Stewart/Colbert '08

Much has been said about the impact The Daily Show and The Colbert Report have on political discourse and engagement in this country, especially among younger viewers. What I find fascinating however, is how willing these shows are to interview people that most network talk shows or even cable news programs wouldn't go near: authors of interesting (read: not self-help) books. I would venture to say that these two shows are responsible for exposing a decent segment of the public to ideas and works we might not necessarily be exposed to otherwise. Not only that, but they do it in an exceedingly engaging fashion.

What got me thinking about this was Jon Stewart's recent interview of Stanford Professor Phil Zimbardo regarding his new book. The interview was captivating because both Stewart and Prof Zimbardo were thoroughly engaged in their discussion; both brought something to the table. As I began to think more about it, it turns out that this is often the case on this show, and on The Colbert Report, though in that instance it is for a slightly different reason. By pretending to be the Alpha-O'Reilly, Colbert gets to ask questions no one else would dare, and often he gets pretty honest answers.

I had a similar viewing experience with Conan one recent evening. When he was talking to a couple celebrities, I was bored, and it looked like he was too. But then Neal Degrasse Tyson came on plugging his book "Death By Blackhole" and it seemed to light a spark in Conan. Since both men are generally very dynamic it turned into a really interesting interview. As a result, I'm a heck of a lot more likely to go buy his book than I am to go see the movie/tv show/whatever the other guy was plugging.

Contrast such situations with the by-the-numbers interviews you see on the morning talk shows or the cable news channels. When they aren't wasting time interviewing celebrities, the hosts are generally asking questions not meant to elicit meaningful dialogue, but rather to allow the interviewee to just say what they came to say. In the case of Katie Couric, it's even worse because all her questions are usually some form of "and isn't true that" or "don't you think that", followed by what the other person actually thinks. She is in essence answering the question as she asks it. But I digress.

Some people (mostly those who take themselves too seriously - yeah I'm looking at you O'Reilly and Geraldo) see no value in what Stewart and Colbert bring to the table every night. Well, hundreds of thousands would beg to argue, including me. Granted I wouldn't want someone's sole source of news to be either of those shows, but at least they are dealing with issues the mainstream media doesn't think we would be interested in. You could watch a month of the Today Show and not get one interview as interesting as when Stewart interviewed former UN Ambassador John Bolton a couple weeks back.

Stewart and Colbert "bring it" every night, in every meaningful way. If "real news" interviewers even appeared to be half as interested in their guests as these guys, it might make for much more compelling television. Of course, it would also help if they found interesting people to interview.