tl;dr - Late Night was killed by the Internet. This has nothing to do with Trump and everything to do with the increasing irrelevance of television.
Everyone keeps suggesting this is because of Trump but you’re ignoring what has been happening to both the Late Show and Late Night in general for years. The entire format is dying. Most people don’t watch the show live anymore, they do it on YouTube. Financially that’s not viable for the studios. The cost they put into it doesn’t equal out over the amount they can get back from YouTube. It doesn’t make financial sense for them to keep making the show when no one is watching it on its primary method. They could try to pivot the entire show to YouTube but that also would be kinda hard to justify the cost.
Television is dying. Jon Stewart has come out saying that Paramount is ‘risking Late Night’ but… it isn’t Paramount. It’s people. No one watches it anymore. Who wants to watch constant ads
Now if you want to take Politics into account, it shows how Late Night is on life support even worse. First off, the entire market is saturated. You’ve got too many Late Night hosts to choose from, all of them in essentially the time slot or close to it. All of them then talk about the exact same thing. The only thing you’re watching one show over the other for is the host or the guests that episode. Then there’s the focus on American politics which makes sense because it’s an American show but it alienates people outside the country from watching it on YouTube. And due to it having a heavy focus on American politics, like a lot does now a days, a lot of people are exhausted and don’t want to tune in. They want an escape not another reminder.
Seth Meyers is probably the only host who could easily survive this. Fallon and Kimmel have way too much money dumped into their shows. Meyers runs everything on a shoestring and has a hard focus on politics, not splitting his attention. He focuses the majority of his non-Guest screentime on politics with stuff like A Closer Look as well so his show doesn’t feel quite as pulled in two directions. The guest conversations are also super relaxed and casual, seeming to focus more on smaller celebrities than having constant big ones.
Love Colbert but I haven’t seen his show since December. Partially because of what I listed above, partially because he really leaned into the “Oh this is such a horrible tragedy and we must feel for the family of Brian and how horrible of a person Luigi is” garbage. Considering Colbert has never shyed away from telling off the CBS bosses, that was his own personal decision.
Then there’s the fact that I’m a Canadian. Hearing some of the shit that both him and other hosts had to say during these constant threats to my nations sovereignty was genuinely enraging. Kimmel tried to do a PuckOff thing where “Angry canadians message us videos for us to laugh at!” which, as far as I’m aware, went NO WHERE because every Canadian just got furious at him. Trump wants to use us for his own purposes and Kimmel went “Lets do the same thing!”
tl;dr - Late Night was killed by the Internet. This has nothing to do with Trump and everything to do with the increasing irrelevance of television.
Everyone keeps suggesting this is because of Trump but you’re ignoring what has been happening to both the Late Show and Late Night in general for years. The entire format is dying. Most people don’t watch the show live anymore, they do it on YouTube. Financially that’s not viable for the studios. The cost they put into it doesn’t equal out over the amount they can get back from YouTube. It doesn’t make financial sense for them to keep making the show when no one is watching it on its primary method. They could try to pivot the entire show to YouTube but that also would be kinda hard to justify the cost.
Television is dying. Jon Stewart has come out saying that Paramount is ‘risking Late Night’ but… it isn’t Paramount. It’s people. No one watches it anymore. Who wants to watch constant ads
Now if you want to take Politics into account, it shows how Late Night is on life support even worse. First off, the entire market is saturated. You’ve got too many Late Night hosts to choose from, all of them in essentially the time slot or close to it. All of them then talk about the exact same thing. The only thing you’re watching one show over the other for is the host or the guests that episode. Then there’s the focus on American politics which makes sense because it’s an American show but it alienates people outside the country from watching it on YouTube. And due to it having a heavy focus on American politics, like a lot does now a days, a lot of people are exhausted and don’t want to tune in. They want an escape not another reminder.
Seth Meyers is probably the only host who could easily survive this. Fallon and Kimmel have way too much money dumped into their shows. Meyers runs everything on a shoestring and has a hard focus on politics, not splitting his attention. He focuses the majority of his non-Guest screentime on politics with stuff like A Closer Look as well so his show doesn’t feel quite as pulled in two directions. The guest conversations are also super relaxed and casual, seeming to focus more on smaller celebrities than having constant big ones.
Love Colbert but I haven’t seen his show since December. Partially because of what I listed above, partially because he really leaned into the “Oh this is such a horrible tragedy and we must feel for the family of Brian and how horrible of a person Luigi is” garbage. Considering Colbert has never shyed away from telling off the CBS bosses, that was his own personal decision.
Then there’s the fact that I’m a Canadian. Hearing some of the shit that both him and other hosts had to say during these constant threats to my nations sovereignty was genuinely enraging. Kimmel tried to do a PuckOff thing where “Angry canadians message us videos for us to laugh at!” which, as far as I’m aware, went NO WHERE because every Canadian just got furious at him. Trump wants to use us for his own purposes and Kimmel went “Lets do the same thing!”
not reading all that
Bro the tl;dr was at the top of the comment
Sure, Jan.