{"id":692650,"date":"2026-05-25T02:45:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T02:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/692650\/"},"modified":"2026-05-25T02:45:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T02:45:08","slug":"judd-apatow-pens-earnest-essay-about-importance-of-late-night-tv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/692650\/","title":{"rendered":"Judd Apatow Pens Earnest Essay About Importance Of Late-Night TV"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWriter, producer and director Judd Apatow<\/a> penned an earnest essay about the importance of late-night television \u2014 and safeguarding it in the American consciousness \u2014 as last week saw the shuttering of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert<\/a> and end of the CBS franchise begun by David Letterman.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a tribute for Rolling Stone<\/a>, the Freaks and Geeks developer outlined his love for late-night as an institution, which was born out of hours spent watching a plethora of hosts throughout middle school and high school. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cProbably the highlight of my career was working for Garry Shandling on his talk-show satire\u00a0The Larry Sanders Show,\u201d he wrote. \u201cGarry had observed all of the backstage machinations of that workplace, and he thought it was the perfect metaphor for life. The curtain and what\u2019s behind the curtain, the way we all put on a face and present ourselves one way when we\u2019re actually feeling something completely different inside. It was a way to talk about human frailty in a hilarious manner.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tApatow \u2014 himself a late-night interview staple, from his first appearance on The Dennis Miller Show to later stints on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon<\/a> and Jimmy Kimmel<\/a> Live! \u2014 enumerated the service comics provide commentating on current events.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe watched Letterman talk about 9\/11. We went through political events through the eyes of these people,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m amazed at the way talk-show hosts are able to write jokes that allow us to laugh at something that is dark and troubling. You can\u2019t give enough credit to people like Kimmel and Colbert and Fallon and Seth Meyers<\/a> for the Herculean feat that is. Imagine it was your job to wake up in the morning and look at what happened in the Iran War and know you have to go do an 11-minute monologue about it. It\u2019s almost unbelievable that they pull it off, ever.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe three-time Emmy winner also referenced Kimmel\u2019s suspension, the ensuing backlash and consumers rallying behind him, adding that the remaining hosts \u201care going to fight until their last breath to be allowed to express themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSome people say late-night is dying out, but I hope not. I love the host with the desk, with the band, doing the monologue. I love it when the monologue works. I love it when it doesn\u2019t. I hope one day our country is stable enough that some of the monologues don\u2019t have to be about all the horrifying things that happened that day. But when almost everything that happens is horrifying, you really do need to gather and talk about it,\u201d Apatow concluded. \u201cSo I pray that when all of the entertainment industry is owned by one man in the future \u2014 some bizarro creature\u00a0who\u2019s half man, half robot, who makes all decisions for us in our surveillance state \u2014 that he likes talk shows. And even if it doesn\u2019t make economic sense, I hope he lets at least one stay on the air.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tColbert\u2019s final episode bowed May 21, to the tune of 6.74M live + same-day viewers, per preliminary panel only data from Nielsen, making it the most-watched weeknight episode<\/a> in the show\u2019s history. The following day, the comedian surprised local Michigan audiences when he filled in as guest host<\/a> on\u00a0Only in Monroe,\u00a0joking: \u201cIt\u2019s been an excruciating 23 hours without being on TV, so I\u2019m grateful to be here on Monroe Community Media, before they also get acquired by\u00a0Paramount.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Late Show was axed three weeks before David Ellison officially took control of Paramount, with the network stressing that it was \u201cpurely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night\u201d and \u201cis not related in any way to the show\u2019s performance, content or other matters happening at Paramount.\u201d However, as the cancellation came days after Colbert called Paramount Global\u2019s $16 million settlement of Donald Trump\u2019s lawsuit\u00a0a\u00a0\u201cbig fat bribe,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0folks have found it difficult to reconcile the conglomerate\u2019s reasoning with the decision\u2019s timing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Writer, producer and director Judd Apatow penned an earnest essay about the importance of late-night television \u2014 and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":692651,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,134,6517,4625,224716,28684,6516,3869,4626,427],"class_list":["post-692650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-jimmy-fallon","tag-jimmy-kimmel","tag-judd-apatow","tag-late-night-tv","tag-seth-meyers","tag-stephen-colbert","tag-the-late-show-with-stephen-colbert","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=692650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692650\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/692651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=692650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=692650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=692650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}