Here is a brief excerpt from an article by Dave Itzkoff for The New York Times in which he discusses Stephen Colbert who begins as the new host of CBS’s Late Show on Tuesday, September 8th. To read the complete article, check out others, and obtain deep-discount subscription information, please click here.

Photo Credit: Damon Winter/The New York Times

* * *

On a recent Monday night, Stephen Colbert was about as high atop the Ed Sullivan Theater as one can be, looking out over the 200 or so employees of his CBS Late Show who had gathered for a roof party as he stood on a staircase with a megaphone in hand.

In a few moments, Mr. Colbert’s bandleader, Jon Batiste, and his fellow musicians would guide the crowd in joyful gyrations while a far-off camera swooped in — all for a few seconds of footage that will appear in the opening credits of this reinvented “Late Show” when it makes its debut on Tuesday.

Throughout the evening, Mr. Colbert had been slipping in and out of the festivities, wearing a steel-blue suit and shimmying with co-workers. Now, from his elevated perch, he was instructing his colleagues on where to stand and how to dance, and he seemed just as comfortable to be in charge of the revelry as he was participating in it.

Mr. Colbert is approaching his own transformative moment, when he will become the second person to host The Late Show, CBS’s marquee late-night franchise, succeeding David Letterman, for whom it was created.

Having spent a decade in the guise of a grandstanding, nominally conservative commentator, this 51-year-old entertainer is preparing for his greatest trick yet. Can he shed the ironist’s mask he wore on The Colbert Report and turn himself into the genial master of ceremonies that an 11:35 p.m. network show requires? And can he do it without sacrificing the irreverence and erudition that made his Comedy Central series a welcome antidote to a poisonous political era?

Even as Mr. Colbert has prospered on late-night TV, its landscape has become increasingly competitive in the year and a half since his appointment was announced. He’ll now be expected to hold his own against — if not surpass — friendly rivals like Jimmy Fallon on NBC’s Tonight Show and Jimmy Kimmel on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live, who have helped break talk shows out of their familiar formats and made viral online content essential to their diet.

* * *

Here is a direct link to the complete article.

David Itzkoff is a culture reporter for the New York Times. He is the author of Cocaine’s Son, a memoir about growing up with his drug-abusing father. Before joining the Times, he was an associate editor at Spin magazine and Maxim.