"Colbert" picked up through 2006

According to this report, Comedy Central has extended the run of The Colbert Report through 2006. In it's first two-plus weeks on the air, it's keeping 85 percent of The Daily Show's lead-in audience, averaging 1.2 million viewers a night.

This is definitely a good move for Comedy Central. Despite what some feel might become a tired premise, Colbert still contains enough laughs to show that it has potential once it works out some kinks. In last night's episode, for instance, Colbert took time from his interview with PBS filmmaker Ken Burns -- the only man able to make a documentary about baseball boring -- and showed him a short film that contained Colbert's ruminations on the interview he was conducting at that moment. It was shot in signature Burnsian style, using scratchy sepia-colored stills shot during the interview as well as a voiceover by Colbert, reading a letter expressing his desire to "nail" Burns with a probing question. It was a pitch-perfect hack at Burns' epic series The Civil War, and the look on Burns' face after the film ended was priceless. If there are more moments like this in the next year, Colbert will be around for a while.