‘The Daily Show,’ ‘Colbert Report’ to go live for Election Night

While this has become almost expected for Comedy Central these days, it is still worth pointing out: for the sixth election in a row, the network is going to have election coverage, and for the second straight election it will be coming to us via “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report.”

These comedy shows are generally pre-taped, but each show will be coming to us live on Tuesday at 11:00 p.m. Eastern time, where there will be some live results of the voting, interviews with some of Stewart’s favorite correspondents, and some analysis between Colbert and columnist Andrew Sullivan. Our favorite part of this year’s festivities is already the title for Colbert’s special: Election “2012: A Nation Votes, Ohio Decides; The Re-Presidenting of America: Who Will Replace Obama?.”  Try saying that five times fast.

Clearly, the reasons behind airing this show live are clear: in pre-taping the shows, they would be immediately irrelevant by the time they ended up airing, and election season tends to see them reach some new ratings highs. These ratings may actually be more important than ever now, especially when you remember that “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” each were off the first two days of this week in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. The two shows returned to the air one day later than “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” aired from Brooklyn, whereas “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” and “The Late Show with David Letterman” continued to air all week long.

Are you excited to see what these two do next week? Thanks to the chaotic state of the election right now, the one thing that we can guarantee about it is that it will not be predictable in any sense of the word.