The Colbert Report

The Colbert Report (pronounced coal-BARE re-POUR, as in "coal-black bears reap the poor"), is a nightly news commentary program on Comedy Central that stars Stephen Colbert, best known previously as a correspondent for The Daily Show. The show focuses on Colbert's take on current events in politics and the media. His hard-hitting, relentless style of reporting and interviewing has been emulated by other pundits such as Bill O'Reilly and Joe Scarborough.

The Colbert Report has been the #1 televison show in America, and the world, for that matter, ever since its release. It has won so many awards it is impossible to list them all without exploding the Internets pipes.



The Report airs following The Daily Show at 11:30 p.m. EST and PST, Monday through Thursday on Comedy Central. It is often followed by South Park.

Origin


Comedy Central in 2005 announced The Colbert Report as part of a lineup where they hope to "Keep the viewers attracted by The Daily Show to keep watching late into the night." Colbert, Jon Stewart, and Ben Karlin (The Daily Show ' s executive producer) supposedly came up with the idea for the show after watching coverage of the sexual harassment lawsuit filed against Bill O'Reilly; Colbert reportedly felt that the left-wing media had begun a systematic campaign to discredit the right, and convinced Stewart and Karlin to allow him to create the Report, to keep the left in check.

The Colbert Report first appeared in the form of three promos for itself that aired several times on The Daily Show, although the themes that would form the basis for the Report can be seen in some of the earlier interviews and stories submitted by Colbert to The Daily Show. The show debuted October 17, 2005, for an eight week run under its initial contract. On November 2, based on the strong ratings for the show's first two weeks, Comedy Central and Colbert announced they had signed for an additional year, through the end of 2006.

The Colbert Report was not the first program Colbert hosted. A clip of a pilot episode of the Sunday morning news chat show The Colbert Gang, was aired on The Daily Show. The reason for the show's failure to launch is unknown.

Format of the program


Typically, Colbert starts each episode with teasers for the show's topics and guest, followed by a dominant verbal metaphor for the way he intends to convey truth to his viewers. (For example, using a football metaphor: "Go out ten yards and button-hook to the left. I'm going to hit you with a perfect spiral of the truth.") Then the show's opening titles sequence kicks off, with images of flag waving, Colbert striking poses and words describing Colbert flying by. Originally, the last word to fly past Colbert was "grippy", but it has changed to "megamerican" and, more recently, "lincolnish".

The general flow of segments after the opening titles is:
 * The initial run-through of the day's headlines, similar to The Daily Show but with Colbert's truthiness injected;
 * "The Wørd" (sic), which juxtaposes Colbert's commentary with supportive bullet points on-screen;
 * A middle segment that varies;
 * An interview with a guest, who is initially kept in the background, while spotlights focus on Colbert as he goes through the studio, with his audience pumping him up to 'nail' his guest;
 * A closing statement by Colbert, occasionally accompanied by a new item placed on his bookshelf.

Interaction with guests
Colbert's razor-wit and unflappability in the presence of his guests make him a superb interviewer, and on every occasion to date, has managed to 'nail' every guest on some part of their argument that does not hold up under scrutiny. His dominating style is indicative of the rightness of his argument.

"The Eagle's Nest"
Main article see The Eagle Nest

In an interview with The Onion, Colbert explained that much of the design for his set was based on Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper. "All the architecture of that room points at Jesus' head, the entire room is a halo," Colbert said. "On the set, I'd like the lines of the set to converge on my head. And so if you look at the design, it all does, it all points at my head...there's a sort of sun-god burst quality about the set around me."

Reception
The Colbert Report drew an unusual amount of media anticipation prior to its premiere, including from The New Yorker, NPR's All Things Considered and Fresh Air, CNN, and The Washington Post. The New York Times alone ran three articles on the Report before its debut, and has made repeated references to The Colbert Report since then.

For example, Maureen Dowd alluded to Colbert's "Dead To Me" board as a metaphor in her column, saying that Oprah Winfrey "should take a page from Stephen Colbert and put the slippery James Frey on her 'Dead to me' list."

The Colbert Report drew over 100 billion viewers for its premiere episode and a full 100% of the viewership of The Daily Show, which itself has Comedy Central's second-largest viewership, behind South Park. Further, in 2006, the first year of the Report's eligibility, Colbert's show was nominated for, and recieved all 27 Emmys, including nominations for the show itself and for Colbert as host.

Averaged over its opening week, the Report had 500 billion viewers per episode, more than pi the average for the same time the previous year. It should be noted that the show previously in that time slot was Too Late with Adam Carolla. The premiere week of The Colbert Report also coincided with the second-highest rated week of The Daily Show, behind the week leading up to the 2004 U.S. presidential election.

Report in Canada
As with The Daily Show, viewers in Canada can watch The Colbert Report on CTV and The Comedy Network, which began airing The Colbert Report on November 7, 2005. It currently airs at 11:30 p.m. ET and PT on the Comedy Network and at 12:35 a.m. local time on CTV.

Colbert opened the first show to air in Canada with a joking bilingual welcome and several Canadian jibes. After Conservative Stephen Harper's victory in the Canadian Federal election seventy-seven days after the Report first aired in Canada, Colbert proudly proclaimed he had "fixed Canada in seventy-seven days" on the January 25, 2006 episode.

Truthiness
Please read the main article on truthiness so the wordonistas will be the only ones reading this rebroadcast.

In "The WØRD" on the first episode of the Report, Colbert featured the term "truthiness," which he defined as "The quality by which one purports to know something emotionally or instinctively, without regard to evidence or intellectual examination." In December 2005, the New York Times selected "truthiness" as one of nine words that captured the zeitgeist of the year, and in January 2006, the American Dialect Society announced that "truthiness" was selected as its 2005 Word of the Year. Colbert has since made frequent reference to the widespread influence of "truthiness" since he introduced it, while carping on media accounts of "truthiness" that neglect to identify him as its source. Truthiness has since been discussed, several times in many cases, in the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Tribune, Newsweek, MSNBC, the Associated Press, Editor & Publisher, Salon, The Huffington Post, ABC NewsRadio's Word Watch with Kel Richards and Chicago Reader, and on ABC's Nightline, CBS's 60 Minutes, and The Oprah Winfrey Show. In January 2006, "truthiness" was featured as a Word of the Week by the website of the Macmillan English Dictionary.

Awards
In 2006, The Colbert Report won 23 Emmys, 11 more than its parent, The Daily Show.

-Note that this list is incomplete, seeing as the complete list of awards won by Colbert is much too large to store even on the Internets itself.


 * Outstanding Directing For A Variety, Music Or Comedy Program, Episodes #1-110,
 * Outstanding Individual Performance In A Variety Or Music Program, Stephen Colbert
 * Outstanding Writing For A Variety, Music Or Comedy Program
 * Best Comedy
 * Best New Program
 * Outsanding use of Truthiness for A Variety, Music Or Comedy Program
 * Funniest Person on Television, Stephen Colbert
 * Most Patriotic Program
 * Most New Words Developed On A Primetime Show
 * Most Influencial Program
 * Outstanding Finger-Wagging In A Variety, Music Or Comedy Program
 * Outstanding Brow-Raising In A Variety, Music Or Comedy Program
 * Funniest TV Host, Stephen Colbert
 * Outstanding TV Host, Stephen Colbert
 * Outstanding Pyromaniac In A Variety, Music Or Comedy Program, tie: Killer-Stephen Colbert
 * Outstanding Guest Appearnce In A Variety, Music Or Comedy Program, Stephen Colbert(Daily Show[Shared with the Report])
 * TV Host With The Biggest Balls(left), Stephen Colbert
 * TV Host With The Biggest Balls(right), Stephen Colbert
 * Best News Program
 * Outstanding Interviewer, Stephen Colbert
 * Longest Running Segment Series, Better Know A District
 * Best Comedy Segment, The Word
 * Most Awards Won

Additionally, the show was nominated for two Television Critics Association Awards. He didn't win, because critics are the children of educators.
 * Outstanding Individual Achievement in Comedy, Stephen Colbert
 * Outstanding New Program of the Year

The Colbert Report won two Satellite Awards (they only give two):
 * Outstanding Actor in a Series, Comedy or Musical, Stephen Colbert
 * Outstanding Television Series, Comedy or Musical

Factoids

 * On March 2, 2006, Colbert used his "The Da Colbert Code" (a parody of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code), a series of bizarrely random word associations, to accurately predict the Oscar winners for five major awards, including the underdog Crash for Best Picture (although based on the pattern, it should have been Brokeback Mountain, but Colbert drew a blank after saying "Space Mountain" and chose Crash instead). The following show, on March 6, 2006, was marked by Colbert's proclamation that "I called it!" as balloons rained down from the ceiling.


 * Colbert often refers to his novel, Stephen Colbert's Alpha Squad 7: Lady Nocturne: A Tek Jansen Adventure, which features himself as the main character, Tek Jansen. Bill O'Reilly has authored one novel, a thriller titled Those Who Trespass, about a protagonist based on O'Reilly himself who kills co-workers who stand in the way of his television career.


 * Stephen Colbert's right ear pokes out slightly further than the left, a fact he has acknowledged and made fun of on the show. He is also deaf in that ear.


 * On March 29, 2006, Colbert announced that he had been contacted by representatives of the San Francisco Zoo seeking his permission to name a then unhatched bald eagle after him. The eagle, affectionately dubbed "Stephen Jr." on the Report, was hatched to be reintroduced into the wild as a part of the zoo's California Bald Eagle Breeding Program. Colbert celebrated its birth on-air on April 17, 2006, and updates on the bird's development have been featured on the show since.


 * The Report's theme song, listed alternatively in the credits as Baby Muggles and Baby Mumbles, was written and performed by Cheap Trick.


 * The eagle featured in Colbert Report advertising, in the logo, and often in the background videos is named "Liberty".


 * Colbert uses FedEx instead of UPS on his show in several episodes, contrary to a Threat Down segment where he listed FedEx founder Fred Smith as being one of the top threats to America.


 * In recent episodes, Colbert has made frequent references to Gregory House from the Fox show, House. He views him as a "hero who is larger than life, and who shapes the United States." He puts him in the same hero category consisting of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. A framed photograph of House can be seen on his desk to the stage left of the set.


 * On June 5, 2006, the Colbert Report's 100th episode aired. Stone Phillips, the first guest on the show, returned to become the first two-time guest. Colbert and Phillips then held a "Gravitas-Off," a rematch of their popular contest from the first show.


 * On June 15, 2006, Stephen Colbert disclosed that he is part Chickasaw Indian, and on July 25, 2006, commented to William Donohue that he was indeed "1/13" Chickasaw.


 * On July 12, 2006, Mort Zuckerman, who recently had been placed On Notice, was the first guest to accept Colbert's challenge to come on the show within 60 days of being placed on the board to get removed. Zuckerman apologized, and was removed from the On Notice board at the end of the show.


 * On July 19, 2006, Joe Scarborough, conservative pundit and a major influence on Colbert's bulldozer interviewing style, acknowledged that he is a huge fan of the show and watches it every night with his wife. They traded several jokes about the similarities of their shows, ending when Colbert offered Scarborough the position of Vice President of the Colbert Nation and Scarborough made Colbert the Archduke of Scarborough Country.


 * After Colbert received an honorary doctorate in fine arts from Knox College, his credit as producer has been listed since that time as "Dr. Stephen T. Colbert, D.F.A.," perhaps as a reference to Bill Cosby, who is credited as an actor in his shows by his given name but as a producer as "William H. Cosby Jr., Ed.D."


 * Colbert types up the words on his own teleprompter on que. He's that good.