{"id":31854,"date":"2025-07-29T13:01:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T13:01:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/31854\/"},"modified":"2025-07-29T13:01:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T13:01:08","slug":"a-warning-signal-is-this-the-beginning-of-the-end-for-late-night-comedy-us-television","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/31854\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018A warning signal\u2019: is this the beginning of the end for late-night comedy? | US television"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI acknowledge we\u2019re losing money,\u201d comedian Jon Stewart told viewers this week<\/a>. \u201cLate-night TV is a struggling financial model. We are all basically operating a Blockbuster kiosk inside a Tower Records.\u201d<\/p>\n

The remark did not dull Stewart\u2019s righteous anger about his friend Stephen Colbert<\/a>\u2019s show being cancelled<\/a> by CBS after its parent company Paramount settled<\/a> a lawsuit with Donald Trump<\/a> \u2013 and a week before Paramount\u2019s $8bn merger with Skydance was approved<\/a> by federal regulators.<\/p>\n

Stewart did, however, point to another truth about the decline of a format that has been part of America\u2019s cultural fabric for three-quarters of a century.<\/p>\n

Late-night TV serves a nightly supper menu of comic monologues, variety sketches, celebrity interviews and musical acts. It turned hosts such as Johnny Carson<\/a>, Jay Leno, David Letterman, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Conan O\u2019Brien and Colbert into a familiar and reassuring presence in millions of homes. It was also relatively cheap to make and offered lucrative returns from advertising, representing a cash cow for major networks.<\/p>\n

Stephen Farnsworth<\/a>, a co-author of Late Night With Trump: Political Humor and the American Presidency, says: \u201cIt was a comforting collection of lighter fare before bed. It was for people who work second shifts in factories, people who just wanted a joke or two and a celebrity interview before they drop off. It was a cultural experience back in the days of Carson where you had one show that dominated above all and it had those moments that people would talk about the next day at work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not any more. The late-night format has been struggling for years as viewers increasingly cut the cable TV cord and migrate to streaming. Younger people are more apt to find amusement on YouTube or TikTok, leaving smaller, ageing TV audiences and declining ad revenues. Whereas the Late Show might once have raked in about $100m a year, it now reportedly loses $40m a year \u2013 giving CBS<\/a> a convenient pretext to pull the plug and claim it was \u201cpurely a financial decision\u201d.<\/p>\n

Farnsworth, the director of the Center for Leadership and Media Studies at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia, adds: \u201cThe big problem with late-night comedy in recent years is the problem with all traditional media in recent years. When you move to an online environment with podcasts and on demand, it\u2019s hard to get people to pay attention in a place where the ad rates are the highest.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are plenty of people watching Colbert clips throughout the day on all kinds of platforms. But when you\u2019re talking about advertising revenue, it\u2019s mainly the eyeballs fixed on this TV screen. That\u2019s where the money is made, but it\u2019s also where the decline has been the greatest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Late-night TV began in the 1950s as the postwar consumer boom made TV sets widespread, including in many bedrooms. Networks saw potential in late-night slots to capture audiences, especially younger viewers and urban professionals.<\/p>\n

The first notable show was Broadway Open House on NBC<\/a>, created by Sylvester \u201cPat\u201d Weaver (the father of the actor Sigourney Weaver). Airing from 11pm to midnight, it introduced a casual, variety-style format with comedy, music and guest interviews, setting the template for future shows.<\/p>\n

Joan Rivers and Johnny Carson in 1976. Photograph: NBC\/NBCU Photo Bank<\/p>\n

The definitive late-night programme was The Tonight Show, premiering in 1954 on NBC with host Steve Allen, whose wit and improvisational style were so successful that he got moved to prime time. His successor Jack Paar<\/a> added emotional depth and conversational interviews during his five-year reign.<\/p>\n

Then came Carson, whose 30-year run solidified The Tonight Show<\/a> as a cultural institution, pulling in between 10 million and 15 million viewers a night at its peak. Born in Iowa and raised in Nebraska, Carson\u2019s charm went well beyond coastal cities to middle America. He interviewed presidents, performed impressions of them and told jokes at their expense but wore his own politics lightly.<\/p>\n

Farnsworth comments: \u201cThey were jokes that never were biting. A joke about Ronald Reagan<\/a> being a little confused is hardly the same thing as the kind of fare that\u2019s provided today. But it\u2019s important to remember that was a tamer time in American politics too. As America has gotten more partisan and voters and politicians themselves have gotten much harsher, late-night comedy has reflected those changing realities.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think Carson would be anywhere near as successful today. His relatively tame approach to humour would strike a lot of contemporary viewers as out of touch in the same way that, had Colbert been on the air in the 80s, he wouldn\u2019t have gotten very far.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carson\u2019s success inspired competitors including CBS, which launched The Late Show with David Letterman in 1993. The Daily Show<\/a>, a spoof news programme with mock reporters, began on the cable network Comedy Central three years later.<\/p>\n

Under Stewart<\/a>, the Daily Show gave late-night a satirical edge, exposing the hypocrisy of politicians and the media with lacerating commentary and smartly edited video clips. A spin-off, The Colbert Report, was a searing parody in which Colbert played an exaggerated, bombastic version of a conservative news host and coined the term \u201ctruthiness\u201d.<\/p>\n

The distribution method has changed so dramatically that making money off the old format is very difficultBill Carter, author<\/p>\n

Bill Carter<\/a>, the author of the book The Late Shift and executive producer of the CNN docuseries The Story of Late Night, says: \u201cJon Stewart, more than anyone else in that era, brought point of view to what he did, certainly more than Letterman and Leno ever did. Young people loved it. He was breaking news to them. They didn\u2019t pay attention to news; they watched his show and they\u2019d find out things from watching his show.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among that generation was Tyler Hall<\/a>, 36, who recalls growing up inspired by the Daily Show\u2019s iconoclastic take on the 2003 Iraq war. He says from New York: \u201cThat was so appealing, to think that you can speak with moral authority while still being fun and funny and not preachy and shouty. It felt like a dream to put a finger in the eye of people who were oppressing and causing harm.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always thought there was something kind of punk rock about Colbert tricking people in his interviews in those early days because they thought he was for real, or Jon Stewart<\/a> spitting back in people\u2019s faces their own video clips. It felt badass. The teenage version of me wanted to be part of it and was fortunate to be part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hall got a job as as a researcher at The Colbert Report and followed Colbert to The Late Show in 2015. Even as Stewart stepped away from the Daily Show to make way for the South African comedian Trevor Noah<\/a>, his legacy lived on as proteges such as Samantha Bee, Jordan Klepper, John Oliver<\/a>, Larry Wilmore and Roy Wood Jr forged their own paths.<\/p>\n

Barack Obama makes an appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque\/Reuters<\/p>\n

Hall reflects: \u201cThere was certainly an abundance, a diversity, you could even say, a glut of these late-night political shows. There would honestly be times where we could all accidentally write the same punchline off the same thing of the day. We didn\u2019t know what the other one was writing, but inevitably enough of the same smart people writing on the same topic bang out the same basic joke.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having initially struggled with the transition to a major network, appearing as himself rather than a character, Colbert found his voice<\/a> in the era of Trump. His nightly monologues skewering the president are sardonic, silly, smart, snarky and sublime, an invaluable body of work for future historians seeking to understand the decade when America lost its mind. They also carry a rare moral force.<\/p>\n

David Litt, a former speechwriter for Barack Obama whose books include It\u2019s Only Drowning<\/a>, says: \u201cWhat stood out was Colbert\u2019s kindness as an individual and his public persona as an upstanding citizen. That stands in real contrast to Donald Trump. Colbert was the personification of the idea that people who believe in basic decency have a natural inclination toward saying: \u2018I want nothing to do with Trump and I have no interest in bending the knee.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Maga frustration with Colbert was you had this person who was a religious Catholic from South Carolina, in many ways not easy to dismiss as a coastal elite or crazy socialist. And what he was saying is that it is deeply American to oppose this man and to find what he\u2019s doing both ridiculous and abhorrent.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Late Show became the most watched late-night programme with ratings peaking at 3.1 million viewers during the 2017-18 season, according to Nielsen data. But not even Colbert was immune to the tectonic plates shifting beneath the format. In the season that ended in May his audience averaged 1.9 million. The show\u2019s ad revenue plummeted to $70.2m last year from $121.1m in 2018, according to the ad tracking firm Guideline<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Carter, who has written four books about TV, is not surprised. \u201cIt\u2019s of a piece with the end of linear TV,\u201d he says. \u201cThe regular primetime programming that\u2019s on the old traditional networks has faded to the point where the ratings stagger me how small they are. It\u2019s like a pond that\u2019s shrinking in the sun. It\u2019s getting smaller and smaller.<\/p>\n

This is definitely a warning signal for the genre of late-night humour. But it\u2019s not a death knellStephen Farnsworth, author<\/p>\n

\u201cCBS has made the point that they were losing money and we have to believe them; I\u2019m sure they have finances that show that. But it didn\u2019t look to me like they did a whole lot to counter that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carter notes that some late-night shows have saved money by ditching their live band or reducing the number of nights they broadcast. But CBS, whose parent company was accused by Colbert of paying a \u201cbig fat bribe<\/a>\u201d to Trump just three days before the cancellation, made little effort to adapt or save the format.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know exactly how they handled this, but the shows became somewhat bloated. When Colbert talked about this last week, he said I want to thank the 200 people who work on the show, and one of Letterman\u2019s former producers spoke to me and said: \u2018They have 200 people on their show?\u2019 The shrinkage was happening but it didn\u2019t look like CBS was doing that much that I could see until they totally pulled the plug.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, CBS appears to be ready to give up on late-night. When The Late Late Show host James Corden left in 2023<\/a>, the network opted not to hire a replacement. The network also cancelled After Midnight this year after host Taylor Tomlinson chose to return to full-time standup comedy.<\/p>\n

Late-night comedians have followed their younger audiences online, releasing clips to YouTube or TikTok. But digital advertising does not make up for the lost TV ad revenue.<\/p>\n

Stephen Colbert. Photograph: CBS Photo Archive\/CBS\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Carter observes: \u201cThey have very big subscriber bases. Jimmy Kimmel<\/a> of ABC and Jimmy Fallon<\/a> of NBC both have over 15 million to 20 million people subscribe to their TikTok or YouTube channels. That\u2019s an enormous number of people but they have not been able to monetise that.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople watch it whenever they feel like it, which is the way television works now. It\u2019s very hard, if you\u2019re not compelled to watch something, to then commercialise it. How do you get commercials into that? In the past, people would sit through the commercials with Johnny Carson and wait till he came back. People try to avoid commercials now.\u201d<\/p>\n

He adds: \u201cIt isn\u2019t like the idea of late-night is bad or weak or old or used up. It\u2019s that the distribution method has changed so dramatically that making money off the old format is very difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n

Farnsworth agrees: \u201cThe shows haven\u2019t failed. The shows have kept up with the changing preferences but you simply don\u2019t get the same advertising revenue online that you do with over-the-air broadcasts.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are shows that draw millions of viewers every evening, not to mention millions of more viewers through other platforms. There\u2019s an audience for this. It may not be as big as it was, but no audience is. There\u2019s nothing that television could do to recreate must-see TV or the popularity of All in the Family or M*A*S*H today. People just don\u2019t consume media the same way.\u201d<\/p>\n

He concludes: \u201cUltimately the strategy for the remaining shows is living with less. You\u2019re going to have to figure out ways to cut the staff, maybe air fewer nights a week. This is definitely a warning signal for the genre of late-night humour. But it\u2019s not a death knell.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI acknowledge we\u2019re losing money,\u201d comedian Jon Stewart told viewers this week. \u201cLate-night TV is a struggling financial…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31855,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,75,348],"class_list":["post-31854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31854\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}