TheLateLateShow
Tim Meadows and Craig Ferguson Attempt to Talk Football (VIDEO)
In one of his more famous routines, George Carlin compared football to baseball. Thursday night on 'The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson' (weeknights, 12:35AM on CBS), Ferguson and Tim Meadows compared football and football, or rather, American football and what we call soccer here in the New World.Ferguson started the show by having Sid, his white rabbit puppet, talk about how he was looking forward to the new football season, especially his favorite team, the Detroit Lions. "This season," he said, "this is the season for us, the Detroit Lions," before laughing and disappearing from the camera view.
Craig Ferguson and Eddie Izzard Are Not Talking About a Bike Pump (VIDEO)
Craig Ferguson has a dirty mind, but the guests on 'The Late Late Show' (Weeknights, 12:37AM ET on CBS) aren't always so quick to catch on. When Ferguson asked Eddie Izzard if he was going to have an orchestra at an upcoming show, Izzard cracked a joke about it being a tiny little inflatable orchestra.Ferguson immediately started thinking of something else you can pump up, and started suggesting it toward Izzard. But a pump and self pleasure are two different things, and Izzard assumed Ferguson was referring to the latter.
"That is not how you masturbate, I tell you," Izzard said. "That is a bicycle pump."
Elizabeth Banks Is a Tri Delta, Met Her Husband on a Frat House Lawn (VIDEO)
When you see Elizabeth Banks, do you think of sororities? When Craig Ferguson found out she was in one on 'The Late Late Show' (Weeknights, 12:37AM ET on CBS), he defaulted to the 'SNL' skit with the sorority girls."Delta Delta Delta, can I help ya, help ya, help ya?" he asked, and he was actually right. In fact, her college experience was so great that she met her husband there, though she never did get to the story we really wanted to hear.
"I met him on the lawn of a frat house," is how the story began. But then she started talking about how he tried to play it all cool for the new girl but we're with Ferguson. This isn't the story we want.
'Modern Family,' 'Glee' Pick Up Peabody Awards
The Peabody Award winners were announced today and they included their usual mix of enlightening documentaries and popular favorites, both of which are equally worthy of recognition. This year's list didn't have many fictional shows, but the one's they picked more than made up for their absence. ABC's 'Modern Family' and Fox's 'Glee' both picked up awards, the only two sitcoms on the list. HBO's 'No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency' and 'In Treatment' were also the only dramas on the list.
Other notable winners include 'The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson' for his sit-down with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, HBO's documentary 'Thrilla in Manila,' PBS' 'Frontline' for their stirring report on Bernie Madoff and '60 Minutes'' expose on "The Cost of Dying."
Craig Ferguson's Late Night "Experiment" Should Be Done More Often

If you tuned into Tuesday night's 'Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson,' you might have found yourself questioning if there was something wrong with your hearing, your brand new surround sound speaker system, or both.
Nothing was wrong, though. The show didn't have a monologue. It didn't have any pre-planned comedy bits or hand puppets talking about Lindsey Lohan's latest coke binge. It didn't even have an audience.
The entire hour just featured two guys sitting in two chairs talking about anything and everything all at once. It was the most normal hour of late night television I've seen, despite the fact that both of them were taking an occasional sip of water from angry rattlesnakes.
Best TV of the '00s: Late Night Moments

More of our best of the decade coverage, which started on Tuesday. You can read the other posts at the link above. Here, we talk about the funniest or most surprising late night moments of the last ten years.
In the past decade, late night shows continued to bloom in popularity. However, some of our favorite late night shows were shuffled around while some got new hosts.
No matter what network executives decided to do to the line up of US late night shows, their hosts and guest stars gave us plenty fantastic, OMG!, and WTF? moments that generated tons of watercooler talks and forum discussion threads.
Below are some of the best late night moments of the past decade as chosen by some of the TV Squad bloggers. We realize there are tough choices in this category, so we hope you'll add your own favorites in the comments section below.
Craig Ferguson Discusses Suicide Attempt on 'Ellen' (VIDEO)
On 'The Ellen DeGeneres Show,' 'Late Late Show' host Craig Ferguson discussed his memoir, 'American on Purpose: The Improbable Adventures of An Unlikely Patriot,' which includes frank accounts of alcohol and drug use, as well as an attempt by the late-night host to commit suicide.According to Ferguson, he intended to end his life by jumping of a landmark bridge in London, but got sidetracked when someone offered him a glass of sherry.
Watch the video after the jump.
Craig Ferguson's 1,000th show features a special guest host
And wouldn't you know it? Craig wasn't able to celebrate his anniversary in person! He actually had a guest host sitting in for him Tuesday night. What a crock. I don't even get a day off on my birthday around this lousy place.
Craig Ferguson Tops Jimmy Fallon in Ratings (Bring On the Free Candy!)
It looks like Conan O'Brien vs. David Letterman isn't the only late night war brewing. For the first time since Craig Ferguson took over in 2005, 'The Late Late Show' has bested 'Late Night' in both total viewers (1.9 million to 1.3 million) and the advertiser coveted 18-49 demo (0.6/3 to 0.5/3), according to the Hollywood Reporter. The two have been neck-and-neck in the demo for the past seven weeks.
Ferguson's win takes on even more significance when you consider that it's coming almost nine months after Jimmy Fallon took over 'Late Night' from Conan O'Brien back on March 2, 2009. As the networks have been saying over and over again during the race between Letterman and O'Brien, late night isn't a sprint. It's a marathon. And after nine months, it looks like Ferguson is starting to pull ahead.
So, what sets Fallon and Ferguson apart? Let's break it down.
Craig Ferguson's show goes dark ... literally
Sound like a bigger tall tale than Pecos Bill taking Amelia Earhart to the homecoming prom? Here's the proof. His Late Late Show suffered a power outage towards the end of Tuesday night's episode and he still stepped in front of the camera with only a flashlight to serve as his comedy spotlight. This convinces me that if a bull suddenly got loose in the studio, Ferguson could use the moment to make the audience laugh until they are gasping for life while teaching the bull English just so he could beat an apology out of it. Chuck Norris never made me laugh, intentionally.
Craig Ferguson is "mystified" by NBC's Leno move - TCA Report
Just got back from a teeny tiny conference room off the main ballroom here at the Langham. CBS decided that they'd have an "informal press conference" with Craig Ferguson in this itty bitty space, even though a fair number of the critics wanted to hear the funny and thoughtful late night host speak. The SRO crowd wasn't disappointed.The most newsworthy bit that came out of the proceedings? The fact that the Late Late Show host is "mystified" at the fact that NBC is putting Leno at 10:00. Asked if a show like his could play at that hour, he said, "I don't think people are ready for cussing puppets at 10:00."
More funny quotes from Ferguson's press conference are after the jump.
Conan's Tonight Show ratings slip beneath Letterman's
The ratings for The Tonight Show With Conan O'Brien have been slipping since he took over, which is to be expected. Possibly less expected is that while he's been dipping, Late Show With David Letterman has seen a slow increase. So much so that last night, David Letterman beat Conan O'Brien in the ratings. That should certainly help Letterman's negotiations for that contract extension to 2012. The real question is how will this ratings battle settle down?Certainly there's no reason for the Tonight Show camp to panic yet. Letterman stomped Leno for awhile early in Leno's run, when Letterman first jumped to CBS. But Leno is a very different comedian and host than O'Brien. Perhaps too different? The concern isn't so much that O'Brien's numbers are dipping, because the curiosity factor was going to inflate his initial numbers anyway, it's that Letterman's are on the rise. That could be defectors from the Leno era making a move. But should O'Brien even want to bring them back, or should his battle be for new viewers that maybe weren't watching Letterman or Leno.
ABC eyeing Aisha...for a talk show, sicko
Comedy talk shows are a vastly underrated wasteland of quality programming, but they're shorter on female eye-candy than the floor of the Consumer Electronics Show. ABC is hoping to change that by giving comic babe and former Talk Soup slinger Aisha Tyler her own piece of programming.
The network is letting her develop a pilot for a "hybrid" style talk show that incorporates sketch, stand-up and other variety comedy into a fully "wired" show that will communicate with their audience over the Internet's series of complex tubes.
More sad news on Ed McMahon
We reported Ed McMahon's "very serious" medical condition a few weeks ago, and it tugged at the strings of our very weak and sodium clogged hearts. He's a TV legend, so much so that even people who didn't grow up watching The Tonight Show at least know of him and his work. It's been even harder to duplicate. Hank Kingsley was right. Sidekickology is a "dying art."
But a few little factoids popped up around the Internet surrounding McMahon's hospitalization, and it made the news even more tragic and depressing.
I miss Craig Kilborn
And before all of you Craig Ferguson fans yell and scream and throw tomatoes at your computer screen, let me add, I really like Ferguson! His opening monologue is 10 of the best minutes on TV every night.
Having said that, I still miss former Late, Late Show host Craig Kilborn. You know why? I didn't really realize until he was gone that he was doing something truly different on late night television. Sure, he was the irreverent wiseass, but the show also had a clear old school, retro, Rat Pack-ish vibe too. You sensed that in the guests he had (Merv Griffin was a favorite and he even went to parties at his home), the suits he wore, some of the segue music they played, and the references that he made. Even the set was like something out of a 50s or 60s movie.
And his regular bits! The news segment he did at the start of the show was consistently funny (better than SNL's Weekend Update has been in 10 years), and I really, really miss "Five Questions." And I miss Family Guy writer Alec Sulkin's appearances as the chain-smoking guy who came on and said that everything "sucked." And I miss Craig's faux-newspaper interviews backstage, "A Moment For Us," and his Dance, Dance, Dance!
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