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Craig Kilborn prepares to move from The Daily Show's anchor desk to CBS' new late-night show. Will Conan notice?

by Jesse Fox Mayshark

Craig Kilborn is sitting at a sticky green picnic table in Knoxville's World's Fair Park, running thin fingers through his famously perfect hair and talking about his new late night show on CBS.

"CBS actually did research, and based on my personality I can carry a show for 12 minutes," he says, his delivery so deadpan you might not notice he's being funny. "And that includes two commercial breaks. So we're in trouble, we're scrambling."

Then he pauses. "Um, these are my little jokes. I hope you enjoy them."

The moment neatly encapsulates Kilborn's comic approach. He's part of the post-Dave Letterman generation, comedians for whom it's not enough to merely deliver a gag line. Constantly aware of the artificiality of their relationship to the audience, they find ways to puncture it, satirize it, comment on it. You could call it post-modern, but that would be taking it too seriously. What it is, for this era at least, is hip.

That's what CBS is banking on in hiring the young, lanky, and very blond Kilborn to take over the hour—12:30 to 1:30 a.m.—that follows Letterman's show on weeknights. Letterman himself approved the choice; his production company, Worldwide Pants, controls the time slot. For the past two years, it's been filled by veteran talk host Tom Snyder. But Snyder's ratings haven't been great, and his chatty, sometimes windy style hasn't held onto younger viewers. They've instead tuned into NBC's Conan O'Brien, who has weathered a rough beginning to build a strong following in Letterman's old 12:30 a.m. spot.

"We're not competing with Conan O'Brien at this point," Kilborn insists. "He's got a five-year head start. His ratings are gonna kick my butt. What CBS wanted was this desirable young demo, this male young demo, they just want me to improve on that."

Kilborn was in town last weekend as part of a promotional tour for the new show, called simply The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn, which debuts on Tuesday, March 30. CBS sent him around the country to cities hosting the NCAA basketball tournament. ("I just wanted to see some games," Kilborn says.)

It was a natural fit. At 6 feet, 4 inches, Kilborn was a basketball star in high school and played college ball for Montana State University (although not, by his own admission, particularly well). His first visit to Knoxville was on an MSU trip to the Vol Classic tournament, which he mostly remembers because current Utah Jazz great Karl Malone was also here that year, playing for Louisiana Tech. Not surprisingly, Kilborn's first big break in broadcasting was sports-related; he was an anchor for ESPN's popular, irreverent SportsCenter. He used the gig to hone his on-air personality, two parts puckish smart-ass and one part goofball. Some of his ESPN catchphrases—"Once, twice, three times a goalie," "Good wood, solid spank, major league crank"—are still in use among aficionados.

In 1996, cable channel Comedy Central chose Kilborn as head anchor for The Daily Show, a nightly satirical news broadcast. The combination of Kilborn's blow-dried looks and sharp-edged wit perfectly suited the format. He developed trademark bits, most notably the infamous "Five Questions," a jokey trivia quiz that concluded each of his celebrity interviews. (Kilborn to comedian Elayne Boosler: "Which household product has 'scrubbing bubbles?'" Boosler: "That would be Massengill, I believe.")

The Daily Show quickly became one of Comedy Central's top-rated programs, although both it and Kilborn occasionally got into scrapes. The head writer quit after Kilborn made joking sexual comments about her in an Esquire interview (specifically, he said, "If I wanted her to blow me, she would"). Last year, Comedy Central blocked one show's next-day rerun after a Monica Lewinsky send-up of the "Got Milk?" campaign. But none of that hurt Kilborn with his core fan base, males in their teens and 20s. One even went so far as to create an online "Craig Kilborn Worship Center," of which Kilborn says, "It was strange when I first saw it...But it's flattering. I know when I was growing up guys like David Letterman and Bill Murray meant a lot to me. So if there's some kids there that I can make them laugh, that's a nice feeling. Or make them cry, I don't care. Either one."

When CBS came calling with a chance to do his own show for an hour a night, Kilborn jumped. The new Late Late Show won't depart radically from the established late-night talk format, although Kilborn won't have a sidekick or a band to play off. The set is supposed to be his "house in the Hollywood Hills," a den with a small desk, comfortable chairs, and—he says with some satisfaction—a stocked liquor cabinet. He's taking "Five Questions" with him and he'll also do Daily Show-style news briefs. The celebrity interviews will be longer and somewhat more serious, but Kilborn still sees the show as mostly a comedy vehicle, a major shift from Snyder's program. He's aware of some criticism directed his way—that his appeal is demographically limited, that his sarcastic, sometimes caustic style is going out of vogue, that we don't really need another sardonic white guy cluttering the after-hours dial.

"I don't always like to educate the press, but sometimes I will," he says dryly. "I've been described as frat-boy humor, which is something I do sometimes. And 100 years from now, frat-boy humor will still be funny. Sarcasm is something I do. It'll always be funny, 500 years from now. We need it. But my favorite kind of humor is the hardest to describe; I just call it irreverent or offbeat. I don't know if you saw The Daily Show, but I used to dance once in a while. That is not sarcastic and that is not frat-boy. Maybe homoerotic, I don't know. But it's offbeat."

In a loose black sweater and baggy brown corduroys, the unshaven Kilborn doesn't look like a guy who's worrying too much about undertaking the biggest career move of his life. If the pressure of turning out five hours of entertaining television a week on a network hurting for hipness is weighing on him, he doesn't show it.

"I love it," he says. "Bring it on. Bring on the pressure." Pause. "That's why I have the liquor cabinet on the set. I like single-malt Scotch..."