Maybe it didn’t occur to CBS that the answer to the financial challenges facing The Late Show with Stephen Colbert was to dump that old theater on Broadway and set up shop in Colbert’s basement, with a two-man band, 20 live-audience members, a desk that used to be the home bar-top, and a wall of 980 more “audience” members projected by Zoom on the back wall.
But it did occur to Ben Gleib, a veteran stand-up comic with a long-standing dream to host a late-night show himself. And now he is, starting tonight.
It’s not on CBS, of course. Gleib’s show, Good Night with Ben Gleib, is built on ancient late-night scaffolding but presented on the most contemporary of video transmitters,YouTube.
Gleib’s intention, as he put it when we spoke earlier this week, is to “honor the tradition of the format that people have grown to love.” Meaning: “They will see a monologue, a house band, a desk bit, guests, and a comics’ roundtable. There will be pre-taped segments. Our premiere is going to have a hidden camera segment, and a man-in-the-street segment.”
That’s familiar territory, but on this show it will all be taking place in a room in Gleib’s real house in the San Fernando Valley, one that used to be a home theater. And that may be the least of the alterations to the traditional framework.
The show will ask its audience members to pay an admission fee. It will be available on a global basis thanks to YouTube’s reach. And it will tape Wednesdays for posting on Thursday nights at 10 p.m. ET.
Gleib says Good Night will augment the usual talk show celebrity interviews with chats with what he calls “thought-leaders and change-makers.”
The show itself will also be followed by a more open-ended companion show called Nightcap, where all the “weird stuff,” as Gleib put it, begins. “The cameras will follow me into the rest of the house.” The folks in the 20 seats in the studio will get in on this action.
“In the kitchen, we’ll have a snack, a cocktail, might smoke a joint by the fire pit. Might get in a little inflatable in the pool. Go behind the pool into the ashram, smoke a hookah or tell stories.”
Sounds like a little reality-show flavor may be sneaking in.
Gleib’s stated goal is to reinvent late night for the post-linear age, both because he’s convinced that’s the only way to make these shows work economically, and because he wants to “not be beholden at all” to the corporate forces that have historically owned these shows.
Gleib says he is creating “the first truly uncensored late-night show. Uncancellable. With the first independent owner. So, free from corporate constraints or expectations.” Cocktails, joints, and hookahs might have kicked up a few corporate concerns.
Gleib says he’ll be free from all that, free even from input from YouTube. “We’re just uploading a show to YouTube like anybody else and hoping that we catch fire.”
The money—Gleib says he has raised $1.5 million—is coming from a wide range of investors, all of whom will have a piece of the show.
“I am hyper-aware of the economic challenges of late night, that’s why I’m hyper-vigilant on the budget.” Every $20 expense is scrutinized, he says.
The show’s total staff is under 30 people, a dramatic contrast to a network show like Colbert’s, which had about seven times as many. There is no traditional writers room to churn out monologue jokes. Gleib says he will write the show himself, with the help of a few other staffers.
“A lot of the show will be improvised,” Gleib says. “I think I’m a pretty darn good improviser. We don’t have to have every corner of the show being written.”
The bandleader is a known name, Keith Harris, the drummer for the Black Eyed Peas. And the showrunner, Stewart Bailey, has credentials from The Daily Show and Carson Daly’s old talk show, Last Call.
Gleib is planning on a 42-episode first season, which is a lot for a once-a-week franchise. If it works out, he says he’d like to expand to two nights in a second season.
All of that assumes the costs remain manageable. It would certainly be much cheaper, Gleib acknowledges, to do a more conventional YouTube talk-show format, one that is essentially an on-camera podcast.
“It’s on YouTube but it doesn’t have to look like a podcast,” he says. “It can look like television. It can have energy, live music. But it also doesn’t have to be unsustainably expensive, where it costs $100 million a year, and there’s just no way to make money. We’ll have a hill to climb, but in success we’re at a budget point where I think we can be profitable.”
How? CBS canceled its entire late-night franchise because nothing made economic sense—or so they said.
Gleib says his approach has no fewer than eight revenue streams in addition to traditional YouTube ads.
On the list: desk reads for products, product integration, subscription memberships, even merch. But the ticket arrangement is clearly new in a business that always brought in audiences for free—and in some cases paid them.
Ticket hopefuls can pay various fees, from $10 to $40, for the privilege of sitting in the tiny live audience, or to be part of the big audience wall of Zoomers. The VIPs will get to participate in those after-show house tours and smoke experiences, while virtual audience members will get to see the Nightcap show—after a ten-minute teaser available to everyone.
Of course, none of this will matter if people don’t find the show appealing. Gleib plans to steer clear of what he calls “polarizing” comedy, the kind that has invited blowback from the hyper-sensitive-to-comedy White House.
“I think late night has not been welcoming to people of all political stripes,” he says, echoing one steady criticism of the current editions of the genre. “It’s also counter-productive because you’re just preaching to the choir.”
Does that mean no politics, just good times on Good Night? Gleib is not saying that.
“I will speak out when necessary,” he says. “I don’t think the government has any place in censoring free speech, in censoring creative expression. If you’re trying to make America great, going against our founding principles is certainly not the way to do it.”
So, is it fair to suggest: as one late-night door closes, another one opens?
“We shall see,” Gleib says. “The market will decide.”
Gleib’s late-night experiment kicks off tonight—Thursday, May 28—at 10 p.m. ET/7 p.m. PT on the Good Night with Ben Gleib YouTube channel, with opening-night guests filmmaker Kevin Smith, author/podcaster Max Lugavere, and comics Zainab Johnson and Brent Pella.
