{"id":376307,"date":"2025-12-29T18:08:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-29T18:08:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/376307\/"},"modified":"2025-12-29T18:08:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-29T18:08:09","slug":"how-attacks-on-kimmel-colbert-brought-a-fading-format-back-to-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/376307\/","title":{"rendered":"How attacks on Kimmel, Colbert brought a fading format back to life"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe Fourteenth Floor<\/a>\u201d is hardly the best episode of The Larry Sanders Show or even the season in which it ran. (That distinction, for both, goes to \u201cHank\u2019s Night In The Sun<\/a>.\u201d) Which isn\u2019t a slight: An unremarkable outing of this remarkable series isn\u2019t bad by any stretch. But the installment of the HBO comedy did spring to mind a few times over the past few months considering all of the stranger-than-fiction, headline-grabbing, and decidedly unfortunate drama surrounding Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, and late-night TV as a whole.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The episode of Sanders premiered in September 1994, a good seven years after Howard Stern (who played himself on the show) held a public rally against the Federal Communications Commission, only two after David Letterman (ditto) and Jay Leno\u2019s spat over hosting The Tonight Show post-Johnny Carson, and good 15 before another well-publicized scrap with Leno, that one with Conan O\u2019Brien (who didn\u2019t appear on Sanders but was referenced, often derisively by network executives).\u00a0<\/p>\n

The story arc and fuck-the-brass<\/a> themes of \u201cThe Fourteenth Floor\u201d are plain enough: While riffing on the programming at his network with guest John Ritter, the titular host (Garry Shandling, playing a thinly veiled version of himself) calls the executives there \u201cidiots.\u201d This prompts a war of sorts between the show and the network, which includes a kid (portrayed by Haley Joel Osment) hopping up on the couch for an interview as a slick-haired suit and boils over when sidekick Hank (Jeffrey Tambor), while presenting a gift basket of of Cup-A-Soups as an apology during a remote bit, trips over a secretary and injures his ankle. (This leads to the episode\u2019s most laugh-out-loud sequence, when a pissed Hank keeps storming away down the hall\u2014on crutches\u2014only to return during a talk with Larry.) Eventually, to save the job of producer Artie (Rip Torn), the host apologizes sincerely, only\u2014in classic loop-around Sanders fashion\u2014to be spurred on by Hank in the show\u2019s closing seconds into calling those at the network \u201cidiots\u201d again on the air. Artie\u2019s phone lights up with another angry call from upstairs. End credits.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The difference between late-night TV (or the pop-culture landscape) in the \u201990s versus today is almost too obvious to point out here. Back then, lots of people ended their nights by watching these shows live. The Tonight Show With Jay Leno could pulled in more than five million viewers in a single evening in 1995. Now? Not so much, with less than 700,000 catching<\/a> The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon over a week this summer. But cultural significance and attracted eyeballs aside, what really stands out about that Larry Sanders Show episode is how quaint that sort of skirmish feels. Having a disagreement with a couple of folks who make the decisions a few floors above you is nothing compared with an administration, by all appearances, relishing<\/a> in the ability to take a show off the air<\/a> for coverage it doesn\u2019t like and a network seemingly canceling one<\/a> in the hopes of appeasing that administration to secure a merger<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

As the year quickly winds down, it\u2019s worth pausing to remember, however briefly, that this business with The Late Show With Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel Live! actually happened. With so much noise these days, the respective cancellation and suspension of those shows\u2014and the frightening free-speech and First Amendment implications they suggest\u2014can easily be at risk of being drowned out by the latest, more consequential injustice and forgotten. To put it in perspective, the Kimmel debacle reached a fever pitch in September, which was somehow only three months ago. (Also, for more end-of-the-year analysis of the mingling of politics and comedy, check out Matt Schimkowitz\u2019s excellent piece<\/a> on how some stand-ups fought back to make \u201cthe manosphere the butt of the joke.\u201d)<\/p>\n

\u201cI think one of the scariest parts was seeing how effective this network of right-wing podcasts is that Brendan Carr was able to push the first diameter to make this happen completely independently of the government,\u201d Liz Hynes, a writer for Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, said on a recent episode of the OnWriting<\/a> podcast. (She was referring, of course, to the Chairman of the FCC dropping a threatening \u201cWe can do this the easy way or the hard way<\/a>\u201d in his talk with Benny Johnson after taking issue with a Kimmel comment.<\/a>) \u201cHe went on a podcast,\u201d she continued. \u201cHe said what he wanted them to do, [and] they did it as if viewers were rising up and demanding that they do this to Jimmy Kimmel. [There was] no evidence of that happening.\u201d To quote one of Oliver\u2019s go-to post-clip segues on Last Week: She\u2019s right.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s the kicker: It backfired and did more than a bit to breathe new life into a format that had seen much better days. Per CBS News<\/a>, Jimmy Kimmel\u2019s return to the airwaves in September \u201cdrew an estimated 6.26 million total broadcast viewers.\u201d (The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, according to Forbes, also had an increase in ratings, which went up 32 percent<\/a> in the aftermath of the announcement of show\u2019s cancellation in July.) Plus, at least anecdotally, the Kimmel comeback was the first time in years\u2014perhaps even since the Tonight Show With Conan O\u2019Brien dustup more than a decade and a half back\u2014that tuning in live felt like a must and struck this much of a chord, a moment no doubt compounded by the recent Colbert developments.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis show is not important,\u201d Kimmel remarked\u00a0during that evening\u2019s monologue. \u201cWhat is important is that we get to live in a country that allows us to have a show like this. And that\u2019s something I\u2019m embarrassed to say I took for granted until they pulled my friend Stephen off the air and tried to coerce the affiliates who run our show in the cities that you live in to take my show off the air. That\u2019s not legal. That\u2019s not American. That is un-American, and it is so dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a short video piece<\/a> published on Christmas Eve, New York Times critic at large Jason Zinoman said, \u201cThe year started with everyone assuming that late night was dying,\u201d noting that The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon had ben cut down to four nights per week and Late Night With Seth Meyers had lost its band, among other bad signs for the format. But, Zinoman explained, that changed, with the one-two punch of Colbert and Kimmel sparking renewed interest in this American pastime. \u201cThat was one of the key moments in culture this year,\u201d he claimed of Kimmel\u2019s return. And it\u2019s worth noting that he didn\u2019t add \u201cpop\u201d in front of \u201cculture\u201d there, as this story is much bigger than two guys in suits who tell jokes and interview celebrities on TV losing their jobs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And that is something Colbert, during his acceptance speech for Outstanding Talk Series at this year\u2019s Emmys (which occurred just three days before Kimmel\u2018s suspension and was preceded by a standing ovation), got at quite beautifully: \u201c10 years ago, in September of 2015, Spike Jonze stopped by my office and said, \u2018Hey, what do you want this show to be about?\u2019 And I said, \u2018Ah, Spike, I don\u2019t know how you could do it, but I\u2019d kinda like to do a late-night comedy show that was about love.\u2019 And I don\u2019t know if I ever figured that out, but at a certain point, and you can guess what that point was, I realized in some ways we were doing a late-night comedy show about loss. And that\u2019s related to love, because sometimes you only truly know how much you love something when you get a sense that you might be losing it. And 10 years later, in September of 2025, my friends, I have never loved my country more desperately.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Or, as put far less gracefully, but no less accurately, by Towelie in this year\u2019s Christmas episode of South Park (which premiered on Paramount+, of all streamers<\/a>): \u201cSo crazy, man. You can\u2019t write this shit.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tim Lowery is The A.V. Club\u2018s TV editor.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThe Fourteenth Floor\u201d is hardly the best episode of The Larry Sanders Show or even the season in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":376308,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[88,92],"class_list":{"0":"post-376307","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376307","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=376307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376307\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/376308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}