The Daily Show and The Colbert Report come back tonight. Fans of irony may enjoy the fact that these two shows, the Bush-era rallying media rallying points for American liberals, have reportedly been having a hard time getting left-leaning guests, because they don’t want to cross WGA picket lines. Among the guest names that have been tossed around: Andrew Sullivan, David Frum, and, of course, Mike Huckabee, who’s been doing more late-night TV than an infomercial host.
Comedy Central late night: bastion of center-right punditry! Cognitive dissonance alert! [OK, actuallly, Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi has been mentioned as a possible Colbert guest, but I couldn’t resist.]
There’s been a lot of speculation that these shows will be especially crippled by a strike because they had used so many scripted segments, but I’m not sure. They’ll be changed, but as I told Josh Tyrangiel in this week’s TIME entertainment podcast, both Stewart and Colbert could do well in interview-heavy formats: Stewart because he’s become a better, and more pugnacious, interviewer these last couple of years, and Colbert, because he’s the master of in-character improv.
Will you watch the shows? What do you hope they’ll do? And what will you settle for?