Does Craig Ferguson Pay His Audience?

Courtesy of Darla Khazei/PacificCoastNewsOnline.com

Audience-free for a reason?

You know how Craig Ferguson is going to be doing his show without a live audience now? It might not just be some crazy cool idea he and his producers had. It might actually be necessary. Because they can't afford to pay their audience anymore. Yup, pay them.

Maybe I'm in the minority, but I actually quite like Craig Ferguson. I think he's funny and off-beat and if given the chance to see him on The Late Late Show, I'd jump on it. Heck, even if I didn't think he was awesome, I wouldn't turn down the opportunity to catch a show of his. But allegedly, Craig Ferguson is having a hard time filling the seats in his audience.

Craig Ferguson kind of explained that he was doing his show sans audience to be like past host Tom Snyder who didn't have an audience. But there might be more to it than that. According to an inside source, "The Craig Ferguson Show is currently using a service for their audience procurement... They have 100 seats, of which 10 are reserved for house guests, and 30-40 members are through requests for tickets. The rest of the seats, about 50-60, are each paid for by the show. At around $20 per person, that's almost $1,000 per hour-long taping, which is one expensive laugh machine." This is opposed to someone like Conan O'Brien who had long lines of people waiting to see his show every night.

This just seems silly to me. If you're not going to see Craig Ferguson already, is $20 really going to change your mind? The source continues by saying, "Why Craig has to pay people to sit through his show is beyond me. It's even more funny that when he stopped, everyone is lauding him for ‘breaking the mold.' He hasn't done anything original! This was a decision based solely on need."

Do you believe this story? Would you see Craig Ferguson's Late Late Show if given the opportunity? Poor Craig Ferguson, I feel bad for the guy!