“Do you love television but hate the visuals?” asks talk host Stephen Colbert in the trailer for his new show. His solution is taking the late night television show to podcasting. CBS says “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” is launching The Late Show Pod Show that will be an audio version of the TV show featuring Colbert’s nightly monologue, guest conversations, and music performances. “You’ll get everything you love about the ‘Late Show’ in convenient pod form,” said Colbert in the show’s trailer.
“The podcast space is growing exponentially, and it proves that audiences are consuming their content in a variety of ways across platforms that serve their needs,” said Chris Licht, showrunner and executive producer. “As we continue to grow Stephen’s overall brand, we’re excited to officially launch this audio experience for ‘Late Show’ fans.”
The Late Show Pod Show debuts Monday, Oct. 25 with new episodes published each morning. The podcast will be hosted on Megaphone, a Spotify company, and will be available to advertisers via the Spotify Audience Network.
Colbert’s rivals are also dabbling in podcasting. ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” offers a podcast of the show’s nightly monologue via an RSS feed and through Amazon Echo and Google Home speakers. It does not however appear on any of the podcast listening apps most used by listeners.
At NBC’s “Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon” there is no podcast – yet. The show has had a placeholder site on TuneIn since earlier this year, but no podcast has turned up. NBC does post what it calls a podcast on YouTube, offering video clips of the show. (Fallon did however on a May episode talk about his love of podcasts and use of fictional podcast app Castaway HERE).
TV talk host Conan O’Brien has been the most successful in the medium. He has leveraged his Stitcher series Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend into the podcast studio Team Coco which is behind several other shows.