Video May Have Killed the Radio Star, but TDS Killed Late Night Talk Shows
Here’s a question for ya: is anyone under 40 still watching late-night talk shows? And even more to the point: is anyone under 40 who isn’t a flaming liberal still tuning in to Kimmel, Colbert, or Fallon?
We’d bet the answer is probably “NO.”
Sure, media is changing. Podcasts are exploding. Legacy formats are fading; just look at how X has exploded. But the real reason late-night is dying is multifaceted, and one big reason is Stage 5 Trump Derangement Syndrome. These shows aren’t just outdated; they’ve become downright insufferable.
It’s the same tired punchlines. The same smug sneering. The same moldy jokes about Nazis and orange spray tans. It’s not comedy; it’s therapy for bitter elites who still haven’t processed 2016, let alone 2024.
The media made Trump a ratings cash cow; they milked him dry and then turned on him. Now they’re stuck with the same tired old act, just without the audience.
Late-night talk show ratings are circling the drain.
And Americans have had their fill. At this point, most Americans would rather gouge their eyes out and saw off their ears than sit through another hour of TDS theater. So of course they’re tuning out and flocking to media that doesn’t feel like it’s being written by a brotherhood of bitter dropkicks.
As the television industry has leaped to streaming, many old genres have come along. Prestige dramas, crime documentaries, reality TV, stand-up specials and even soap operas have successfully crossed over. But not talk shows.
Even on traditional network and cable TV, ratings for late-night talk shows are down, and advertising revenue has plummeted. The number of shows is falling, too, so much so that last year’s Emmy Awards had one nominee fewer because of a lack of submissions. This fall, CBS will forgo programming its 12:30 a.m. slot, the first time in three decades that the network will not have an original talk show in that wee hour.
“Of all the legacy broadcast day parts — morning shows, evening news, late night — late night might be the first one headed for the wood chipper,” said Jim Bell, a former showrunner of “The Tonight Show” on NBC and now a senior executive for the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. “It’s expensive to make, tough to monetize and no longer appointment viewing. It’s still got cultural juice, but from a business standpoint, it’s the most vulnerable.”
As recently as 2018, the five broadcast network late-night shows — hosted by Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, James Corden and Seth Meyers — drew an estimated $439 million in combined advertising revenue, according to Guideline, an advertising data firm.
By 2022, that figure had fallen to $277 million, Guideline said. Last year, it plunged to $220.6 million, nearly a 50 percent decline from 2018.
Yes, of course the media lapdogs will tell you late-night talk shows are tanking because “viewing habits are changing.” Sure, that’s part of it. But let’s be real, shall we? Video may have killed the radio star, but Stage 5 TDS killed late-night.
Take a look:
While the usual network late-night shows keep spinning their wheels with nonstop TDS, Greg Gutfeld, the conservative, pro-Trump voice, is soaring. Sure, he’s on cable, and by all accounts, he should be trailing behind these legacy hosts, especially with the changing media landscape. After all, he doesn’t have a built-in “late night talk show” audience that’s been groomed over decades.
And to drive the point home, a streaming talk show is actually thriving, not because it’s pushing stale political jokes, but probably because it isn’t. John Mulaney made a conscious decision not to be like Kimmel, Colbert, or Fallon. And guess what? It’s working. People are tuning in. The New York Times piece goes on:
Mr. Mulaney, a renowned stand-up comedian and comedy writer, wound up hosting a talk show almost by accident. During the Netflix Is a Joke comedy festival last May, he was assigned to produce a nightly live show, one that could host the many comedic legends in Los Angeles during the event.
Mr. Mulaney originally envisioned a show that would be a bit “like MTV,” he said, where the host would serve as a sort of V.J., introducing one comic and then the next. He decided he could host it himself, and before long, the concept started to morph into the show’s current iteration.
“Then it became like, well, people can come out and I’ll talk to them, and then they’ll sit there,” Mr. Mulaney said. “Then I’m interviewing people, and we’re doing bits. Like, we couldn’t have backed into it in a more convoluted way.”
Robbie Praw, Netflix’s vice president of stand-up and comedy formats, said in an interview that the company had not initially been “looking or aspiring to do another talk show.” It was more interested “in being in the John Mulaney business” than in talk shows generally, he said, adding, “John is so singular.”
The first season of the show, called “Everybody’s in LA,” ran for all of six episodes but was a huge critical hit. Netflix went ahead and ordered 12 episodes for this year and changed the name to “Everybody’s Live.”
There has been no shortage of big-name guests. Mr. Letterman, Mr. O’Brien, Tina Fey, Bill Hader and Ben Stiller, among other comedic superstars, have appeared this season.
And though the show loosely follows one theme (planning a funeral, borrowing money, getting fired), Mr. Mulaney is not following in the footsteps of Mr. Colbert or John Oliver and dedicating much of the show to the current political news cycle.
“I was kind of like, what type of show do I want to watch?” Mr. Mulaney said. “And it is not — because the ground is well covered by great people — a topical ‘Can you believe sociopolitical story of the day?’”
For a while now, late-night talk shows have been morphing into bitter, Trump-hating abysses, lacking humor, insight, hope, or anything that adds value to anyone’s life. They’re not funny or fresh. They’re sad little circle jerks for overgrown hall monitors. It’s become bad group therapy for liberals who want to fall asleep feeling like their political and social outrage is righteous.
But that doesn’t get ratings. It gets extinction…