there's a lot of talk here about it being "scripted." I think it's plenty clear that, at best, Rob knew only generally what was coming.
None of these talk shows are "scripted." What they do is a pre-interview so if, say, Robin Williams is going to be on Letterman, some staffer sits down with him and talks about his new movie or TV show and then if he has some wacky story to tell and then versions of what to ask about is given to the host and he gives the prompts so no one is operating in the dark but it's also still spontaneous. So maybe Williams says, "I want to talk about this funny thing that happened when we were shooting last week..." and then Letterman asks, "Have you ever had anything just go off the rails during shooting?" Or maybe Williams tells the staffer he's got this great riff on cellphones and how annoying they are and Letterman just goes, "Anything else bugging you these days?" and off he goes.
Doolittle (as someone cited above) talked about how little pre-interview there was with The Daily Show, but she no doubt had a gist of roughly what he would ask. I've also been interviewed and had a pre-interview and the final questions I got "on air" were phrased differently, on the same subject but in a different way from what had been discussed before; it's not a repetition of what you've already discussed. So Ford knew there would be crack stuff and maybe they even told him there would be videos, so he could guess what would be on screen, but there is no way they did like a run-through of the whole thing and then did something totally different on air. You could tell Ford wasn't SHOCKED by what was coming; he has all his standard defenses ready to go.
In the past 12-hours we've seen Doug and Rob go from "I was set up" to "That was great, we go to promote the city..." etc. It's all bull. They knew they'd be mocked and challenged and they were. Trying to understand "what really happened" through Doug's eyes is just dangerous. Believe your own two eyes. Everyone except Doug knows what they saw.
Speaking of which, I've seen this circulating around now too - since it's not a glowing review, I can only assume this American media outlet found a guy from the Biased Toronto Media to write it?
http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/rob-ford-jimmy-kimmel/
(They also have an article on Carleton's basketball team, so you can get your CanCon fix...)