'Cause The Man Would Never Give Me An Hour

I've been asking it on a nightly basis for months now, so I'll ask it here: what the hell is Late O'Clock News? Actually, I can answer that: It's a 5-minute satirical interview program on the Comedy network every night at about ten-past-eleven (that is, the first commercial break in The Daily Show.  Well, maybe not "program;" perhaps, "segment"? I guess it doesn't count as a TV program, since it's not in the Internet Movie Database.  The closest thing that site's search function could come up with is the British classic Not The Nine O'Clock News, and the juxtaposition of those two has now made me even more angry.

It's easy to see what's going on here.  The Colbert Report - which normally follows The Daily Show at 11:30 - is ending this week, so the Comedy Network had to find something to replace it, and they chose Jimmy Kimmel Live.  But that show starts at 11:35, so they'd have to find something to fill an extra five minutes.  Someone said, let's produce an extra, five-minute show that emulates the weakest part of The Daily Show - deadpan interviewers trying to make their subjects look silly without using the show's political humour.

Of course, they could have placed it at the end of The Daily Show, but then people would probably change channels to some other show that starts at 11:30, rather than sit through five-minutes of awkward interview before Kimmel starts.  So now we're stuck with an extra-long commercial break.  A half-time show in the middle of a half-hour show.  I guess their idea was to make something that would appeal to The Daily Show's viewers, but like I said, it only resembles the show's slowest moments.  They would have been better off emulating the show's political satire.  Say, have a guy do Rick Mercer-style rants.  They could be about Canadian politics, and then it would count towards their Can-Con.  I don't know if Late O'Clock host Paul Lemieux would be up to that, but given that he used to work for MTV, I'll assume not.  Or they could just hire Rick Mercer himself, since I'm sure Bell/CTV can afford to spend more on five-minutes than the CBC can on a half-hour.