TVSquad

Recently, I had the opportunity to attend the venerable Bravo series, Inside the Actors Studio. The guest was Conan O'Brien, and since I have a thing for late night hosts, I was pretty psyched to see him up close and personal. I've seen the show a million times before, yet I wasn't really sure what to expect from the taping. Would it be like The Daily Show, in which it's taped live with pauses for commercial breaks? Or would they do a longer taping and then edit it down for broadcast?

After discussing it with a few of my friends, we figured that they would cut it down. What I didn't realize is that I should have packed a snack. "What is your mother's name?" "What is the name of the primary school you attended?" "What did your father do for a living?" These are only a few of the questions that led Conan to crack, "I feel like I'm applying for a credit card."

It would seem that sooner or later everyone in show business will get a shot at a talk show. After all, if Rachael Ray can win an Emmy as a talk show host, and a one-time respected anchorman like Maury Povich can have 20 years of syndicated talk success, why not give every Tom, Dick, and Megan Mullally a chance.

NBC reportedly thinks Piers Morgan could be the next big thing in talk. The bitter Brit, a personality as caustic as Simon Cowell, was the winner of The Celebrity Apprentice and is the nastiest judge on America's Got Talent. Morgan has a two-year deal with ITV and is on the verge of inking a similar contract with NBC. The idea is that he could be the next David Frost.