{"id":89684,"date":"2025-08-22T21:50:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-22T21:50:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/89684\/"},"modified":"2025-08-22T21:50:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-22T21:50:07","slug":"lorne-michaels-has-been-assured-nbc-late-night-shows-are-safe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/89684\/","title":{"rendered":"Lorne Michaels has been assured NBC late night shows are safe"},"content":{"rendered":"

Is late night television dying? Maybe, but not at NBC. In a rare interview with <\/a>Puck<\/a>\u2018s Matthew Belloni<\/a>, Lorne Michaels professes himself \u201cstunned\u201d over the firing of Stephen Colbert and the end of The Late Show at CBS. But as the producer of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and Late Night With Seth Meyers, Michaels has been assured his shows are safe. \u201cI think [Comcast C.E.O.] Brian Roberts\u2014who I will be working for for the rest of my life, who I have very high admiration for\u2014has integrity. But at the same time, everyone has [broadcast] licenses, everyone has\u2026 you know,\u201d the Saturday Night Live boss says. \u201cBut I really don\u2019t believe that we affect things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Something of a vague answer, but Michaels has been in the game too long to give away too much. (That\u2019s why, we can assume, he rarely does press<\/a>.) For instance, he won\u2019t weigh in one way or another as to whether the Colbert firing was political. However, he observes that \u201cthere\u2019s two audiences now\u201d: \u201cThere\u2019s the audience that is [watching on] TikTok and YouTube, and there\u2019s a linear audience. Both Seth [Meyers] and [Stephen] Colbert are heirs to David Letterman. You know what I mean?\u201d He explains. \u201cConan [O\u2019Brien] as well. They\u2019re going to be doing that [type of show], just as I\u2019m still doing SNL, as if everybody\u2019s watching that night. But Jimmy [Fallon] does a lot of stuff that you can watch all day.\u201d<\/p>\n

From his long-held, fortified fiefdom at NBC, Michaels isn\u2019t concerned about any kind of political censorship from networks that are worried about President Donald Trump\u2019s opinion. And that\u2019s despite the fact that Trump has threatened Comcast<\/a> over Meyers\u2019 show and called Fallon a \u201cmoron.\u201d Asked if he thought the president\u2019s ire would affect his shows, Michaels shrugs it off, saying, \u201cWhatever crimes Trump is committing, he\u2019s doing it in broad daylight. There is absolutely nothing that the people who vote for him\u2014or me\u2014don\u2019t know. You know what I mean? And he is a really powerful media figure. He knows how to hold an audience. That\u2019s a very powerful thing, and I think it was always underestimated. His politics are obviously not my politics, but denouncing [him] doesn\u2019t work.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not exactly an answer to how Trump might affect political comedy, but again, Lorne Michaels typically plays things pretty close to the chest. He does share one revealing nugget, in connection to Colbert. He recalls the cancellation of The Smothers Brothers following their anti-Vietnam War sentiment as a \u201chuge thing,\u201d and formative to him personally. \u201cI later asked Tommy [Smothers] to do [SNL], when I was planning the first six shows, and he said no,\u201d Michaels says. \u201cLater we talked about it, and he said, \u2018I was still so angry.\u2019 That was four years later. And I thought, Being a martyr is thrilling, and everyone\u2019s cheering, and then it\u2019s show business. It just goes on.\u201d In other words, don\u2019t expect Michaels to stick his neck out if Trump continues to remake the TV landscape in his image.<\/p>\n

Dave Chappelle’s Saturday Night Live monologues are always a surprise, even to Lorne Michaels<\/a>Lorne Michaels won’t free Bowen Yang from his JD Vance curse<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Is late night television dying? Maybe, but not at NBC. In a rare interview with Puck\u2018s Matthew Belloni,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":89685,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-89684","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-celebrities","11":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89684","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=89684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}