No because they’d all be seen as hokey and boring by today’s standards. Leno already did the comeback thing and it was a DISASTER, which led them to Fallon (an even bigger disaster). They would have probably been better sticking w/Conan but as I recall when he got the Tonight Show his ratings were down as well, and that was more than 10 years ago.
Great article. Beloni is mostly so solid but does sometimes get out over his skis (and it's all anonymous sources). Colbert produces 41 episodes a year for (Belloni's quote) $100 million dollars. That's about $2.4million per episode. With a 9% share and 2.4 million viewers plus socials, it's crazy to me that this show is losing (checks Beloni's math) 40 million a season (though even he concludes that doesn't include ancillary revenue). It would mean that every episode produced is losing roughly a cool million dollars. With the amount of commercial breaks in a program both on air and on socials, I just do NOT get that math (the average college football game on ESPN last season averaged 1.9 million viewers by comparison). Love this bit from Belloni's article: The bigger TV question: Is this the dam bursting? We’ve known for a while that the guys who host these late night shows—Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel (ABC), Jimmy Fallon (NBC), and Seth Meyers (NBC)—will likely be the last to do so, at least in the current format. CBS’s Late Late Show was also losing money when James Corden departed in 2023, but it lost less than Colbert because of brand integrations and spinoffs. (Corden was offered a new contract; Taylor Tomlinson, whose much-cheaper After Midnight replaced Corden, was also renewed this year but chose to quit and will be replaced by reruns of Byron Allen’s syndicated show. (Exactly how many seconds until Allen calls Cheeks and asks for the 11:35 slot?). This last bit is the key -- While the show still garners an average of 2.47 million viewers a night, leads its 11:35 rivals in total audience, and just this week scored its ninth consecutive Emmy nomination for outstanding talk/variety series, its ad revenue has plummeted precipitously since the 2021-22 season. Those first three bits don't pair well with that last bit. Would be like leading the nation in passing yards and touchdowns and wins but losing votes in the Heisman race
Changing demographics. Kids are watching Khaby Lame and Mr. Beast, not late night TV. The eyeballs are elsewhere.
There is a simple explanation to the last piece that advertising dollars are down. Prior to 2020, or maybe even before then, late night shows were pure comedy, and they steered clear of politics. Carson, Leno, and Letterman understood that when you inject politics into the show, you are ostracizing about 1/2 of your audience. I will admit I liked Colbert until his political commentary became unbearable. As we have seen in recent years, brands that tend to support a politicial party, are boycotted by the other side of the aisle. Once Colbert went off the deep end, he lost viewers and advertisers. No respectable brand wants to sponser a show that night after night attacks Trump, and for that matter almost 1/2 of the population, if not more, considering the outcome of the last election. That is why advertising revenue for the Late Show is way down.
One of the best skits on Carson. What I love about that piece, Carson understood comedy. He grabs Ed Ames so he doesn't remove the hatchet and lets the audience digest it, then after the laughter dies down, he makes his joke about being jewish. He also understood allowing his guests to be the "star" or part of the comedy, and then he just simply directed or steered it in a direction to make it more humorous. He didn't try to be the "star" of the show or overshadow his guests.
I'm not sure that holds up and sounds more like wishful thinking. I would imagine that DVR utilization on any late night shows is incredibly high and has only been getting higher. Yet most of the numbers that we see for viewership and share include DVR baked-in. I would be willing to bet this is way more of a factor than anything related to content. Streaming and live (non-DVR viewership) are considerably more valuable to advertisers than high percentage DVR viewership for obvious reasons (ads are often skipped by DVR viewers.) The sponsors of late night programing are well aware that the number of people watching their ads is CONSIDERABLY lower than the total viewership, and that the number is declining rapidly.
Good luck. Gutfeld is criminally unfunny, but he’s a right wing “comedian” so that’s par for the course.
We watch it every night. It did get a little stale, as many long-running shows do, but it was comfort TV. Jon Stewart is the master, as far as I'm concerned. Funny, articulate, intelligent, and he mugs like nobody's business.
Jon Stewart on Daily Show Future Post Merger: 'I Honestly Don't Know' Just hours before “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” was canceled at CBS, Jon Stewart opened up about the uncertain future of “The Daily Show” if the proposed Skydance–Paramount merger goes through. David Ellison’s Skydance Media is in the process of buying Paramount, which is the parent company of CBS and Stewart’s network Comedy Central. The $8 billion deal is still pending FCC approval more than a year after it was announced. But earlier this month, Trump and Paramount reached a settlement in the president’s lawsuit over an interview “60 Minutes” did with Kamala Harris, in which Paramount agreed to pay him $16 million. Both Colbert and Stewart have been vocal about their disapproval of the settlement. On Thursday’s episode of his “The Weekly Show With Jon Stewart” podcast, a listener asked: “Do you think Skydance would get rid of ‘The Daily Show’ after the merger goes through?” Stewart responded, “Unfortunately, we haven’t heard anything from them. They haven’t called me and said, ‘Don’t get too comfortable in that office, Stewart.’ But let me tell you something, I’ve been kicked out of shittier establishments than that. We’ll land on our feet. I honestly don’t know.”
Well I certainly can’t say for sure, but the evidence doesn’t look good. For one, these people have to exist, and yet no media company is giving them a shot, despite the money to be made if you are right. Second, today’s top rated shows, things like Survivor and Law and Order, don’t seem close to the experience of Carson. I think it’s just a different time.
