Early Birds Get to Pick the Peanut Galleries of New York

Live, from New York, it’s... Good Morning America, The Colbert Report, and tons of other programs that are taped in front of live audiences. Want to see Triumph the Insult Comic Dog or Tyra Banks’ glorious weave in person? In most cases, all it’ll take is patience, determination, and the ability to wake up before 10 a.m.

The good news about tapings is that they’re basically always free to attend—Jon Stewart can’t laugh at his own jokes, after all, and what power would an early morning Jonas Brothers concert have if there weren’t any teenage girls there to shriek at them? And because many shows are taped daily—especially talk shows like The Late Show With David Letterman—you’ll have plenty of opportunities to find a taping that fits your schedule. The bad news: the only way to actually guarantee tickets usually involves a whole lot of waiting, and most of it will be when you’d prefer to be asleep.

Most shows that tape in New York have automated Web sites that either host forms that accept ticket requests or allow prospective audience members to e-mail requests for the date of the taping they’d like to attend. That’s the case with Colbert, The Tyra Show, and The View, to name a few. Because dates fill up incredibly fast, though—according to Comedy Central’s site, there are currently no tickets available to The Daily Show between now and August 2009—electronic requests aren’t the best ways to ensure tickets.

If you really want to see Saturday Night Live, for example, you’re probably going to have to show up at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in the wee hours of Friday night. Standby tickets to both the live taping and the show’s 8 p.m. dress rehearsal are handed out at 7 a.m. the day of the show, and the standby line starts forming much earlier than that.
Even if you do score a standby seat, you’re not guaranteed admission to the show. Try to hedge your bets by accepting a ticket to the rehearsal instead, since chances are there’ll be more available seats for that than the live show. Colbert, The Daily Show, and Late Night With Conan O’Brien also hand out standby tickets on the day of tapings, although none of them include the option to view a rehearsal instead.

Sometimes, your familiarity with a show can help give you a leg up. If you want to get standby tickets to Letterman, call 212-247-6497 after 11 a.m. on the day you’d like to see the show. The operator will ask you a Letterman trivia question, and if you answer it correctly, you’ll be placed on the standby list.

And if you’re desperate enough, you can always resort to trying to get on a show rather than just in its audience. Tyrashow.com is currently looking for women to interview for scintillating segments like “I Am Sexually Promiscuous and Proud” and “I’m A Teen Girl Who’s Recently Done Something Violent.” Who knows—a simple talk-show taping could lead to the launch of your career, if you aspire to be embarrassed on national television. On second thought, sleeping on the sidewalk outside of 30 Rock doesn’t sound so bad after all.