Late Night TV is Dead and Something New is Replacing it
Conan is the only exception
After a hard day's work — after taking it from our boss for 8 hours, why do we watch James Corden and the kids from “Stranger Things” do a TikTok dance?
Why do we watch Jimmy Fallon take Post Malone to Olive Garden?
Or watch Colbert play with puppets?
The fact that America isn’t already a dictatorship is a miracle.
These “shows” are not entertaining. They are soul-crushing.
Late night is literally politics. It’s all pretend. Everyone in it is a charlatan, a snake oil salesman. They tell you what you want to hear, they don’t challenge you or stimulate you in any way. Didn’t we learn all this when celebrities painfully embarrassed themselves during Covid?
In the age of social media and podcasts, and in an era where we’ve pulled back the veil on entertainment, late-night TV is no longer necessary.
It’s Radio Shack; it’s party line; it’s dead. (Or soon will be)
Now that Trevor Noah is leaving — or being fired? — due to piss poor ratings on “The Daily Show” I think it’s finally time to say goodbye to late-night television.
The Death of Political Late Night
“You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”
— The Dark Knight
Stephen Colbert and John Stewart once spoke truth to power to warmongering neocons.
Now both are relics of the Bush administration.
What happened is that Donald Trump decayed Colbert and Stewart’s brain function. Both began to spend 99% of their time convincing their audiences that they were underdogs fighting against “the powers that be” despite lacking nuance on most subjects and standing beside the majority of celebrities, institutions, and media.
It rings hollow because it is.
This isn’t what killed political late night though.
It was Barack Obama.
No late-night host wanted to make fun of Obama.
Stewart especially was relentless at poking fun at Clinton, and Bush jokes basically wrote themselves. Both Stewart and Colbert would mock any politician early in their careers, but after Obama was elected, they went full-on political shilling, not realizing there was already a sea of those types to drown in.
Political late-night slowly became an echo chamber thereafter.
Gutless like a lot of comedy these days.
And this isn’t to say Colbert and Stewart aren’t comedic geniuses. They are. Colbert especially has written some of the funniest TV shows ever like “Strangers With Candy” and “Harvey Birdman.” But in their current form?
Cowards. Both of them.
Trevor Noah
The real death of late-night was when comedians started going after claps instead of laughs. “Clapter” comedy. Ever heard of it? It’s the dumbest shit ever.
Donald Glover said something important about this when shooting “Atlanta” S2:
“The №1 thing we kept coming back to is that it needs to be funny first and foremost. I never wanted this shit to be important. I never wanted this show to be about diversity; all that shit is wack to me. There’s a lot of “clapter” going on. A lot of n−−−−− be like …” — Glover starts clapping exaggeratedly — “‘So true, yes, so, so true.’ But what you did isn’t funny; they’re just clapping and laughing to be on the right side of history.”
Enter Trevor Noah.
Since Noah took over “The Daily Show” he’s shed almost a million live viewers — that’s 1.309 million during the Stewart era VS. 372,000 on average now, a 72% decrease.
He’s not alone.
Colbert is down 31% to 2.16 million, Fallon is down 64%, and Kimmel is permanently canceled on Twitter due to multiple blackface controversies.
And get this.
Fox News recently debuted “Gutfield!” — a conservative show and it averaged 2.19 million viewers, beating out Colbert for the number one spot.
Personally, I think many Fox shows are smug and cringe. But the majority of media has one opinion — a left-leaning “clapter” opinion — and that gets boring really quick. It’s stale like week-old Chinese food.
It’s why Fox is winning.
James Corden Killed Talk Shows
I’ll be the first to say that Jimmy Fallon doesn’t deserve all the hate.
His laugh is unbearable, and his mannerisms are that of an alien that’s just learned human customs, but you can tell he’s really trying.
Like his “SNL” days, he just seems happy to be there.
The same can’t be said of James Corden
He’s one sorry sack of shit.
He’s the Jar Jar Binks of late-night talk shows. A sycophantic, cringe-worthy dude who has been proven time and time again to treat anyone he perceives as below him as pure dirt.
Multiple co-workers of James have spoken out against him. My favorite interaction of his was a Reddit AMA where he only answered three questions before fleeing; here’s the best one:
“Hey James. You won’t remember me but me and my friends sat at a table next to you and Harry Styles + some others in Manchurian Legends in London’s Chinatown about 6 years ago. We didn’t bother you but you were a massively entitled cunt who yelled and treated the waitstaff like shit and when one of my party politely suggested you calm down, you got really aggressive and threatening (in a chubby way. Like a boozy panda.) So my question is this; why did Harry seem so cool, while you were such a massive throbbing bellend?”
People hate James so much there’s even a petition to get him out of the upcoming “Wicked” movie.
It has 109,000+ signatures as of now:
And for the cherry on top of this shit sundae James Corden replaced Craig Ferguson who was one of the good ones.
Craig actually didn’t give two shits about the Hollywood machine and was dryly hilarious.
It’s a shame we lost him.
Maybe next time.
At Least There’s Conan O’Brien”
I like how we all universally agree on “except for Conan O’Brien.”
Conan is the universal exception to the late-night rule.
He has always stayed ahead of the curve from his early days as a writer for “Saturday Night Live” and “The Simpsons” in their prime mind you, to his current podcast “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend.”
He’s always been the smart one, and it shows.
Final Thoughts
Imagine going to New York City.
There are great parks, great shows, restaurants, public spaces, monuments— but one of your friends suggests going to a taping of “The Tonight Show.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” any rational person would say.
This is all to point out that nobody cares who replaces Trevor Noah.
It doesn’t matter if it's Chris Rock, Samantha Bee or even Robert Downey Jr. Okay, maybe if it was Robert Downey Jr. But besides that one exception nobody cares because late-night TV is dead.
The new Johnny Carsons and Ed Sullivans of the world are Joe Rogan, “Your Mom’s House”, First We Feast’s Sean Evans, Tim Dillon, Conan O’Brien, and Ben Shapiro (whether you like him or not).
They’re all on YouTube or Spotify, and they don’t need NBC or CBS.
Give it 10 to 15 more years.
There won’t be a Fallon, Colbert, Corden or Jimmy Kimmel. They’ll all be looking for a career change; or panhandling on the streets.
Didn't know about Tim Dillon.
He's hilarious.
Thanks for pointing me to his podcast.