How Many "You's" Are There?

Last Sunday's New York Times Magazine featured a Charles McGrath article headlined with the question: "How Many Stephen Colberts Are There?"

The Colbert on-screen persona is actually less rigid than it used to be, and Colbert can dial it up or down as he chooses. There is now more of a winking quality to the act, a sense that we’re all in on the joke. And in the last part of the show, when Colbert typically leaps up from his desk and bounds across the set to a table in front of a fireplace with the Latin motto “Videri quam esse” (“To seem to be, rather than to be”), where he interviews a guest about a new book or movie, he usually tamps the character down enough to allow the guest a few minutes to get his or her own message across.

There are many great lessons for anyone who creates content and then brings it to life in the piece.

For example: "Colbert and his staff, which numbers about 80, have the show down to something like a science. They call it the “joy machine,” with equal emphasis on the fun and the mechanics, and the engine runs practically nonstop, at very high r.p.m.’s. By 11 every morning, a rough plan for that day’s show is established and the writers — all of them brainy and most in their 30s — are sent off, usually in pairs, to come back with finished scripts in just a couple of hours. Editing and polishing goes on all day, and sometimes continues even after the taping is done, around 9 or so.

"The show’s writing process is extravagantly wasteful. Colbert likes to say, “Let’s make it perfect and then cut it.” Every day enough good jokes or ideas are jettisoned to fill another couple of half-hours. Some are deemed too weak by Colbert’s demanding standards, some are put on hold for want of time on a given night and are then forgotten, and some are merely left behind as the show is swept along with the relentless news cycle. “The trade-off with the show is that you can have an idea and see it on TV that night,” Tom Purcell, the executive producer, says. “The downside is that you have to do it all over again tomorrow. It’s a hungry beast.”

Questions to ask yourself as you prep for Monday:

1. Can listeners hear "the real you?"
2. Is there an exaggerated, bigger than life character of you and what's that character's purpose?
3. Do both of them interact and engage with the real world in entertaining ways, adding dimensionality, freshness, topicality and relevance?
4. Can listeners describe how "all aspects of you" feel about and view one another? (i.e. do they feel like an insider, always getting the point?)
5. Do you over prepare and is what ends up on the air your very best?

Old Habits Die Hard

PPM statistically-proved several years ago that a longtime staple of morning radio, song parodies, seem to entertain the personalities more than they do the listener.

Yet, as I travel, I still hear from morning jocks whose prep services continue to provide them, if there's ever a place where they fit and do not lose audience.

In general, I feel like they don't achieve anything affirmative for the real driver of usage and loyalty, authenticity, personal values and character-building.

However, two comedy masters used this one to deftly pay off on a six month stunt, that I have to say works for me.



However, television and even the internet isn't morning radio, and as priceless as this great story line is, I worry that it still would lose more listeners than it would keep if it had been a radio bit.

PPM duration of the totality of all listening occasions for the vast majority of listeners (a mode of two and a half minutes) means that more folks would have missed the setup or have had to leave before the ending than would have been there for the whole thing.

For anything that goes much longer than 2:30, it's likely that the only people you can be absolutely certain have heard the beginning, the middle and the ending are in the control room.

Making Product Placement Part Of The Show

... Sez here "the usual annual four-week ad blitz by Hormel in 2010 will look to leverage air talent’s personal stories with its products.

Announcers will take the products home and then tell their listeners about how they used products like Bacon Bits, Dinty Moore Beef Stew and Hormel Chili into their family’s menu.

“Look what you can do” is the theme of the CRN International-created campaign.

It's not radio, I know, but, for some reason, I just can't wait to see how Stephen Colbert fits in a plug for Spam!

Stephen Colbert Gives Us A Lesson In Powerful, Creative Teasing

Stephen Colbert has deployed to Iraq for a USO tour entitled "Operation Iraqi Stephen: Going Commando." He will perform his shows in front of the troops for the next week, according to Comedy Central.

While there, Colbert will host Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq Barham Saleh and General Ray Odierno, commander of the Multi-National Forces in Iraq, among others. The show is taking place at an undisclosed military base in conjunction with the USO, and promises to boast "shout outs from notable figures in society."

Anticipation (get excited in advance about what you're going to do), Realization (create word of mouth by standing for something relatable and important) and Memory (don't let them forget what you did) are in full force at Comedy Central. Watch and learn how it's done.

Toby Keith And Stephen Colbert "Duet" To Christmas

Click here to get a preview, suitable for stealing for some silly Holiday imaging drops (with credit of course), of the very funny TK's musical contribution to Colbert's Christmas Special.

I'd link to the hilarious Willie Nelson segment of the show, but you wouldn't be able to see it through all the smoke..