So David Letterman is gonna retire. As a fellow Ball State grad, I almost hate to say it, but sooo don't care. Never got into him and his snide, sneering snottiness. Of all the replacement contenders, most of whom I've just seen snippets of here and there, I'd put my vote in for Craig Ferguson. His show is almost entirely improvised, which gives it an immediacy the more scripted shows don't have. And he's just an appealing guy, whose show seems much "edgier" to me than Letterman's supposedly once was. Here's another vote for him :
Anyway, I hope CBS gives him a chance to do the show as it exists right now, and don't screw it all up by demanding it be just like every other damn show on late night, with scripted crap. The scripted jokes aren't funny anyway; at least if someone's making them up on the spot there's a sports-like interest in the jokes (in as much as one's curious to see if someone can pull something off).
With an increasingly fractured audience, there is a lot to be said for doing something that's a little bit different. No, not everyone's going to watch a foul-mouthed Scotsman make up jokes with his gay robot skeleton friend and waste network time by reading emails and tweets on the air.
But you're not going to get a large audience anyway, are you?