the same appeal. One of the reasons he picked me is that I had a reputation for being fast and when he hired me, he said, "In three months, the market will be glutted with this kind of script. I want something I can be shopping around in one." I was a big hero to him when I delivered a first draft in two weeks.

He said, "This is great. Cut ten pages and lose the tits." When we'd discussed the project two weeks earlier, he wanted scenes in it like the one in Fast Times where Phoebe Cates takes off her bikini top. (If you're not familiar with the scene, it's only findable in about 73 trillion places on the Internet.)

Fourteen days later, he decided he needed to aim for a PG so I cut ten pages, including stuff like that and then into the marketplace he went with it. He had attached an experienced director and he had about a third of the financing pledged. What he needed was a studio that would put up the other two-thirds and then distribute the thing.

Within a few weeks, he called me back and said, "We may be too late. Everybody's already got a script like this." In the end, nothing happened with it and the quality of my screenplay became largely irrelevant since no one wanted to read it.

That's a setback but it's a different setback from if people were reading the script and not liking it. In this case, we had a numerical problem — the same problem actors face when fifty people go in to audition for one role. 49 of them are going to get turned down and it's usually not because only one of them was good. Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino are reportedly up for the same parts often. When Dustin doesn't get picked, it isn't because he has no future as an actor.

I think you need the idealism to keep going and you need the pragmatism to understand why you don't get the job or don't sell your script. It may be that you just aren't very good…or more likely, very special. Or it may be like those Big Man's Shops in Tokyo and you need to see if there's something else you have to sell, something a bit more commercial. Then again, I've also known writers who I thought were trying too hard to be commercial to the point of not playing to their strengths, writing what seemed to be hot instead of what they were good at.

There are also people who may be good at writing but rotten at selling; again, a restaurant analogy: If you want to have a successful restaurant, you not only need to be able to make good food, you need to be able to manage a restaurant and publicize it properly. If that's your problem, recognize it and address it. (And it's where advice from me is really useless. When new writers ask me how to break into the profession, I tell them, "I dunno. I haven't done that in over forty years. Ask someone who's broken into the current industry.")

Am I answering your question? I'm trying to say that, yes, I've known wanna-bes who worked tirelessly to achieve their dream and never got within fifty furlongs of it. There are a lot of reasons why writers — or actors or directors or whatever — don't make it and it helps to have enough realism in your attitude to understand why you aren't getting anywhere.

If you can't tell the difference, maybe that's the time to think of another line of work you'd like to pursue. If you know anything about men's suits and wouldn't mind relocating to Tokyo, I'm a partner in something over there which might have an opening.

George Will makes a pretty lousy case against the Iran deal. Daniel Larison explains why it's a pretty lousy case.

Roderick George Toombs was once the most hated man in the wrestling game but I liked him. Under his stage/ring name of "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, he wrestled hundreds of times with most of the audience booing him and wishing for him to die a slow, painful death. People paid good money to go see him wrassle, praying for his defeat and humiliation.

His career was a masterpiece of acting and showmanship since, first of all, he was a real nice guy when he wasn't being paid to play a rat. And secondly, he became a superstar of professional wrestling without really having the physique for it. Hulk Hogan — against whom he was often pitted — was constructed like a wrestler: 6'7" and body-built to a glistening sheen. Roddy was barely 6' (shorter than I) and not all that muscular. Still, through Roddy's sheer personality and performance, he managed to look like someone who might very well kick the Hulkster's ass. I do not think it is a coincidence that Roddy was among the 1% of professional wrestlers who ever manage to make money doing anything in front of an audience besides wrestling.

It seemed to me his success was due to three things, one being that showmanship and his ability to work a crowd. Another was his willingness to endure the physical strains and injuries that can occur in the ring even if you're following a scenario wherein you're supposed to triumph. And the last of the three was his ability to laugh off the hatred he sometimes encountered when, as per the script, he won. Some people who take this kind of thing way too seriously really despised him. To Roddy, all of this was part of the job.

Back in the eighties, I co-produced and wrote a CBS special and he was our star. He was utterly professional, totally cooperative and very eager to please everyone. I can't think of a star I ever worked with who had less ego. My favorite moment of the experience? It may been this incident which I related here before as follows…

We were having lunch at the old Hamptons Restaurant on Highland — the one I was later a partner in but this was before that. The guy at the table behind Roddy kept moving his chair around and bumping into Roddy's chair. Roddy asked him politely to stop doing that. The guy kept doing it so Roddy asked him again…still polite but a bit less so. Finally, Roddy asked the waiter to tell the man to either stop bumping into him or move to another table.

The other diner got angry at Roddy (not yet realizing who it was) and turned to him and barked, "What's your problem, fella?" Roddy turned and got up and said in a Clint Eastwood reading, "My problem is that you keep bumping my chair." The other diner for some reason was itching to make this Roddy's fault and to demand an apology. He got up too…and from the body language, it looked for about two seconds like someone was going to take a swing at someone.

But then, and I wish I had a photo of it, the other guy suddenly realized he was messing with "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, the guy who liked to take a folded-up metal folding chair and bash his ring opponents into unconsciousness with it. The change in facial expression was acute and hilarious. He promptly apologized to "Mr. Piper" (addressing him that way) and moved his chair around to the other side of the table so he was nowhere near Roddy.

And Roddy whispered to me, "See? The reputation does me some good."

He died last night at the age of 61. Cardiac arrest, they're saying. You know, you hear so much in and around show business about people who seem nice but really aren't that I want to make this point: He played a bad guy but he was a good guy. Isn't it nice that it can also work that way?

Are you Hooked on Words? Being a writer, I am but what I'm actually asking is if you've played a game on your Smartphone or other electronic device called Hooked on Words. So I guess I should ask if you're hooked on Hooked on Words.

I have it on my iPhone and I play it when I'm waiting somewhere for a few minutes. The app shows you columns of random letters — six columns at a time, each containing seven letters. Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to find words in it. Like in the illo below, you can find "ring" or "grin" or "side" or "bedtime." Your finger can go from any letter to the letter up, down or diagonal but you can't repeat the same tile in a word. As you use up letters, others drop down to fill the voids.

I usually don't play it for very long and I really don't keep score. I just give myself little challenges — like one time, I'll decide to see how many words I can find regardless of length before the nurse comes out to tell me the doctor is ready to see me. Or other times, I'll decide to take as much time as I need but to only make words of six or more letters.

Most of the time to spell a word of any length, you have to go up and down and diagonal and move around in an odd pattern. Every once in a while though, the random letter selection just gives you a nice, long word by chance.

The other day I was waiting for the doctor who's making my knees work better and I started playing, not really playing hard or concentrating. All of a sudden, I noticed that the game had by chance given me a seven-letter pattern that was very familiar, though it wasn't acceptable as a word. I immediately did a screen capture so I could preserve it and share it with you. The screen capture has been Photoshopped only to reduce the size of it. I didn't change what's in the image in any way.

Here — take a look: Ignore the word "tit" and check out the second column from the right. What are the odds of that?

Also: On Sunday at 9 PM, Comedy Central is running some sort of special using material from The Daily Show. It's called News Your Own Adventure: The Quest for the Best Daily Show Segments and that's about all I know about it.

And on Thursday, Stewart's last day as host, they're airing a day-long marathon of old shows. I sure hope they're thinking of rerunning a lot of that material in the future. I think it would draw a consistent audience despite its age.

This article over at Hollywood Reporter says, as I quote: "Jon Stewart's final Daily Show episode will feature guests Louis C.K., Denis Leary and Amy Schumer. The longtime late-night host made the announcement at the end of Thursday night's episode." No, he didn't. He said those people would be on next week but he didn't say they'd be on his last show.

The piece also says the last show will be 50 minutes long. I assume that's so and I'm waiting to see if anyone tells my TiVo, which still thinks it's 32 minutes.

After I posted the previous message, I thought of one other thing I should have said. Bill Carter says that something Stewart put on The Daily Show made Megyn Kelly cry. That may be so but I don't think it got her to change her act, nor did it probably cause any of her viewers to think less of her as a newsperson. My admiration for Jon Stewart is vast and great but I sometimes think his lasting impact is being exaggerated.

Also: I still don't know what's going to happen in the Daily Show timeslot between the time Stewart does his last show and Trevor Noah does his first. And has anyone heard anything resembling a debut date for the new Jason Jones show or the one with Samantha Bee?

Bill Carter on what Jon Stewart achieved on The Daily Show. I think this essay (and other praise Stewart is now receiving) may make too much of the more concrete effects — like getting CNN's Crossfire canceled, which given its ratings was no major toppling. I think Mr. Stewart gave us a brilliant, entertaining show that raised a lot of awareness in this country but didn't have a whole lot of impact in quantifiable ways. He exposed an awful lot of lying and hypocrisy among politicians and pundits and newsfolks…but I'm not sure it did those people a whole lot of harm.

Max Fisher thinks the online lynching of Dr. Walter Palmer has gone too far. It probably has if you look on it as an attack on one individual. If you look on it as a mass revulsion against trophy hunting, maybe not…but I'm sure it wouldn't feel that way to me if I were Dr. Palmer. And it's unfair that his employees, family and even some of his patients are being punished to some extent.

Interestingly, the worst things I've read online about the man were when I cruised, just outta curiosity, some online forums where hunters post. I'd expected messages defending the man's actions and while I saw some, I saw a surprising number that said things like, "It's men like him who give all hunters a bad name."

When I'm writing, I like to be hit in the face. By air, I mean. (If I liked to be hit in the face any other way, I'd try to find a job like when I worked on MacGyver. The three worst weeks of my life as a TV writer.)

Anyway, I like a little breeze coming at me…not enough to ruffle papers or even my hair but just enough to keep the atmosphere moving. This is probably not unrelated to the fact that I have Sleep Apnea and must sleep with a device clamped onto my nose that forces air into it all night. I tend not to breathe normally when prone so I require a bit of an assist at night, and there's a teensy bit of the same problem when I'm perpendicular.

So as I sit here at my computer, I usually have a small electric fan hurling oxygen my way. For years, I had an adequate fan there but I recently replaced it with a real good one, the Ozeri Brezza III Dual Oscillating 10" High Velocity Desk and Table Fan. It's pretty quiet, it has plenty of different speeds and it has a nifty little remote control so I can turn it off or down when I'm on the phone and don't want the party on the other end to think I'm in a wind tunnel. The remote also lets you move the air flow from side to side or up and down so you can point it exactly where you want it.

I did not check out every possible option; just bought this one and decided I couldn't have done better. There may be others just as good or cheaper but I thought I'd tell you of my happiness with it. If you want to check it out, here's an Amazon link. It's $43, air not included.