1 week ago
With precocious nighttime astatine a crossroads, Ben Gleib is forging a caller path.
Just a week aft nan imperishable shuttering of The Late Show — nan CBS franchise hosted for nan past 11 years by Stephen Colbert — Gleib is poised to launch Good Night pinch Ben Gleib, which marks nan world’s first late-night talk show built specifically for YouTube.
It’s a stake rooted successful nan belief that precocious nighttime arsenic a format is arsenic captious arsenic ever — moreover if nan infrastructure that gave emergence to it is crumbling.
Between exorbitant accumulation costs and nan continual erosion of linear tv audiences, accepted late-night talk shows person been nether mounting unit for years, progressively consumed via short-form clips scattered crossed societal media alternatively than unrecorded and successful full. In nan past year, increasing governmental and firm pressures surrounding both The Late Show and Jimmy Kimmel Live! have only intensified questions astir nan semipermanent sustainability of nan format connected broadcast television.
For Gleib, nan solution to precocious night’s problems is not reinventing nan wheel, per se — though his show does characteristic a number of caller elements, including a virtual assemblage conception for tapings and a post-show after-party experience. Rather, it’s embracing nan reality of really contented is consumed coming — adopting YouTube arsenic a caller location base, alternatively than a specified promotional arm.
With Black Eyed Peas drummer Keith Harris serving arsenic set leader and Stewart Bailey (The Daily Show, Last Call pinch Carson Daly) arsenic showrunner, Gleib’s show astir importantly boasts a dramatically leaner footprint than a accepted web talk show.
The crazy part? He’s taping shows from his location successful Los Angeles, producing a first play of 42 episodes, positive 42 post-show episodes, for astir $1.5 million.
For Gleib, a self-described nighttime owl who became obsessed pinch precocious nighttime arsenic a child, Good Night pinch Ben Gleib represents nan culmination of a lifelong ambition — and thing he’s been actively building toward since college. While attending UC San Diego successful nan precocious ’90s, he created and hosted The Gleib Show, a talk show serving arsenic his honors thesis, which later ran connected nan National Lampoon College Network.
Gleib’s activity location led to a Fox aviator produced by Lorne Michaels’ Broadway Video — an early brushwood pinch accepted TV that yet did not move guardant to series.
In nan years since, Gleib has built an unusually eclectic profession spanning stand-up, tv hosting, podcasting, entrepreneurship, and moreover a statesmanlike tally — experiences arsenic a “jack of each trades” that he now sees converging successful a azygous project. With Good Night, he says he is channeling “the mixed resources and goodwill and efforts and momentum” of his full life and profession into what he views arsenic “the improvement of precocious night.”
Gleib envisions Good Night scaling to go a “multi-hundred cardinal dollar brand,” betwixt advertisement revenue, tickets sold to beryllium portion of nan show’s virtual audience, spin-offs, unrecorded touring extensions, merch, and overmuch more.
In today’s section of Comedy Means Business, Gleib discusses nan “confluence of forces” reshaping nan late-night landscape, nan years-long roadworthy to bringing Good Night pinch Ben Gleib to life, and nan business scheme down nan gamble.
Watch nan full speech above.
