As the evening news dies and newspapers struggle for their lives, who knew that so many would pay so dear a price for made-up news? One recent afternoon, even in the shady bits of sidewalk along West Fifty-fourth Street the temperatures and humidity were at rain-forest levels, and yet hordes of humans—scrums, mobs, as many as, say, two dozen—sat on the concrete for hours to get into the six-thirty taping of “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.” Few were aware that, like the last fans at Ebbets Field, they would be a historical audience. Jon Stewart and his company of merry fools were moving. This was their last show at 513 West Fifty-fourth. Interns were packing crates. The next taping would take place at the studio on Eleventh Avenue where, until recently, Emeril Lagasse whisked his roux. “And look at me,” said Stephen Colbert, who plays a “well-intentioned, poorly informed, high-status idiot” of a news correspondent on “The Daily Show.” “Look at me. I’m not going anywhere.”

Colbert’s sense of abandonment was limited by the fact that he was staying behind on West Fifty-fourth Street to develop his own fake-news program, “The Colbert Report,” which, starting in October, will air just after the fake news on “The Daily Show.” “It’ll be like O’Reilly segueing into Hannity, Hannity into Greta, Larry King into Aaron Brown,” he said. “I love that Aaron Brown, the way he sucks the flavor out of every word, and I love the way he mulls. No one mulls the news like Aaron Brown.” If “The Daily Show” is faux evening news, “The Colbert Report” will be faux Bill O’Reilly. “The focus will be me, lots of me,” Colbert said. “Occasionally, we’ll turn the camera elsewhere, but only for pacing.” And what sort of presence will “Stephen Colbert” have? “My ambition is to have Stone Phillips’s neck and Geraldo Rivera’s sense of mission.”

Since Bill Murray’s departure for the movies, no one has done fatuous like Colbert does fatuous: the serious-reporter-guy ability to cock a brow with bogus knowing, his way of tilting his head to indicate sincerity worthy of an Airedale. The key is not listening, missing the point. During the 2004 Presidential campaign, “The Daily Show” interviewed the Democratic candidates, none more vividly than the Reverend Al Sharpton:

__{: .break one} ** C_olbert_: In street lingo, are you running to stick it to the Man? Sharpton: I don’t know on what street you got that language. Colbert: The urban street. The mean streets. Sharpton: I’m sticking up for a lot of people that have felt that no one has stuck up for them. But I’m not trying to stick it to anyone. Colbert: Not even . . . the Man? Sharpton: Who’s the Man? Colbert: Let’s pretend for a moment that I’m the Man. Now stick it to me. Sharpton: I’m not sticking it to anyone. Colbert: Not even the Man? He’s very stickable. **

The real Stephen Colbert is a little like the one on television, but smart and leached of self-importance. In his ramshackle office, the most impressive decorations are an ancient Nixon campaign poster and a portrait of Ace, one of the two animated superheroes who make up the Ambiguously Gay Duo on “Saturday Night Live.” “I am proud to say that he is me,” he said. “I am the voice of Ace.” Colbert is forty-one, a native of South Carolina, one of eleven children, the father of three, a suburban guy, and deaf in one ear. “I had this weird tumor as a kid, and they scooped it out with a melon baller.”

When Colbert was a student in Chicago, he studied improvisation with the legendary Del Close. Close was a personality so unpredictable that he has been called “the Ted Kaczynski of modern comedy”; before he died, in 1999, he bequeathed his skull to the Goodman Theatre, in Chicago. His hope was that he could play Yorick into eternity. As the artistic director of the ImprovOlympic, he had a legacy at least as memorable. “One of the great things about Del was that he was a pagan,” Colbert said. “When he was teaching, he would take out this pentagram necklace that he wore and flash it at you,” he continued. “I’ve been to my share of new-moon celebrations.”

There are no ready pilots for “The Colbert Report.” Commercially, Comedy Central is clearly hoping to extend the good fortune and renown of “The Daily Show” another half-hour every night. Everything else seems up for grabs. The idea for the show, Colbert made clear, is to come to the precipice of things and not hesitate. “Del used to say, ‘If you come across a rabbit hole, don’t step around it. Jump down the hole! See where it leads.’ ”