{"id":366171,"date":"2025-12-23T20:27:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T20:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/366171\/"},"modified":"2025-12-23T20:27:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T20:27:07","slug":"late-night-tv-got-more-liberal-in-2025-per-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/366171\/","title":{"rendered":"Late-Night TV Got More Liberal In 2025, Per Study"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tLate-night television has had a wounding year; The Late Show with Stephen Colbert<\/a> was canceled<\/a> ahead of David Ellison\u2019s purchase of Paramount, Jimmy Kimmel was taken off air <\/a>following a furor around Charlie Kirk\u2019s murder and CBS axed its 12:30am slot.<\/p>\n

\n\tPressure from the right, whether direct in Kimmel\u2019s case or implied in Colbert\u2019s, was a defining feature of the year for the sector so it\u2019s not a huge surprise that the content of these shows got more liberal, according to a new study.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Media Research Center, a conservative watchdog group which is part-funded by Republican donor Robert Mercer, clocked that 92% of jokes told on the six nightly late-night shows were aimed at conservatives.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe group analyzed jokes from Comedy Central\u2019s\u00a0The Daily Show<\/a>, ABC\u2019s\u00a0Jimmy Kimmel Live!<\/a>, NBC\u2019s\u00a0The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon\u00a0and\u00a0Late Night with Seth Meyers<\/a>, and CBS\u2019s\u00a0The Late Show with Stephen Colbert\u00a0from January 6 through December 19, as well as jokes told on After Midnight<\/a> until its cancellation on June 12.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt found that of the 13,097 political jokes\u00a0told, some 12,011 were about figures such as President Trump, Elon Musk, Robert F. Kennedy Jr and Pete Hegseth.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis 92% figure was up from the 82% last year, per the study. Liberals were the butt of the joke just 982 times across 818 episodes, which was the first time in the study\u2019s history that this joke count failed to reach quadruple digits.<\/p>\n

\n\tMelania Trump, President Biden, JD Vance and Eric Trump rounded out the top ten alongside general MAGA\/Trump supporters and Republicans.<\/p>\n

\n\tParty leadership, however, was fairly even with late-night hosts mocking Mike Johnson around the same amount as they mocked Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries. Real America\u2019s Voice\u2019s Brian Glenn\u00a0was the most joked-about conservative media personality.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe study found that Kimmel was the biggest source of gags against the right with 97% of his 3,046 jokes about them, understandable given that Trump and his FCC commissioner Brendan Carr went after him so directly. Colbert was next with 92% of his jokes aimed at Republicans, again, understandable given that he was canceled days after accusing his parent company Paramount of making a \u201cbigfatbribe<\/a>\u201d to settle a lawsuit with the President to smooth over a deal with Ellison.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon hosted the most number of shows this year with 161 episodes but had the lowest percentage of jokes against Republicans with 89%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Late-night television has had a wounding year; The Late Show with Stephen Colbert was canceled ahead of David…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":366172,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[179997,88,11575,11576,9610,10675,36512,92],"class_list":{"0":"post-366171","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-after-midnight","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-jimmy-kimmel-live","11":"tag-late-night-with-seth-meyers","12":"tag-the-daily-show","13":"tag-the-late-show-with-stephen-colbert","14":"tag-the-tonight-show-starring-jimmy-fallon","15":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}