David Letterman Archives

How to Create a New Comedy/Talk Show

Posted on February 16, 2015 by Joe Toplyn

You have a host. Your assignment is to build a new comedy/talk show around him or her. How do you even begin to do that?

Recently The New York Times went behind the scenes to give a glimpse into how James Corden and his staff are creating their version of Late Late Show, premiering on March 23, 2015.

And soon Stephen Colbert and his team will begin to shape a new Late Show, to debut on September 8, 2015.

New comedy/talk shows are also being created around Chelsea Handler, Grace Helbig, and other hosts.

I know what that process is like. I assisted in the birth of The Chevy Chase Show and The Caroline Rhea Show.

And I saw what worked and what didn’t work during my many years on the writing staffs of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Late Show with David Letterman.

So how would I go about creating a new comedy/talk show? I’d start by asking questions like these:

What is our host good at?

You want your show to have your host doing what they do best as often as possible. That way your host will have fun and perform at the top of their game, which means the audience will enjoy watching them.

Take James Corden. He’s a Tony Award-winning Broadway star, so his Late Late Show will probably have him performing many comedy scenes and songs. A clue that this is true: the Times article mentions that James hired writer David Javerbaum, with whom I worked on Late Show with David Letterman. In addition to his extensive experience in late night, D. J. is also an award-winning musical-theater lyricist and librettist.

What is our competition doing?

TV viewers crave familiarity but also freshness. Ideally your new show will offer viewers types of entertainment they’re not getting anywhere else in late night.

For example, Stephen Colbert and his Late Show team may look at Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show and sense an opportunity to do more barbed comedy about politics, celebrities, and current events.

What is physically possible to produce week after week?

The time and money available to produce the show are limited so you can’t always do what you want.

That’s the way it was with Saturday Night Live alumnus Chevy Chase. He’s a gifted sketch performer, so ideally The Chevy Chase Show would have resembled SNL. But no late-night show has the writing budget, production resources, and rehearsal time to air even a half-hour of scripted sketches five nights a week.

How much time is our host willing to devote to the show?

Producing elaborate comedy pieces, like taped TV show parodies, takes up a lot of a host’s time. Producing comedy pieces like field pieces outside of regular business hours also takes a host’s time. If your host can’t or won’t put in that time, they’ll be limiting what comedy you can present on the show.

Jay Leno could only perform a thirty-joke monologue on each episode of the Tonight Show because he devoted every free moment during the day, and several hours at night, to working on it.

Okay, fine, but what should we actually do on the show?

Use the answers to the above questions to create your new show by customizing the generic comedy/talk show template. In addition to your host, these are the elements of that generic template:

Sidekick
Other staffer-performers
Guests, including musical guests
Studio audience
Desk
Comedy pieces

To tailor your comedy pieces to fit your new show and host, get my book, Comedy Writing for Late-Night TV. It’s a comprehensive manual of ways to pack a comedy/talk show with laughs:

cold openings and cold closes
the monologue
the main and second comedy pieces
guest segment extras
bumpers

Good luck to the new entrants in late-night!

How the Two Jimmies Can Prepare for Colbert

Posted on July 4, 2014 by Joe Toplyn

As I write this, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon is dominating its competition. Since its premiere on February 17, 2014, Tonight has earned a 1.28 rating in Adults 18-49, compared to a .65 for Jimmy Kimmel Live and a .51 for Late Show with David Letterman.

But the game is changing. Sometime in 2015 Stephen Colbert will take over Late Show and he’ll be a formidable opponent. Here’s why:

Colbert is versatile. He’s done stand-up and improv. He’s a sketch performer and a writer. He’s a savvy and quick-witted interviewer. That means he can do whatever it takes to keep his show entertaining month after month.

Colbert is hard-working. He’s been doing The Colbert Report for almost nine years, so he’s proven he can handle the demands of a late-night comedy/talk show.

Colbert is smart. He and his team know how to turn out a quality show. Last year The Colbert Report won two Primetime Emmys.

So what should the two Jimmies and their staffs do to get ready for Colbert? Here are a couple of suggestions:

Don’t coast on what’s working now. Over the next six months, develop lots of new comedy pieces. You want your show to be as fresh as possible when Colbert gives viewers another option. For example, when I was co-head writer of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno I spearheaded the addition of characters like Mr. Brain. That new, popular comedy material helped Tonight catch up with Late Show.

Shoot lots of taped pieces, particularly field pieces, in the weeks leading up Colbert’s premiere. Then air those taped pieces during the first couple of weeks after the premiere. Field pieces tend to score big with audiences; learn why in my post “5 Reasons to Do Field Pieces.” Late Show with David Letterman used this tactic very successfully to launch itself against The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Tonight took months to recover from the prerecorded onslaught, as described in my book Comedy Writing for Late-Night TV.

So those are some ways the two Jimmies can prepare for the premiere of Colbert’s Late Show: develop lots of new comedy pieces and air a lot of taped pieces.

And, by the way, I’d make the same suggestions to Colbert and his team.

How to Create Funny Products

Posted on April 27, 2014 by Joe Toplyn

Short-form comedy, the kind on comedy/talk shows, often turns up in consumer products. That’s why the same writing techniques used on late-night shows can also be used to create funny products like tee-shirts, bumper stickers, and novelty gifts.

For example, here’s how I used late-night comedy writing techniques to create two greeting cards that the staffers of Late Night with David Letterman sent out to their holiday mailing lists.

1986 holiday card from "Late Night with David Letterman" promotes General Electric products

“Late Night with David Letterman” holiday card, 1986

In both cases I started with the joke topic “Late Night holiday card.” The two handles—the distinctive elements—of that topic are “Late Night” and “holiday card.”

One association of the handle “Late Night” is “General Electric,” the show’s new corporate parent at the time; a sub-association of General Electric is “stuff for sale.”

And one association of the handle “holiday card” is “gifts”, which also has the sub-association “stuff for sale.” Linking those two sub-associations together gave birth to the official Late Night holiday card of 1986.

1989 holiday card from "Late Night with David Letterman" features Dan Rather's credit card

“Late Night” holiday card, 1989

For the 1989 holiday season I started with the same joke topic: “Late Night holiday card.” This time I linked the “Late Night” association “Dan Rather” (a CBS newsman and friend of the show) to the “holiday card” association “buying gifts” by using the shared sub-association “credit card.” Here’s the greeting card that resulted.

Headline of 1989 "New York Times" item reads "'Late Night' Makes Santa of Dan Rather"

“New York Times” item, December 15, 1989

That holiday card generated some nice publicity for the show, including a mention in The New York Times.

Writing techniques like these are used to craft Monologue jokes, Desk Pieces, Joke Basket Sketches, and a lot of the other comedy on comedy/talk shows. Learn these techniques by reading my book Comedy Writing for Late-Night TV.