Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales took part in an online question and answer session with readers today on a wide range of topics.  One reader from Montana praised Craig and asked if the Scottish-American host might take over for Letterman.  Shales apparently doesn’t think so.  Here is the exchange:

Montana: …Craig Ferguson has really started to grow on me, when I can stay up late enough to watch him. Very clever. Funny without getting too mean as Letterman seems to do increasingly. (I notice Letterman’s audience hardly responds to some of his “jokes” these days). And Leno is fine but bland. Does Ferguson have a shot at moving into a better time slot?
Tom Shales: I do not think Ferguson would be much of a candidate for Dave’s slot should Dave do the unthinkable and retire; some other comic would likely be “tapped.” One good thing about Dave leaving is that he will take that irritating freak Paul Shaffer with him. Ferguson certainly has a constituency but I don’t think it’s broad enough – OR YOUNG ENOUGH – to keep a network happy at 11:35 p.m., When you consider that even Leno attracts too old audience, Ferguson would be a self-defeating choice.  Shales reference probably is to the figures released recently that show the median age of Letterman’s audience as 54 and Ferguson’s as 52, which is not a big difference as far as many advertisers are concerned.  The complete Shales Q&A article is on WashingtonPost.com.

A blog post on today’s USAToday.com site mentions that television’s Emmy Awards are eliminating the category for best theme song (as reported Monday in the trade paper Variety) and laments that among others, the Late Late Show theme would have been a great candidate.  Agreed.  If you’ve never seen the full version, enjoy:

Craig’s assistant Rebecca Tucker had a great tweet today:  Discovered this morning that it is possible to fall asleep while running.  Been there, done that.

Craig’s guests on the Late Late Show tonight will be English actress Emily Mortimer (who can forget her in Notting Hill?), the writer/creator of the HBO series The Wire, David Simon and Craig’s standup comedy warmup man Randy Kagan, who tweeted this afternoon:  I’m on The Late Late Show tonight!!!!  We’ll be watching.

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