Talk Shows

Both The David Susskind Show and The Sid Caesar Show featured large, unwieldy guest rosters and entertaining, timely jokes. A vintage episode of Susskind's show and a reunion of Caesar's writers are now available on DVD. TV critic David Bianculli says both offerings are laugh-out-loud funny.

On Friday, Regis Philbin will step down from his hosting duties on the talk show Live with Regis and Kelly. But that doesn't mean he's retiring. In his new memoir, How I Got This Way, Philbin chronicles the twists and turns of his career and explains where he plans to go next.

The political satirist and comedian talks about his Broadway performance (and performance anxieties) and about his recent segments on The Colbert Report featuring Sarah Palin and Anthony Weiner.

Fresh Air's TV critic rounds up the hottest and the hottest of the year that was. Worth watching? A BBC America import about a choir director teaching people to sing. Jersey Shore? Makes Bianculli want to shower.

After a lengthy hiatus, Conan O'Brien made his return to TV last night as the host of Conan, his new talk show on TBS. David Bianculli says that a guy who had months to prepare should have had a better and funnier opening night.

In an interview with Terry Gross, taped in front of a live audience in New York City, the Daily Show host deconstructs his upcoming "Rally to Restore Sanity" on the National Mall and explains how The Daily Show comes up with material.

Fresh Air's guest host and TV critic recaps the best of last night's salvos from the talk-show wars — which are getting fiercer with every passing hour.

Late-night television is at war ... with itself. The Tonight Show's Conan O'Brien has drawn a line at 11:35 p.m. and says that he won't cross it — not for Jay Leno and not for NBC.

The economy may have hit the broadcast business hard, but TV critic David Bianculli says the future is looking bright — for cable, anyway. He joins Terry Gross to talk about the best and the worst television of '09 and what we can look forward to in '10.

For all the claims to the contrary, The Jay Leno Show is as close to a clone of The Tonight Show as it can get without being sued.

After 16 years as the host of the Late Night show, Conan O'Brien moves his act an hour earlier. TV critic David Bianculli reviews O'Brien's premiere as host of The Tonight Show.

TV critic David Bianculli shares his thoughts on the final episode of Boston Legal — and the announcement this week that Jay Leno will begin a new nightly prime-time talk show on NBC next year.

Self-proclaimed "broadcasting legend" Stephen Colbert talks about his upcoming Christmas special on Comedy Central. According to Colbert, it will include goats dressed as reindeer and his own original Christmas songs.

The writers' strike knocked late-night television shows like the Late Show and The Tonight Show into reruns. Now these pillars of the talk-show genre are back on the air with fresh material.

Stephen Colbert, host of Comedy Central's The Colbert Report talks about his book I Am America (And So Can You!) and his successful television show.

The former correspondent and contributor to The Daily Show created his own Emmy-nominated late-night show to parody Bill O'Reilly's The O'Reilly Factor.

In I Am America, Colbert targets race, religion, sports and the American family as well as more mundane topics like breakfast cereal.

Garry Shandling parodied TV talk shows on The Larry Sanders Show, which ran on HBO from 1992 to 1998 and is now out in a four-DVD box set. It's called Not Just the Best of "The Larry Sanders Show" — in part because it features eight hours of extras, including essentially unedited conversations with stars who made guest appearances on the Larry Sanders sofa.

TV critic David Bianculli reviews a new DVD box set of The Dick Cavett Show: Rock Icons. It's a compilation of interviews and performances on the late-night talk show by some of the leading musicians of the 1960s and '70s, including Mick Jagger, Janis Joplin and Stevie Wonder.

Journalist Hugh Miles is the author of Al-Jazeera. Al-Jazeera, the premier news channel in the Arabic-speaking world, plans to launch an English channel sometime in the next few months.

TV critic David Bianculli pays tribute to the original late night talk show host, Jack Paar, who died earlier this week.