Big Night in the Big Easy Craig Ferguson is smiling and so is everyone at CBS, after a Super Bowl Sunday to remember. It was an exciting game that was close at the end, it was a good year for touching and funny commercials and it was a successful night for the network, despite the 34-minute delay thanks to a power outage. The game was the third most-watched ever, and while we rarely talk about ratings, it’s worth noting that the Late Late Show special had it’s second-largest audience ever, drawing nearly triple the number of viewers it gets on a typical night, hopefully introducing a new audience to the craziness of the show. Which LLS had the biggest audience ever? Craig’s 2007 Super Bowl special, which aired earlier in the evening that night. Super Blackout Of course, the biggest story of the game was when in the early part of the third quarter, half the lights in the stadium suddenly went dark. Craig & Company had already taped some segments in Los Angeles nine days earlier, taped more segments on the streets of New Orleans on Monday and Tuesday, as reported by Hollywood.com, and recorded the guest interview segments on the CBS stage on Wednesday. They even taped two beginnings of the monologue; one to use if San Francisco won, the other to use if Baltimore won, so the start of the show could look as “live” as possible. The show’s editors were standing by to insert the correct part as soon as they knew who won the game, with plenty of time to get the final version to New York for broadcast later that night. But when the lights went out, it was Craig who had a light-bulb moment. Inspired by the comedic situation, he huddled with the crew, recruited actress Lucy Liu from the CBS VIP seats at the game, went “backstage” at the Superdome and recorded an entirely new, improvised start to the show. Craig tweeted:

You might as well know the truth.

Late Late Show producer Michael Naidus explained:

True story: ad-libbed cold open conceived by @craigyferg, filmed in 3rd Qtr at Superdome…tape traveled by pedicab to transmission room. // Big thank you to awesome folks at NFL Films for helping make our show…right up to the last minute.

And the voice of Geoff Peterson, Josh Robert Thompson, added:

Uh oh. Looks like the SuperDome is using the same battery as @GeoffTheRobot.

The moment became one of the most talked about highlights of the Super Bowl festivities on Monday morning, as the clip was shown on morning newscasts around the country.  Plenty of media outlets wrote stories about it as well, including Newsday, and TV Worth Watching. In case you had to fall asleep early and missed it, here it is: Video courtesy: CBS Tonight’s Guests Monday on the Late Late Show, Craig’s guests are actress Zooey Deschanel and actor Adhir Kalyan. On Tuesday, there’s been a schedule change, and the guests will be actor David Boreanaz and actress Alison Becker. Wednesday’s lineup stays the same with actress Emmy Rossum and author Jon Ronson. Then on Thursday, we’ll see the guests originally planned for earlier in the week, actress Amanda Peet and musician Paul Williams. Finally on Friday, watch for actor Alfred Molina and previously-bumped radio host/comedienne Ophira Eisenberg. Guest Update

The guest listings have been updated through February 14th, including new additions George Lopez and Sutton Foster. You can see most complete listings on our Guests page any time.

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