Late Show UK

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report episodes can now be downloaded on iTunes for people in the UK.

This is the first time it’s been possible to download episodes through iTunes UK.

Thanks to Olivia Coghlan at Comedy Central UK for the headsup.

Go to www.comedycentral.co.uk/downloads for details on how to download the shows, or if you already have iTunes installed click the links below to open iTunes:

iTunes UK – The Daily Show With Jon Stewart
iTunes UK – The Colbert Report

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart will resume on More 4 from the 23rd February at 8.30pm. There are no episodes this week due to reruns airing in the US. Global Edition will air on CNN International as normal this weekend (Saturday at 2.30pm/8.30pm and Sunday at 9.30am).

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report both return to Comedy Central with brand new episodes tonight – the first new shows since the Christmas break. Both shows will now be broadcast in high definition for the first time.

Comedy Central’s US channel first went HD in early 2008 but The Daily Show and The Colbert Report stayed in SD. It’s taken a while for the shows to make the transition to HD because all the control rooms had to be updated. Broadcasting Cable says the upgrades we carried out “while continuing to put on a program four times a week”.

Broadcasting Cable – “‘Daily Show’ and ‘Colbert Report’ Going HD In Jan. 2010″

CNN International has changed back to its original schedule of airing The Daily Show Global Edition at 2.30pm & 8.30pm on Saturdays and 9.30am on Sundays.

Former US President Bill Clinton was a guest on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart on Thursday (last Friday on More 4).

In the interview the former President talks about the Clinton Global Initiative, negotiations with Kim Jong-il, lunch with Barack Obama and also discusses Obama’s health care reform plans.

Click here to watch the full unedited interview

The 61st Primetime Emmy Awards took place in Los Angeles last night. The Daily Show With Jon Stewart won the award for “Best Variety, Music or Comedy Series” & the award for “Outstanding Writing for a Variety, Music or Comedy Series”. Justin Timberlake won the award for “Best Guest Actor, Comedy” for hosting Saturday Night Live. The award for “Best Guest Actress, Comedy” went to Tina Fey for her work on Saturday Night Live (particularly for her Sarah Palin impersonation).

Wikipedia – “61st Primetime Emmy Awards”
Official 2009 Primetime Emmy Awards website – Nominees & Winners
Examiner.com – “Complete List of Emmy Winners (and My Reactions)”
Digital Spy – “Emmy Awards 2009: The Winners”

CNN International weekend schedules have changed. The Daily Show Global Edition now only airs once – Saturday at 2.30pm. The Daily Show Global Edition also still airs on More 4 every Monday at 8.30pm.

The nominations for the 2009 Emmy Awards have been announced.

Read the rest of this entry »

The nominations for this year’s TV BAFTA awards have been announced.

Jonathan Ross is nominated in the Best Entertainment Performance category for Friday Night With Jonathan Ross, and The Daily Show With Jon Stewart is nominated in the International category.

Jonathan Ross being nominated for an award has been a controversial subject for some people, because of the BBC Radio 2 incident with Russell Brand last year, leading to Jonathan’s temporary suspension from the BBC.

The BAFTA TV awards ceremony takes place on Sunday 26th April.

BAFTA – “Television Awards Nominations”
Digital Spy – “Sachs shocked by Ross’s BAFTA nod”

Bruce Springsteen stopped by The Daily Show With Jon Stewart on Thursday night. Jon Stewart is a huge fan of Bruce, and you could tell he was overcome to meet him.

In addition to an interview on the programme, Bruce Springsteen also did a fantastic music performance of Working On A Dream.

It’s very rare for The Daily Show to have music on the programme – the last music performance was Coldplay back on the 25th June last year.

Click here to watch the interview and the music performance of Working On A Dream

David Letterman welcomed The Daily Show host Jon Stewart to the Late Show on Thursday night.

Jon Stewart criticized US financial TV networks saying “there are three 24-hour financial networks… all their slogans are like ‘we know what’s going on on Wall Street’ but then you turn it on during the crisis and they’re like ‘we don’t know what’s going on’”.

This continues on from CNBC’s Rick Santelli pulling out of his appearance on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart earlier this week.

This resulted in Jon doing a piece on The Daily Show panning CNBC saying how wrong it has been in reporting the economic crisis.

As the Entertainment Weekly website says, Santelli “is the CNBC reporter who became an online celebrity after an on-air rant where he castigated the Obama Administration’s housing plan for bailing out ‘losers’ who couldn’t manage their mortgages” but that “CNBC has explained [Santelli pulling out of his appearance on The Daily Show] by saying it’s ‘just time to move on to the next story’”.

Entertainment Weekly – “Jon Stewart takes another swipe at CNBC on ‘Letterman’”

Click here to watch Jon Stewart’s appearance on the Late Show With David Letterman and to watch the “CNBC Gives Financial Advice” piece on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart will air live on Inauguration Day this Tuesday. The show will go out at 11pm on Comedy Central, but it won’t be pre-recorded beforehand. The last live broadcast Comedy Central did featuring Jon Stewart was the Indecision 2008 programme on election night, which was co-hosted by Stephen Colbert from The Colbert Report.

The Daily Show won’t have live coverage of the Obama inauguration ceremony as that’s taking place during the day (you can keep up to date on that though on the Indecision 2008 blog), but it will have a live roundup of the day’s events at 11pm.

So if you live in the US, tune into Comedy Central on the 20th January at 11pm to watch live. If you’re in the UK, More 4 will air this episode on Wednesday at 8.30pm.

There will be live blogging on the Indecision 2008 blog throughout the show and also live blogging throughout the day of the inauguration ceremony.

Indecision 2008 blog – “The Daily Show LIVE on Inauguration Day”
Indecision 2008 blog – “Indecision’s Inauguration Day Coverage”

Vote for the “Indecision 2008″ blog from The Daily Show and The Colbert Report teams. The Comedy Central blog is nominated in the (rather oddly named) “Best Very Large Blog” category in The 2008 Weblog Awards. Click here to cast your vote. Polls close tomorrow (13th January) at 10pm GMT (UK) so head on over there now before it’s too late.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report are jointly at number 10 in The Guardian’s list of “The 10 Best US TV shows of 2008″.

The Guardian says “In a year dominated by election coverage… the best political commentary was still found on Comedy Central where Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert skewed everyone regardless of political affiliation”.

The Guardian – “The 10 Best US TV shows of 2008″

All US talk shows return with new programmes next week following the Christmas & New Year break. On Monday’s shows;

The Late Show With David Letterman will welcome British comedian Ricky Gervais, actress Kate Hudson and Scottish band Glasvegas. The Tonight Show With Jay Leno will have Terry Bradshaw, Jack Witherspoon and music from Iron & Wine.

Late Night With Conan O’Brien will have guests Benicio Del Toro, actress Sarah Chalke and Doyle & Debbie. The Daily Show With Jon Stewart will have David Gregory as a guest, and John King will be the guest on The Colbert Report.

Richard Lewis and Tracie Thoms will be on the Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson.

Other guests to look out for next week include Jimmy Fallon (Late Show), Kate Winslet (Late Show), Kiefer Sutherland (Late Show), Anne Hathaway (The Tonight Show), Dustin Hoffman (The Tonight Show), Daniel Craig (The Tonight Show), Kate Hudson (Late Night), Kate Hudson (The Daily Show), William Shatner (Late Late Show) and Amy Sedaris (Late Late Show).

Guest listings in full for next week and beyond are available here.

TIME has announced its Top 10 lists for 2008, including Top 10 TV Episodes and Top 10 Late Night Gags.

The Colbert Report episode from the 22nd January came in at number seven in the Top 10 TV Episodes list featuring civil rights activist Andrew Young and they discussed the strike by black hospital workers in 1969. This 22nd January episode came just as The Colbert Report returned after it had been off-air for the WGA writers strike.

In the Top 10 Late Night Gags list, the Late Show With David Letterman came in at number five for John McCain’s appearance cancellation near the end of his US election campaign. John McCain said he had to cancel to head straight to Washington to fix the problems with the US economy, when in truth he was still in New York for several hours doing other things such as the CBS News interview with Katie Couric. Letterman publicly tuned into the live CBS Newspath feed to see John McCain sitting with Katie preparing for the interview. Senator McCain was the butt of many jokes over the shows that followed, and after Barack Obama won the US election, Letterman said “you don’t show up for me – America doesn’t show up for you”. John McCain did eventually make it onto the programme though, and said he’d “screwed up”.

Late Night With Conan O’Brien was at number seven in the Top 10 Late Night Gags list for the “Zipline Challenge” he did when he returned to the air in January after being off-air for the WGA writers strike.

The “Who Made Mike Huckabee” ongoing debate came to a head on Late Night With Conan O’Brien in February after show crossovers between The Daily Show and Late Night (if you don’t know what we’re talking about, click here) – this is at number four in the Top 10 Late Night Gags list.

Stephen Colbert’s “Green-Screen Challenge” made it into the Top 10 Late Night Gags list at number three (click here to read more).

Jimmy Kimmel Live’s ongoing “I’m F***ing Matt Damon” gag got the top spot in the Top 10 Late Night Gags list (click here to read more).

TIME – “Top 10 TV Episodes” | TIME – “Top 10 Late Night Gags”

It was the final week of new episodes of The Daily Show With Jon Stewart last week until January 2009. More 4 is airing reruns this week – as are Comedy Central in the US.

From next week until he start of January, More 4 will be airing different programming at 8.30pm Monday-Friday so there will be no reruns of The Daily Show over the Christmas/New Year period.

It’s thought new shows will resume on Monday 5th January on Comedy Central (More 4 on Tuesday 6th January).