Last month, Stephen Colbert ended the nine-year run of his award-winning cable news-parody show, The Colbert Report. Colbert, a former correspondent on Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show, got his big break when Comedy Central gave him his own show in 2005. The Colbert Report was given the 11:30 pm slot, immediately following Stewart’s highly successful show. This ensured that The Colbert Report would have a sizable lead-in audience.
At the time, many observers were skeptical about whether The Colbert Report would last. Some critics expected that it would go the way of most comedy spinoffs, which are both short-lived and forgettable. Many predicted that Colbert’s audacious move—to play a parody of a pompous cable TV news pundit—would be unsustainable. But instead of Colbert’s act flagging, it became more and more popular with each passing show. The humble Daily Show spinoff soon took on a life of its own.
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