How Stephen Colbert Is Widening His Late-Night Lead and Doubling Down on Trump

A year and a half after it began, Stephen Colbert’s late-night resurgence shows no signs of letting up. Halfway through the 2017-18 season, The Late Show With Stephen Colbert is up 30 percent in total viewers from a year ago (3.83 million, over 1 million more than The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon’s 2.79 million audience). And while Fallon is still ahead in the 18-49 demo, his lead has shrunk to just one tenth of a ratings point (0.7 to Colbert’s 0.6). Colbert will continue chipping away at that that gap on Tuesday, when Late Show broadcasts live following President Trump’s first State of the Union address. It will be the show’s first live telecast since Feb. 28, after Trump spoke to a joint session of Congress. At the same time, on CBS’ sister network Showtime, Colbert is rolling out his latest project: Our Cartoon President, a 10-episode animated comedy he's executive-producing about President Trump that premieres Feb. 11 on the linear network, but will debut Sunday on Showtime’s streaming and VOD platforms. Late Show and Our Cartoon President executive producer Chris Licht—who helped spark Colbert’s Late Show turnaround when he came over from CBS This Morning in April 2016—spoke with Adweek about moonlighting for Showtime, how he’s still improving the Late Show and his favorite integration yet. Adweek: How did you settle on doing Our Cartoon President for Showtime? Licht: It’s a natural offshoot of the character that showed up on the [Late] Show. We all looked at it as, what more can we do with him? Particularly because it’s different than making jokes about the president; it’s a whole different area of comedy. When I talked to Stephen about it, it was always, “This would be a perfect Showtime show.” We had such a good experience with Showtime with the [live presidential] election special—not necessarily what happened that night, but the whole process. The relationships we all have within the company condensed down a process that would’ve been months and months to a very short timeframe. “What do you think of this?” “We like it.” “Let’s do it.” So it was a no-brainer. Speaking of your last project with Showtime, what resonates with you about that night, now that we’re over a year removed from it? I can’t bring myself to watch it because as a producer, there are so many things you could have done better or prepared differently for. But the thing that’s been great about it is, that last moment where he just lets down his guard and really connected with the audience in a shared experience, and that has been the guiding principle going forward. It was real and raw, and that’s what we try to do on the show every night. If Showtime asked you guys to do another live special, would you be up for it? Sure. We are better for having done it, so absolutely. I don’t want to speak for Stephen, but he’s very loath to shy away from anything. Your fellow Late Show executive producer, Jon Stewart, had been developing a topical animated show for HBO and eventually threw in the towel. This is a different show, but did you run into any unforeseen production difficulties? I don’t know much about Jon’s project, but I know that it was much different from what we were looking to do. Part of the ambition of Cartoon President is we do the animation: the writers, the animators, the entire production is on one floor of the Ed Sullivan Theater. We don’t outsource anything, and there is technology that we use on the show that allows things to be done in a much shorter timeframe. I keep waiting for someone to say, “We can’t do this,” but Tim Luecke, who is the lead animator from the Late Show, came over and is a co-EP on the cartoon. He’s a very good barometer of, “No, let’s not even try this,” or, “You can have this, but not this.” The creative has been hand in hand with the production and the technology, so we’re not writing checks that the production can’t cash. Things have been on schedule. [kickout id="1"] When you joined the Late Show, you took a lot of things off Stephen’s plate and let him focus on the comedy. How have you tweaked the show more recently? My job is to eliminate things that get in the way of people’s creativity, and that goes hand-in-hand with giving permission to just try different things. It would not be a no-brainer to put Neil deGrasse Tyson in not only as a lead guest, but the second and third act. We did that [on Jan. 5] and it’s the highest number we’ve had on a Friday since the show started. So having flexibility and taking chances. Is this a day where we do two monologues? We’re in a weird place now where you have to play like you’re not in first place, so you have to keep trying and evolving. We’re resonating enough with the audience that if you try something and it doesn’t work, OK, we won’t do that again. But if it works, great. You’re almost a million viewers ahead of the Tonight Show, but you’re still lagging behind in the 18-49 demo. Are you actively trying to close that gap, or would that mindset cause everything to unravel? I don’t think you ever program like that. The first thing that happens is total audience, and then demos follow, and it’s just the nature of things. We have shrunk the gap significantly to an almost negligible amount, and I see no reason why that won’t continue. Certainly it is not enough of a gap where I would ever entertain changing something specifically to appeal to that portion of the audience. When the sexual harassment allegations last fall started to close to home, and CBS News fired Charlie Rose, did you have any conversations with the network as far as what you could or couldn’t say, or did you treat that the same as all the other names that came before? The network gave no guidance whatsoever; there was zero input as to whether we should do it or not. I recused myself from any discussion about it. Not because I didn’t think I could be impartial about it—and no one told me, “Recuse yourself”—but I didn’t want anyone on the staff to feel that, if I pitch a joke, what is Chris going to do? I had no idea what we were doing on it; I completely removed myself to take that out of the equation and let people see the humor in it. If there were jokes, we should do jokes, and it shouldn’t be tempered by the fact that I used to work with him [at CBS This Morning] or that he’s a CBS star. The most I got involved was talking to Gayle [King], because she was scheduled to come on [that night], and just having conversations with her about that. The Charlie controversy aside, do you miss being in news? I think I’ve lucked out in that this was not a real right turn. [laughs] Because I’m still so involved in just what’s happening in the world. I miss the people for sure. It was an incredible team. I don’t miss getting up [early] and I don’t miss the control room. Being on the stage with Stephen is a whole different experience that I’ve really come to really like. I love watching [CBS This Morning], and I feel a certain amount of pride every time I watch it, because I know I helped build it. But it’s a fantastic show that I don’t miss. When did you decide that Late Show would go live again after the State of the Union? [Almost two months] ago. It’s a muscle to flex. When we told everyone, people were like “Yeah!” No one was like, “Ugh!” So we don’t do it often enough that people are burnt [out] on it. Especially since it’s been almost a year since you last did it. But I will say, there hasn’t been a day where I’m like, “God, I wish we had been live.” Are you thinking ahead to when the next time to go live might be? No. I’m more looking ahead at what’s the next “Russia Week,” because that was so successful on every level. Has your or Stephen’s approach to Late Show integrations changed at all? We are all in if it makes sense. We’re open for business. If we can do something that makes sense and fits in the brand of the show, we have no problem doing it. Which one did you think was particularly successful? The best one was when we debuted the trailer for The Post. It’s so on brand, it’s a movie Stephen is excited about, we get to do the world premiere of it—and we get paid! When you were brought over to the Late Show, CBS said you’d also be consulting on other shows and platforms in the company’s portfolio. Our Cartoon President is an example of that, but what other things would you like to tinker with? Stay tuned. But I’m very happy tinkering with the Late Show.