Stephen Colbert at sweeps time: Looking at his latest nights

“The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” is in the middle of its first November sweeps. So ... how’s the new guy doing?

Let’s break it all down, by looking at some key elements of the show so far this month, along with what’s working, and what’s not. And as an added bonus, some free advice!

But a general impression first: “Late Show” can be a deeply, ineluctably eccentric enterprise. Little here — host above all — defers to tradition, the competition, or the generally accepted wisdom of how a late night broadcast TV talk show should be produced.

Colbert is mounting a cable talk show on a major broadcast network. That’s often what is best here — and what is often most exasperating.

THE HOST Freed at last of his “Colbert Report” character, Colbert is exactly who we always knew him to be — cerebral, intense, mock-serious and imbued with an unshakable sense of the absurdity of the universe. His politics are leftish, his interests eclectic, esoteric, personal. He’s a punster, a smarty-pants, a wit. He can also be indulgent, wonky, a technophile and an unapologetic Tolkienist: “That applause makes me feel like Glorfindel returning from the Hall of Mandos,” he said last week. Adding this: “Look it up.” He is the anti-Jay Leno, and (for that matter) the anti-David Letterman. He is something, someone ... entirely new.

FREE ADVICE Needs to expand his palette, and especially — to use a techy turn of phrase he might even use — deepen his pop culture database. Show and host often feel like they’re still playing to the Colbert Nation. But he’s on CBS now, and there’s a much bigger nation to play to.

THE MONOLOGUE There isn’t one. In lieu of the age-old 10-jokes-off-the-day’s-news, Colbert takes one topic and then twists it into a pretzel. It can be a shaggy dog story (McDonald’s breakfasts) or a stemwinder (a long riff on Oreos).

SEE PHOTOSNew and old faces of late-night TV

FREE ADVICE Done well, the traditional late-night monologues can be an icebreaker, door opener and conversation starter. They’re the comfort food of late night TV. Viewers expect them. Hosts have usually delivered them, for over fifty years. Colbert may want to rethink or at least expand his approach here. A simple reason why -- a great monologue instantly breaches the great divide between host and audience. Everyone has had a day to absord the "news" -- either serious or piffle -- and wants the host to put it all in perspective. It's a valuable device, one that makes the host almost a meta-cultural-figure who quite literally gets the last word of the day. As clever as Colbert's openers are, they are almost invariably about a single topic of interest to him. It's asking a lot of short-attention-span viewers to demand that this should also be a topic of interest to them. Worse, it slows down the show at the exact moment it should speed up: The beginning.    

DESK CHAT SEGMENT That trusty late night segment where the host Talks About His Day to Sidekick? Colbert has dispensed with this altogether, except for the desk. In its place, an exploration of his obsessions, like the website he recently came across, CoolSerialNumbers.com, which leads to a long setup about rare dollar bills. (George Washington with an eyepatch!)

FREE ADVICE This worked brilliantly at “Report,” but the host was “in character” then and his obsessions were political. Here, the bits can be brilliant — or discursive, rambling or trivial. Examples: On Friday's show, the desk chat was devoted to a long riff on J.K. Rowling and her forthcoming "Potter" book. Both amusing and elaborate, it went on for minutes, and required -- no, demanded -- a significant degree of Potter knowledge on the part of viewers. Yes, Harry Potter is well-known, but also ancient history in pop cultural terms; we have moved on but Colbert's bit assumed that the arcana remained firmly front of mind. The problem, for many viewers, is that it has not. Moroever, those with no interest in Potter were simply lost. Next, a bit on TED talks. Everyone knows what a TED talk is, right? In fact, everyone doesn't. But the bit assumed that enough viewers would not only know what a TED talk is, but know how silly a TED talk could be.

  Colbert needs to use this segment to talk about the world, and politics, not cool serial numbers, or TED talks. Focus on the big stuff, ignore the little stuff. Network late night talk shows are about what everyone is thinking about or talking about. They are the ultimate water cooler shows. As established so well over the "Report" years, this guy has a hugely imaginative take on the world. We need to see more of that -- a lot more of that.  

GUESTS An enormous and wondrous range, so far, have appeared. When was the last time novelist John Irving was on a late-night talker during November sweeps? Umm, never?

FREE ADVICE He needs little. This has worked well, and far beyond even expectations. Colbert is an excellent interviewer, and an incisive one. However, the interviews have a tendency to run short and end abruptly. Many of his guests — like Netflix’s Reed Hastings — have a lot of interesting things to say, but can’t possibly say it (even to Colbert) in a few minutes. So: fewer guests per show, longer interviews.

BOTTOM LINE As we've always known, Colbert is an extremely bright, thoughtful, funny and curious guy working in a medium that’s fundamentally superficial and highly commercial. You can almost see the gears grind away while his show seeks a balance, or fit, or style. His best stuff can certainly be his oddest — big-time authors like Irving or Jonathan Franzen reading him bedtime stories! — but the egghead indulgences need to be balanced with populist, frivolous nonsense. Colbert occupies the biggest stage of them all. He now needs to fill it.

By Verne J Gay

Verne.Gay@newsday.com@vernejgay

Verne J Gay is the television critic