2-23-10

+ 'hi everybody. wait a minute, where's the audience?' asks craig ferguson, 'there is none. the audience machine isnt working. i'm going to do something tonight thats a bit different, i'm going to do a show without and audience. i'll tell you why: i was watching the late night thing unfold, conan and jay, and now conan is gone and jay is back. there was a lot of attention on late night. and i'm no different than anybody else and was kind of interested in it. maybe a little more interested because i kind of work in that area. i dont think this is a late night talk show, i mean, it started as that, but i think its turned into something else. its kind of our nightly train wreck that we have here. i became fascinated with late night again when i watched this terrible thing unfolding. the way i see it is that late night television in the way that i understand it and appreciate it was created in the 50's, really. you had steve allen and jack parr, and then johnny carson made this monster, this huge thing that became the late night television brand. and then that brand was lovingly and cleverly deconstructed by david letterman. everyone else in late night, me included, is unimportant. what i started to become interested in was this show that i actually do at night, cause i thought 'well, this show has some history that goes back beyond me'. theres craig kilborn, my predecessor on this show, he had a very specific style, not mine, but it was his and he owned it. and then before that was a gentleman by the name of tom snyder, who was a very interesting broadcaster. a cranky man by all accounts, i never really spent any time with him, but cranky difficult and brilliant. he would do this show every night and he would just talk to people. so i thought i would like to try that tonight. and then i thought, well, there's nothing new to this, this experiment i'm doing here, isnt an experiment in television, larry king does it every night. charlie rose does it, joy bayhar does it. now, if you watch this show, you watch it because you found it. no one told you it was on. there are no bus ads for craigy. there's no billboards, theres no promotion. you found this show because you found it. and if you stayed with it for any length of time, its because you are interested. i am. i kind of deny this quite a lot, but i do feel a certain connection, a certain kinship with the audience because of that. and so i want you to indulge me tonight. i'm going to talk to one man. now, its not just any man, the man i'm going to talk to tonight is really protection for me, its stephen fry, he will be the guest on the show. hes a brilliant man, a very clever man. to be honest, i knew him in london in the 1980's and i was kind of intimidated by him. he's very clever and very successful. and i thought, if i cant do the show tonight, he will be able to handle it fine on his own. so, in the words of my predecessor, the late and much lamented, tom snyder: sit back, fire up the colortini's, and watch the pictures as they fly through the air!'