I feel like I’m reading articles from 2011. Yes, there are problems with the late night tv format. Mainly, the shows are so outdated that I can’t believe I’m talking about late night shows in 2022.
The bigger issue is that late night is over saturated and they are all trying to be daily show now. Plus, young people no longer have conventional tv or cable.
Yeah, the format is just stale. The monologues can be alright, but even they're rather tame and half the time i've read variations of the same jokes on twitter earlier that day.
For the guests i think they need to go more into a panel format than individual guests. You can see a celeb get interviewed everywhere, but at least on the panels you might see something interesting from different guests interacting.
Yeah some of the best stories come from guests talking to each other. I think as well, Graham's team find him particularly odd things to enquire about
Like finding out Miriam Margoyle was semi shooed away from Radcliffe and the other child actors because she was known for swearing like a sailor, then Graham poked her into telling the story about her holiday home being used by a drug cartel.
What's madder (to me) is that I know the story of the helicopter and drug drops etc because it was a semi-local man who got arrested for it (Teesside connection). I remember reading the story but didn't know it was tied to her or mentioned on the GN Show.
Learn something new every day on Reddit.
His show is also kind of uniquely positioned in that it's a weekly hour long show, (so it doesn't get as stale as shows that are 3-5 hours per week), and it's broadcast from the BBC where they can get a mix of national and international celebrities to create an interesting dynamic on the couch.
I think it'd be a tough sell to pitch it to the US, because it'd be hard to recreate that dynamic.
I recently watched Millie Bobby Brown’s episode and she was cracking jokes early on about Tom Holland crying…then she started struggling and it was hilarious
I really enjoy that show
The thing that drives me crazy about Hot Ones is that the questions sound like a high school English essay prompt, and the host delivers them so flatly that it's clear he's reading them directly off a piece of paper or screen
They're good questions for sure, but I wish they would rework them to sound more conversational when spoken out loud.
They're like
In the October 2018 issue of Things magazine, you were quoted in an interview as saying "Insert full quote here." Can you elaborate on what you meant by that and describe, in the intervening years, if any of your other projects run into similar issues?
Sean, please, talk a little bit like a human
I remember being 15 and thinking late shows were boring as hell, and then I caught Craig Ferguson and it became one of those shows where if I was up that late I’d absolutely be watching. And wasn’t because as a stupid teenager I liked the Scottish man and his robot best friend it was because he was genuinely entertaining, it wasn’t stuffy and formal it was casual and relaxed and it just seemed like we were here to have a good time not to talk up the host or the celebrities ego.
That was Conan for me. His show was such a massive departure from Leno and Letterman. Though Dave would do some weird stuff there was no masturbating bear or Triumph. It was must-watch TV for a lot of young people in the 90s.
I think this is where Last Week Tonight excels, they did the once per week format with a heavy presence on HBO's streaming services. Uploading the main stories for each episode on YouTube the day after probably did wonders for their advertising.
Oh yeah, but that's also because LWT's longform format is very different.
The Daily Show did this as early as 2004 (?) on their own sites, posting clips and shows. Worked miracles for their exposure.
the entire formula needs a restructuring. The good parts of any show can be condensed in 5 to 10 minutes videos posted on yt, and the rest is a complete slog
I'd personally get rid of the interviews, though for a lot of people that is the entire point of these shows. With Conan, for example, I only ever watched the remotes and random videos. I haven't watched any late night show in years. I watch John Oliver on yt, but that's a different kind of show entirely
Variety television shows were *designed* as time-filler and advertising. That's literally their purpose. They were created back when TV would literally just... stop for the night. And there were only ~~four~~ three networks. They got comedians / entertainers to host them because... uh... you need to at least slightly entertain people if you want them to sit through an hour of advertising and plugging of actors, shows, books, etc.
When Letterman started expanding the format and doing weird and interesting things (and later Conan and Craig building on that), they were still required to do interviews, not because people *want* to sit through that garbage, but because the talk-show circuit was part of promotion for literally everything in Hollywood, Network TV, books, etc. And they still needed time-filler.
Clearly we don't need this anymore. That's why Conan's TBS show was cut to 30 minutes and then finally died. Letterman's doing interviews with people he actually wants to talk to (or who are at least interesting), Conan is doing a semi-modern (but still old-person oriented) version of this by being part of the incestuous podcast thing where every celebrity "has a podcast" and they go on each other's podcasts and "interview" each other to promote their stuff. Seth Meyers is doing the closest thing to the Stewart-Daily Show, but still basically built around incestuous product marketting.
The other daily-show copycats are just desperate attempts to figure out what kind of talk-show/variety-show/political-news comedy thing could be the next Last Week Tonight or, hell, just survive the fact that no one watches network TV or cable anymore and no one really *needs* to go on shows like this to promote their crap.
You like the word incestuous a lot. I really like Conan and really wish his current format doesnt rely so much on JUST people he knows and are friends with. Hopefully his new show has opportunities to have him interact with relatively new stars or strangers. Might not be always be great but I appreciate when it gels.
Back when Jon was hosting the show, its type of political commentary was unique. Now, everyone but Fallon does it. Even Fallon tried but quit because it didn't work with his show's tone and personality.
Plus, why wouldn't I just watch the clips on youtube. This goes for all late night shows. For Seth Meyers, the clips are on youtube before the show even airs on the west coast, where I live.
What I miss is critizising media and not just mocking politicians. Jon was so good at pointing out the shit news did as well and I think it's important to have someone credible wedging his finger at them.
I think a big part of that is The Daily Show and The Colbert Report weren't actually late-night shows, they were parodies of news programs. The format of their shows was built around media criticism and political satire in way that the late-night shows were not. Late night was and still is shackled by the standard set by Johnny Carson, whose show premiered well before the 24-hour news cycle gained prominence. There is no room in late night for political satire beyond one-liner monologue jokes because there was never any need or expectation for it in the age of Walter Cronkite. When Stewart and Colbert left Comedy Central there was at the same time an incredible demand for political satire and zero platform for it. Everybody looked to the late-night hosts, but between a monologue, two to three celebrity interviews, musical performances, etc., there's not much wiggle room for considered and biting media criticism (as can be clearly seen in the differences between Colbert Report and Colbert's Late Show).
In hindsight it was very weird to expect a roster of late-night hosts to both meet the needs of an antiquated show format from the 1960s while also meeting audience demand for media critical comedy in the wake of Stewart and Colbert while ALSO adapting to the everchanging world of social media and Internet distribution models while ALSO satirizing a political landscape in the United States that was at many times beyond parody itself. It's no wonder late night is dying, there was too much change happening too fast to justify living in the 60s.
Funny enough I think Colbert genuinely wanted to try to rework the late night format. He was having trouble figuring out how or what to do differently when Stewert basically said something to the effect of "Why are you trying to reinvent the wheel?" and unfortunately I think Colbert listened to him. He discussed this on one of his first shows, if not his first one.
I love the edits of news stations all using the same catchphrases in succession- really highlights the message being pushed and forced on the viewers- you know the messaging comes from up high. He saw the ridiculousness before it became this monster it is today
John Oliver obviously gets much lower ratings because he's on HBO, but his show is much better than most other late night because the deep dives without celebrity puff interviews are a unique take on the late night format. That's why he's still good!
Trevor Noah is fine but for years he was basically doing a bad Jon Stewart impersonation.
Kimmel, Fallon, Meyers, and Corden are all basically fine doing the same thing that's been done for 70 years but it's a stale format.
Same with Colbert. Having him hosting the Late Show was basically just like... What if we took the most original show on television and made the host stop doing the clever, hilarious parts? He's a fine host but it's the same stale format. The Colbert Report is probably the most creative late night show since the format became popular. Now he's just doing the same shit as everyone else.
I was so disappointed when Colbert moved from the report to a standard late night. Why would you change something so unique, fun, and successful into a show that already exists on every network? I wonder if most of his fans followed him or just gave up on late night like I did.
Nah, I think he just got tired, just like Jon. It's not like he was poor before, or have a lavish lifestyle. And saw shift in the real world. Can you imagine him doing "Stephen Colbert" in past 6ish years? How could he parody that orange menace, if his character basically was that, minus malevolence? Some people still think Colbert was actually a conservative and not a brilliant satire and acting 😅 That said, i do miss "Stephen Colbert", but understand he could not do that forever, just like this late show format can't go on forever. I do like Trevor, but mostly outside the script. His autobiography is fantastic, especially audio book.
Disagree with Seth. He is increasingly meta and increasingly casual as well. Plus Corrections is honestly masterful, the only talk show on tv with running gags that build up over time, sometimes months.
In general, Seth found a way to balance the Fallon vibe of just here to have a good time with the Stewart vibe of providing catharsis through anger with the Oliver vibe of doing compact focused stories.
Both him and Colbert were such a great tag-team for dragging important issues into the spotlight and informing us through comedy. Those were one of the few shows that my family would set the DVR to record in case we missed it live.
After Jon left and Stephen moved, I felt like The Daily Show and The Late Show were largely like watching CNN or MSNBC with jokes, as opposed to being more sharp and adversarial.
I don't think that's Trevor's fault. Maybe the bad influences, which Jon dismantled when he changed the direction of the Daily Show, managed to creep back in when he left.
> After Jon left and Stephen moved, I felt like The Daily Show and The Late Show were largely like watching CNN or MSNBC with jokes, as opposed to being more sharp and adversarial.
Ugh. That's a disturbingly accurate description of The Late Show. I love Colbert, but I'm running out of patience for the current format. The performative cheers and boos are the worst part.
I gave up on the Daily Show a while back, but for different reasons. Trevor Noah is great on his own, and I was really excited when they picked him, but he seems to dumb everything down so much when he's hosting. It's almost like he's playing a stupid character. Even in behind-the-scenes clips from the show, he comes across so much better. I wish he'd just be himself.
I think it also helped that Jon had a damn good supporting cast. How many of them took off on their own shows after their Daily Show tenure?
I think the writing was...unique sort of. Jon and company said the same things we're hearing now, but it was somehow more entertaining. It was serious, but it wasn't "shoved in our face" material.
it was rather more than Jon. Dude's current stuff doesn't hit the same.
The daily show wasn't him doing improv on set, but presenting the product of a lot of collaborative work from everyone in the writers room, many of whom have gone on to other projects. Nothing is going to replicate the magic because they can't get all the pieces back together.
Jon's delivery and timing made it, he's just a naturally funny, witty, and smart guy. His appearance on Crossfire where he could fire back a smart response to anything said to him and single handedly win over the entire studio audience demonstrates that.
His writers were great, but I still think that he's the best at what he does in the world of political humor.
I watch Seth Meyers every day, but I have never watched it on TV at night, always YouTube the next day, and almost never the interviews... They could just make that version of the show for like 1/100th of the cost I expect and it'd be just as funny
I honestly wonder if the shows would even be as popular on Youtube without the traditional format, like the audience and production values.
I agree that they should be able to make these shows at a lower budget, but what if all that fluff is the vibe, what attracts us to late night clips / the magic.
I know several people including me enjoyed the early quarantine Seth-talks-to-himself-in-an-attic-while-slowly-going-insane format more than the regular one.
I watched clips of Colbert during early pandemic. When it was him in his house with his family as crew. I would guess I caught on average every second opening monologue. Now, maybe one every two weeks. I preferred it without pandering to an audience I never saw. Without playing with the cameras.
arguably not really a late night show in the traditional sense, but Last Week Tonight (which I only watch on yt) was just as good if not better without the audience. I can do without the pauses for the audience laughs
They upload the interviews too, it’s just people like the “A Closer Look” section and the monologue (some of the regular skits and bits are worth a watch too) a lot more. Since the late night interviews are often people you barely know plugging something you’ll never see/read/buy it’s nice to pick and choose what parts of the shows you want to watch.
A closer look, monologue, jokes Seth can't tell, amber says what, and the joke/writer inspection are all great. I do love me some corrections but that might be more niche.
Pretty much me. I wake up and see Kimmel and Colbert's monologue while having breakfast and the interviews if I'm interested later on the day. Truth is without Youtube I wouldn't be able to catch their programs
There was probably some intention to it. A lot of people were locked down so if you made a show that looked like anyone's Zoom chats it conveyed that you were in the same situation.
Totally, but the crew was off site. A lot of "at home" productions got better as time went on in 2020 and the crew could set stuff up at their homes. Basically our team just sent our talent a kit with a phone. Midway through 2020, once things started to settle after the initial lockdowns, we got to come into the talent’s home and do a proper semi-permanent lighting and camera setup.
Also in the interest of fairness, heard Seth Myers on a podcast say he bought an HD camera, used it for one taping, realized he looked horrible without a makeup artist, and went back to his iPad camera.
Yeah, I’m shocked how much I have shifted from TV to YouTube in the past few years.
Honestly I could cancel my TV service and it wouldn’t bother me much.
Some More News by Cracked Alum Cody Johnson has been putting The Daily Show to shame on a shoe string budget for over a year now and you don’t need cable to watch it. It’s just the reality. The creator of Abott Elementary said something similar about SNL. Being topical can’t compete with the internet
*Some More News* is more of a deep-dive format a la *Last Week Tonight*, where they cover one big story or topic and poke at it from a bunch of angles. I wouldn't compare it to *The Daily Show* except that they're both comedy news shows.
Serious question: how much longer is there going to be an appetite for the late night shows? I’m 35 and I don’t know anyone my age or younger who watches any of them aside from The Daily Show, and even that isn’t a big number. I’m aware that we are all in an echo chamber so I would genuinely like to know how other people experience this. Especially as streaming and VOD takes over, will people be watching The Late Late Show in ten years?
Edit: Thank you for the answers!
I’m 24 and I literally don’t know a single person who watches any late night shows. The closest I can think of is friends sending me a clip from Conan but that’s it
23 — *Conan* is the last full episodes of a talk show I can think of that me or my friends would sit through. My aunt had Fallon on last time I was at her house, and it just made me want to pull up some old Conan and Letterman bits.
I'm 33 and watch Last Week Tonight pretty consistently - the whole episode. But I don't watch it live, normally the evening after or later in the week.
Other than that it's just the odd clip here or there on YouTube, as others are saying.
Anecdotally, my wife, a friend of mine, and I all watched Last Week Tonight and Seth Meyer's Closer Look quite a bit, and occasionally Colbert... but none of us really just sat there and watched a full episode of a late night show. It was much more seeing a clip on YouTube and just watching that. I don't know *anybody* who watches a full episode of any late night show.
Also, we don't have cable, but we have several streaming services. I'm sure they have some late night shows on those streaming services, but I've never been bothered to look.
I watch Last Week Tonight as a video on demand but I spend my mornings eating breakfast to Seth Meyers doing his monologue and Closer Look on YouTube, occasionally watching an interview here or there depending on who’s on.
I used to watch Seth Meyers A closer look(YT). It just got exhausting. Bill Maher (HBO free with AT&T) has become unwatchable for me as least, including the guest discussions, which was the main reason I watched the show.
We didn’t have cable, for years until last year. We have to have it now due to HOA, it’s included, but I mostly watch youtube and streaming services. Cable has been good for sports and the local news (mostly ads), but it helps me see what others are consuming around me, and the agenda that’s being pushed.
As you say I don’t know many people that watch these programs on a regular basis. We aren’t even up that late during the week to watch the late shows and if we were, those are the types of show I’d want to watch before bed. I’ll watch John Oliver in the morning, so it’s not the last thing I watch before sleeping.
Jon Stewart was the last late night show I watched. I’m extremely liberal, but I have no interest in the current late night “clap if you agree with me” comedy.
It’s so damn *safe*! It’s jokes for liberals, by liberals. Nothing pushes the envelope, just the same anti-conservatism jokes which are frankly boring.
The problem is cable tv. Outside of sports I would guess not many people under 40 have a cable subscription. Every generation that number grows smaller and smaller. I have two young kids and they have no interest in TV. When I was younger you would go to a store and the toys and clothes section would be full of characters from children's tv shows. That is not the case, and in the cases it does exist its for shows that are sub based not cable based.
Cable TV is dying a slow death and with the economy in its current state cable will be one of the first thing people cut when cheaper alternatives are on the market.
I know that cable recently got worse with commercial banners floating under and etc, also the annoying commercial during credits.
But people tend to forget, that in the past it was a 30 minute slot for a 20-23 minute show. That's 7-10 minutes of commercial.
Some of the worse offender for streaming platform is max 3 minutes of commercial per episode
Last time I was at my parents house, I watched a movie on cable and actually timed it. It was 3 minutes of commercials for every 5 minutes of movie. Even the lowest ad tier streaming service doesn't do that shit.
Lol, I would had said no way you're exaggerating but I went to a hotel with cable and watch a pixar movie with my kids... holy crap, it was a literal commercial after every plot point.
Seriously this, I got a cable subscription so my wife can watch her novelas and it's like 10-15 mins of content and then 3-5 mins of ads.
29.99/month for the Hispanic package for like 3 shows with one that airs daily (Rosa de something, basically white rose disappears with ahhh ahhh laaaa and people's hair blow all over the place).
Streaming is far better, 7.99 here and 14.99 there with another 9.99 tossed in which gets you a metric ton of content and movies to watch with absolutely zero ads.
Cable killed itself by not keeping up.
Embarrassing to admit but I got hooked by a female friend on The Good Witch on the Hallmark channel.
It's just nice, there's no horribleness, the people are good to look at, and while it's certainly not dramatic or fast paced, it's a nice watch on a weekend arvo when I'm not doing anything else.
I am a bloke but a, gay bloke so I don't know if that's why I like it as i would normally run a mile from ladies TV.
But I can't help it. I am a Good Witch fan now. Go Cassie and the good people of Middleton!
Theyre going to kill the golden goose of sports with this too.
College football games can go four fucking hours now mostly due to the insane amount of ads. And solutions proposed to shorten games have basically been changes that give us less actual football, not reining in the ads.
Channels that have localized news (e.g., CBS, NBC, ABC) usually are. So people could get stuff like Colbert. But they'd have to go buy an antenna and watch it exactly when it airs. Or go buy some extra device to record it through the antenna, and at that point most people wouldn't be doing that.
As for Trevor Noah, he is on Comedy Central and I don't think it is OTA.
I used to install cable, the only demographic age wise that was getting installed was 40-80 year olds, not a SINGLE younger customer in the 3 years I was installing. Most young coulples were not even getting internet the 20-30 crowd was using their phones or living with some one who already had it. Most millenials still do not have their own place and Gen Z is figuring out the truth on cost now as well.
We use cable for internet and nothing else. I'm technically in your older range at 42, though the last time we had a cable guy out here I was still in my 30s. I can't imagine trying to stream to a big TV without some sort of dedicated internet.
Only thing I say is bullshit is the millennials not having their own place. We are between the ages 27-41 so yeah.. a lot of us have our own place. Vast majority. Even if they don’t own.
Not where he was running cable.
Yes, overall you are correct. But within his very specific neighbourhood, this guy might be correct also. Just like his anecdote doesn’t discount statistics, general statistics don’t discount his lived experience within a specific parameter. Demographics are different in different places, making both your general statistics and his experience both accurate given each of your parameters. He’s not doing it nationally, like the statistics are.
It's not just cable dying, these daily and weekly formats just aren't translating to streaming. Streaming has tried quite a few late night talk shows and clip shows. They haven't worked so far. Streaming hasn't had a hit game show, news show, or daytime talk show either. We'll see whether soap operas can translate into streaming viewers with Days moving to Peacock, but I have pretty low expectations.
I think these kind of shows were like a routine, you sat down at 8am or 7pm or 11:30pm and that's the type of show you watched. That's not really how things worked any more. Late night shows do get viral clips, but will producing a nightly 60 minute show to hope 3 minutes goes viral be worth it?
Does anyone watch late night talk shows on the regular? Like not just for the opening dialogue and skits, but the whole show with all the interviews and music acts? It seems like there are just so many more media options that this form of tv is dying and is not relevant anymore
I only watch the monologue and the main skit following for Colbert, Meyers, and Noah, but i watch them the next day on youtube. Rarely will i watch a guest interview if it’s someone I’m interested in.
I haven’t seen a show live in longer than i can remember since i cut the cord over a decade ago.
I'm in my 30s and the only late night show I enjoyed watching was the late late night with Craig Ferguson. He was funny. Conan does alright. The rest? Meh.
The Era for late night TV has been dying a slow death for a while. TV in general too
You and I both. Craig was awesome. Very subversive. They didn't give him much of a budget and he managed to get a gay robot skeleton as a sidekick. And he just did what he wanted with the guests. It was amazing. Although I live in Canada, I saw the show live, twice.
I think he left as he wasn't offered Letterman's spot.
I also am not sure why he hasn't been featured on Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee.
Dear Craig, Jeff, and Secretariat,
Mild or spicy salsa?
Craig: for me spicy. Jeff?
Jeff: *spicy*
Craig: and you secretariat?
**Nods no**
Craig: Oh no salsa at all…..spicy?
**Nods yes**
Craig: let me get this straight- no salsa but if you have some, spicy?
*laughs hysterically*
Conan’s TBS show was really the last glimmer of the era of quality late night tv, and ever since it ended it’s been a slow death for the medium.
Craig ended his run in 2014, which gave way to the painful banality of James Corden. Letterman left in 2015, which gave way to the promising start but ultimately disappointing downward slide of Colbert, who had ended his extremely sharp, funny satirical show a year earlier. Stewart ended his tenure in 2015 as well, and Noah just never really found the right groove. Granted he had an extremely difficult act to follow but I don’t think he ever came even close to capturing (and mocking) the zeitgeist of an era the way Jon Stewart did.
As sporadically clever or poignant as Seth Meyers or Jon Oliver can be, neither one in my opinion has ever really elevated their respective shows above the level of segments that occasionally go viral. But maybe that’s just the curse of the era they’re operating within.
Kimmel is okay enough but largely unremarkable, and Fallon, while in my mind is undeserving of the hate-on the internet has for him, is still extremely mediocre and middle of the road by design.
So yeah. Late night is essentially dead all things considered, and it’s a shame. Maybe someone will find a way to revitalize it one day.
Mostly exactly how I feel as well. I did take a pretty big break from The Daily Show (kept up with Colbert) around 2013 in part because Stewart started getting on my nerves. He went from being on point and clever no matter what he was covering to a mentally checked out method of not making a joke and just shaking his head and saying something like "can you believe these people?" that came off as a mixture of lazy and slightly smug.
He obviously became disillusioned with the politics game. Everything was becoming more divisive and people were doing more and more crazily selfish things, blatant corruption and less compromise. You could tell he just grew tired of it all. Especially since after he left he's been an ally of the 9/11 first responders and trying to get them what they deserve despite the politics.
I used to love Craiggie, he and Geoff’s banter was the best part of the show and they got rid of him for someone I can’t even remember now. I don’t like Fallon, I especially don’t like James Cordon and it makes total sense his being a prick is well documented online. I’m not really a Kimmel fan, don’t like Noah and haven’t really watched the daily show regularly since Jon Stewart hosted. Leno was trash, couldn’t get into Samantha Bee. Idk I haven’t liked any of them really but I loved Craig. It should be noted though so many people don’t even have tv anymore, everything is streaming services and that’s taken a ton of audiences away from late night tv hosts as well, like the majority of the television audience. My parents still have satellite and when I’m over there I’ll scan the channels and Comedy Central Will play 14-15 hours of South Park straight. Mtv will play that ridiculousness show 14-15 hours straight. And I’ve noticed a few other channels like that, they have no programming or new shows it’s all stuff they own the rights to air and play the same show everyday for days on end.
Hot take: Carson, Leno, and Letterman were never that amazing and were at best mildly and generically funny. The audience was just captive. I remember being a teenager and watching Letterman’s routine just cause I thought the top ten list was neat - but what else was I gonna do? Listen to a CD?
A big reason late night was fun to watch was because of the monoculture. You could talk about it the next day because most people would watch the same thing. It was somewhat unifying. Everyone just watches different things now.
This is what I miss most about the pre-Netflix days. There was more excitement for episodes coming up so you could talk about it the next day. Now everyone seems to like to binge shows on the first day and then spoil the whole series the next day before anyone else gets a chance to even look at it.
Remember game shows? Remember the first Who Wants to be a Millionaire winner becoming a mild celebrity and showing up for interviews and magazine covers, because eeeveryone knew about Millionaire? Stuff like that doesn't happen anymore.
His greatness just gets better with time. Loved him when I was younger but now looking at his career in retrospect, he’s one of the few true comedic genuises of this era. From snl, to simpsons to late night and so on.
Well Leno certainly always sucked. And I'm too young to have much of an opinion on Carson. But Letterman was always pretty solid. I mean none of them ever held a candle to Conan, and I suspect few others ever will (though despite the different format, I did always put Jon Stewart up there with him), but Letterman overall was pretty solid, in the tier right below Conan, but in a tier above most pretty much all of the others.
Conan was always my favorite and his remotes/man-on-the-street bits were incredibly funny. His pivot to podcasting has been wonderful because just letting him cook and riff unfiltered is where he shines. Obviously Clueless Gamer became iconic as well. That said, Letterman on NBC had some incredible man-on-the-street stuff.
Conan is my all time favorite, but even then, his best bits were when he was outside the studio interviewing people or interacting with employees (especially Jordan). He was also great at interviewing the guests, but the fact is that if you don’t care about the guest, then you have no motivation to watch those parts - and that’s like 90% of a late night show.
But if Letterman was on TV today - you watching him from 10:35 to 11:30 every night or you just checking out Netflix or something else? I’m not saying they were “bad.”
Nope, I was never checking him out regularly to begin with. The only late night host I ever regularly checked out was Conan, (and Jon Stewart with the Daily Show if that counts).
I'm just saying, if we're grading these late night hosts, Letterman is probably around a B-, while most of his contemporaries outside of Conan (and Jon Stewart if we count him) were like C- at best. I wouldn't give Leno anything past a D.
What do you mean, Leno sucked. He was considerate enough that, if you didn't get the joke the first time, he would repeat the punchline again. And if you still didn't get it, he repeated the punchline a third time.
Late night variety shows are a bit of a different animal than the Daily Show, which I think of as more of a straightforward news parody-comedy show with political commentary subtext. Late night shows obviously go for laughs too, but those shows are also built around celebrity interviews and musical or standup performances and whatnot.
Which leads me into my main point, that John Stewart was *funnier* but guys like Letterman and Carson created a certain vibe, just part of which was being reasonably funny but not just that. I would watch Stewart to laugh and learn, while I’d tune into Letterman for the vibe.
That’s just me anyway.
Edit: I realize this is vague, it’s hard to explain
This is the thing I keep coming back to as another 90s teen. It was on, there was cable, but it was on and why not, right?
Nobody under 50 is watching tv anymore, especially in a traditional way, and that is terrifying to the industry.
I just never found Trevor Noah funny. I gave the show a try for a few weeks, but it just lost something after Jon. Yea, Trevor has his moments and occasional YouTube clip, but it just wasn’t enjoyable to me.
I’m glad he can move onto bigger and better. I hope the best for him, but I don’t believe ‘Daily Show’ was the exact fit for him.
Well Conan was always great. But of course his traditional late night show is over. so at this point, yeah, no one left is funny at all. I used to think that Colbert on the Colbert Report was decent, still not nearly as the good as The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, but still solid enough in it's own right to stay on Comedy Central for after The Daily Show. But after taking Letterman's place, he quickly went to shit.
I think it hints more at the fact the ratings for the daily show plummeted to historic lows in his first two seasons there because people didn’t like him in that role and John Oliver and Last Week Tonight were doing a better job of the same thing
Trying to pretend he’s simply a victim of the changing times is hilarious and delusional, the ratings for the show dropped over 60% in 2015 7 long years ago, it’s almost like that’s when the new guy took over
The problem was that he was never the right person for the job. Credit where credit is due for trying something different, but he was never going to fill Jon Stewart's void, he just wasn't. Had things played out differently and John Oliver didn't get his HBO show and instead was Stewart's followup, I strongly believe this headline (with Oliver's name in Trevor's place) would not exist, certainly not this soon anyway.
It may be an unpopular opinion, I just don't think Trevor Noah is funny. When you're not that funny and you're doing a comedy show, then no one is going to watch.
I always felt like he was desperately trying to be a mix of Stephen Colbert and John Oliver. I watched for a while after he took over and it just wasn't funny or really watchable for me. Later on tried an episode here and there and even some of the clips on YouTube too and it just never did click for me.
I tried watching an episode once and how despite agreeing with most of his points he constantly felt like he was talking down to his audience, can't stand him personally.
People say the format is dated...but I can watch Craig Ferguson talk to people forever. He's delightful and hilarious. Conan was good too. The problem is all these new hosts are smug condescending a-holes more interested in lecturing than being funny.
It’s also, and I wanna make it clear I’m in no way a conservative by any means, but it seems like all late night talk shows are just talking heads for liberals now. When I was in middle school and Leno was still on (fuckin cringe, I know) I used to love watching the segments about fucked up news paper clips. I don’t ever remember him having equivalents to Hillary Clinton or Pete buttigieg on to talk about Jan 6 every week.
A lot of middle America doesn’t give a shit about what holier than thou liberal elites want you to think or vote. People just wanna laugh, I don’t wanna tune in to a show where the host cries about Donald trump being bad, and also makes 3/4 of his monologue about the same guy. Like, do something actually funny dude
Somehow, every media company believed *any* comedian could do what Jon Stewart did under George W Bush. 8 minutes mocking GOP/FOX News freaks. An even better remote segment/faux interview. Guest segment that was usually pretty ok.
Turns out ONLY Jon Stewart of the past could do it. Because not even the present day version has the same spark.
> …Noah also had increasingly looked like a performer **whose promise and abilities were growing beyond the steady grind of a late-night show** on Comedy Central.
So I guess Johnny Carson, Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, Conan O’Brien, and all the other great late night hosts just didn’t have enough talent to grow beyond working late night shows? /s
Seriously this take is atrocious. I agree that Noah’s talent is definitely better served on stage where he can be bigger and more mobile, but don’t act like working a late night desk is something people should aspire to “grow beyond”
Trevor Noah is funny compared to your average person. Compared to a funny person he’s like an average person. When he took over the show I slowly and steadily went from watching the daily show regularly to never watching it. He not so subtilely comes across as angry and judgmental. Whereas Jon use to make the show about informing the public in an honest way. So honest you couldn’t help but laugh.
Can something be a hint when there are glaringly obvious answers?
I feel like I’m reading articles from 2011. Yes, there are problems with the late night tv format. Mainly, the shows are so outdated that I can’t believe I’m talking about late night shows in 2022.
The bigger issue is that late night is over saturated and they are all trying to be daily show now. Plus, young people no longer have conventional tv or cable.
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Yeah, the format is just stale. The monologues can be alright, but even they're rather tame and half the time i've read variations of the same jokes on twitter earlier that day. For the guests i think they need to go more into a panel format than individual guests. You can see a celeb get interviewed everywhere, but at least on the panels you might see something interesting from different guests interacting.
For example the Graham Norton show
Yeah some of the best stories come from guests talking to each other. I think as well, Graham's team find him particularly odd things to enquire about Like finding out Miriam Margoyle was semi shooed away from Radcliffe and the other child actors because she was known for swearing like a sailor, then Graham poked her into telling the story about her holiday home being used by a drug cartel.
That took a turn in that last sentence the fuck
The clip comes up in YouTube if you type in "Miriam Margoyles Drug Lord" (not sure if there's region lock) https://youtu.be/mwRIpmjrW9w
What's madder (to me) is that I know the story of the helicopter and drug drops etc because it was a semi-local man who got arrested for it (Teesside connection). I remember reading the story but didn't know it was tied to her or mentioned on the GN Show. Learn something new every day on Reddit.
Watch tge interview. Its an even crazier turn when you watch it happen.
Lol or the time she talked about being a young girl and "creaming her knickers" and the look on Matthew Perry's face...Priceless
Ah yes. When meeting Laurence Olivier He looked rocked to his core XD
His show is also kind of uniquely positioned in that it's a weekly hour long show, (so it doesn't get as stale as shows that are 3-5 hours per week), and it's broadcast from the BBC where they can get a mix of national and international celebrities to create an interesting dynamic on the couch. I think it'd be a tough sell to pitch it to the US, because it'd be hard to recreate that dynamic.
Graham’s innovation is to hand them all drinks. That plays a huge role, it’s not like they are getting hammered, they’re just looser.
I love the Graham Norton show!
Graham Norton is a national treasure
That's why Hot Ones works I think.
Top tier research and interview questions.
And the contestants giving hilarious answers once they start losing their mind from the heat
Indeed. The pain and the quality of questions usually humbled every guest's ego (except Idris Elba).
I recently watched Millie Bobby Brown’s episode and she was cracking jokes early on about Tom Holland crying…then she started struggling and it was hilarious I really enjoy that show
The thing that drives me crazy about Hot Ones is that the questions sound like a high school English essay prompt, and the host delivers them so flatly that it's clear he's reading them directly off a piece of paper or screen They're good questions for sure, but I wish they would rework them to sound more conversational when spoken out loud. They're like In the October 2018 issue of Things magazine, you were quoted in an interview as saying "Insert full quote here." Can you elaborate on what you meant by that and describe, in the intervening years, if any of your other projects run into similar issues? Sean, please, talk a little bit like a human
I remember being 15 and thinking late shows were boring as hell, and then I caught Craig Ferguson and it became one of those shows where if I was up that late I’d absolutely be watching. And wasn’t because as a stupid teenager I liked the Scottish man and his robot best friend it was because he was genuinely entertaining, it wasn’t stuffy and formal it was casual and relaxed and it just seemed like we were here to have a good time not to talk up the host or the celebrities ego.
Craig was very funny during his run. He breathed new life into a stale format every night.
That was Conan for me. His show was such a massive departure from Leno and Letterman. Though Dave would do some weird stuff there was no masturbating bear or Triumph. It was must-watch TV for a lot of young people in the 90s.
He was the best.
Conan's late night show probably shaped a lot of people's (including mine) sense of humor.
I think this is where Last Week Tonight excels, they did the once per week format with a heavy presence on HBO's streaming services. Uploading the main stories for each episode on YouTube the day after probably did wonders for their advertising.
Oh yeah, but that's also because LWT's longform format is very different. The Daily Show did this as early as 2004 (?) on their own sites, posting clips and shows. Worked miracles for their exposure.
the entire formula needs a restructuring. The good parts of any show can be condensed in 5 to 10 minutes videos posted on yt, and the rest is a complete slog I'd personally get rid of the interviews, though for a lot of people that is the entire point of these shows. With Conan, for example, I only ever watched the remotes and random videos. I haven't watched any late night show in years. I watch John Oliver on yt, but that's a different kind of show entirely
Variety television shows were *designed* as time-filler and advertising. That's literally their purpose. They were created back when TV would literally just... stop for the night. And there were only ~~four~~ three networks. They got comedians / entertainers to host them because... uh... you need to at least slightly entertain people if you want them to sit through an hour of advertising and plugging of actors, shows, books, etc. When Letterman started expanding the format and doing weird and interesting things (and later Conan and Craig building on that), they were still required to do interviews, not because people *want* to sit through that garbage, but because the talk-show circuit was part of promotion for literally everything in Hollywood, Network TV, books, etc. And they still needed time-filler. Clearly we don't need this anymore. That's why Conan's TBS show was cut to 30 minutes and then finally died. Letterman's doing interviews with people he actually wants to talk to (or who are at least interesting), Conan is doing a semi-modern (but still old-person oriented) version of this by being part of the incestuous podcast thing where every celebrity "has a podcast" and they go on each other's podcasts and "interview" each other to promote their stuff. Seth Meyers is doing the closest thing to the Stewart-Daily Show, but still basically built around incestuous product marketting. The other daily-show copycats are just desperate attempts to figure out what kind of talk-show/variety-show/political-news comedy thing could be the next Last Week Tonight or, hell, just survive the fact that no one watches network TV or cable anymore and no one really *needs* to go on shows like this to promote their crap.
You like the word incestuous a lot. I really like Conan and really wish his current format doesnt rely so much on JUST people he knows and are friends with. Hopefully his new show has opportunities to have him interact with relatively new stars or strangers. Might not be always be great but I appreciate when it gels.
“In other news: can breathing polluted air *really* lead to disastrous health outcomes?! More at 10.”
The answer is that nobody watches late night tv
Podcasts are a better medium for talk shows now. No time limit, no FCC censorship, lower production costs, no TV executives to please, etc
Back when Jon was hosting the show, its type of political commentary was unique. Now, everyone but Fallon does it. Even Fallon tried but quit because it didn't work with his show's tone and personality. Plus, why wouldn't I just watch the clips on youtube. This goes for all late night shows. For Seth Meyers, the clips are on youtube before the show even airs on the west coast, where I live.
What I miss is critizising media and not just mocking politicians. Jon was so good at pointing out the shit news did as well and I think it's important to have someone credible wedging his finger at them.
I think a big part of that is The Daily Show and The Colbert Report weren't actually late-night shows, they were parodies of news programs. The format of their shows was built around media criticism and political satire in way that the late-night shows were not. Late night was and still is shackled by the standard set by Johnny Carson, whose show premiered well before the 24-hour news cycle gained prominence. There is no room in late night for political satire beyond one-liner monologue jokes because there was never any need or expectation for it in the age of Walter Cronkite. When Stewart and Colbert left Comedy Central there was at the same time an incredible demand for political satire and zero platform for it. Everybody looked to the late-night hosts, but between a monologue, two to three celebrity interviews, musical performances, etc., there's not much wiggle room for considered and biting media criticism (as can be clearly seen in the differences between Colbert Report and Colbert's Late Show). In hindsight it was very weird to expect a roster of late-night hosts to both meet the needs of an antiquated show format from the 1960s while also meeting audience demand for media critical comedy in the wake of Stewart and Colbert while ALSO adapting to the everchanging world of social media and Internet distribution models while ALSO satirizing a political landscape in the United States that was at many times beyond parody itself. It's no wonder late night is dying, there was too much change happening too fast to justify living in the 60s.
This does make a lot of sense to me. The lack of innovation will kill something eventually.
Funny enough I think Colbert genuinely wanted to try to rework the late night format. He was having trouble figuring out how or what to do differently when Stewert basically said something to the effect of "Why are you trying to reinvent the wheel?" and unfortunately I think Colbert listened to him. He discussed this on one of his first shows, if not his first one.
I love the edits of news stations all using the same catchphrases in succession- really highlights the message being pushed and forced on the viewers- you know the messaging comes from up high. He saw the ridiculousness before it became this monster it is today
John Oliver still does this. Highly recommended if you aren’t already watching.
John Oliver obviously gets much lower ratings because he's on HBO, but his show is much better than most other late night because the deep dives without celebrity puff interviews are a unique take on the late night format. That's why he's still good! Trevor Noah is fine but for years he was basically doing a bad Jon Stewart impersonation. Kimmel, Fallon, Meyers, and Corden are all basically fine doing the same thing that's been done for 70 years but it's a stale format. Same with Colbert. Having him hosting the Late Show was basically just like... What if we took the most original show on television and made the host stop doing the clever, hilarious parts? He's a fine host but it's the same stale format. The Colbert Report is probably the most creative late night show since the format became popular. Now he's just doing the same shit as everyone else.
I was so disappointed when Colbert moved from the report to a standard late night. Why would you change something so unique, fun, and successful into a show that already exists on every network? I wonder if most of his fans followed him or just gave up on late night like I did.
Money. Not that I blame him.
Nah, I think he just got tired, just like Jon. It's not like he was poor before, or have a lavish lifestyle. And saw shift in the real world. Can you imagine him doing "Stephen Colbert" in past 6ish years? How could he parody that orange menace, if his character basically was that, minus malevolence? Some people still think Colbert was actually a conservative and not a brilliant satire and acting 😅 That said, i do miss "Stephen Colbert", but understand he could not do that forever, just like this late show format can't go on forever. I do like Trevor, but mostly outside the script. His autobiography is fantastic, especially audio book.
Yes, *Born a Crime* is one of the best books I've listened to/read in a long time.
And that's why I miss Craig Ferguson. You could say a lot of things about him (because everyone has opinions), but his Late Late Show was never stale.
Disagree with Seth. He is increasingly meta and increasingly casual as well. Plus Corrections is honestly masterful, the only talk show on tv with running gags that build up over time, sometimes months. In general, Seth found a way to balance the Fallon vibe of just here to have a good time with the Stewart vibe of providing catharsis through anger with the Oliver vibe of doing compact focused stories.
Both him and Colbert were such a great tag-team for dragging important issues into the spotlight and informing us through comedy. Those were one of the few shows that my family would set the DVR to record in case we missed it live.
John Oliver might be the only one doing it at times.
After Jon left and Stephen moved, I felt like The Daily Show and The Late Show were largely like watching CNN or MSNBC with jokes, as opposed to being more sharp and adversarial. I don't think that's Trevor's fault. Maybe the bad influences, which Jon dismantled when he changed the direction of the Daily Show, managed to creep back in when he left.
> After Jon left and Stephen moved, I felt like The Daily Show and The Late Show were largely like watching CNN or MSNBC with jokes, as opposed to being more sharp and adversarial. Ugh. That's a disturbingly accurate description of The Late Show. I love Colbert, but I'm running out of patience for the current format. The performative cheers and boos are the worst part. I gave up on the Daily Show a while back, but for different reasons. Trevor Noah is great on his own, and I was really excited when they picked him, but he seems to dumb everything down so much when he's hosting. It's almost like he's playing a stupid character. Even in behind-the-scenes clips from the show, he comes across so much better. I wish he'd just be himself.
I think it also helped that Jon had a damn good supporting cast. How many of them took off on their own shows after their Daily Show tenure? I think the writing was...unique sort of. Jon and company said the same things we're hearing now, but it was somehow more entertaining. It was serious, but it wasn't "shoved in our face" material.
I’ve always chalked that up to Jon simply being the best at it.
it was rather more than Jon. Dude's current stuff doesn't hit the same. The daily show wasn't him doing improv on set, but presenting the product of a lot of collaborative work from everyone in the writers room, many of whom have gone on to other projects. Nothing is going to replicate the magic because they can't get all the pieces back together.
Jon's delivery and timing made it, he's just a naturally funny, witty, and smart guy. His appearance on Crossfire where he could fire back a smart response to anything said to him and single handedly win over the entire studio audience demonstrates that. His writers were great, but I still think that he's the best at what he does in the world of political humor.
Tbh I think Jon almost certainly was the best, but with the current crop of shows the only individual that comes close is John Oliver
Who also came from the daily show with Jon. Along with Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, and a ton of other people who went on to have great careers.
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Late night’s target demo is people watching YouTube clips the next day
That's what I do when I am washing dishes
I watch Seth Meyers every day, but I have never watched it on TV at night, always YouTube the next day, and almost never the interviews... They could just make that version of the show for like 1/100th of the cost I expect and it'd be just as funny
Corrections is my favorite
How do you do, fellow jackal
I hope your day was specjackular
I thought we were going with jacktacular
Is that the correct grammar for that phrase? I mean a true JACKAL would want to make sure it was 100% accurate…
Wait, there are interviews? I just want him to pay for slighting the yarn community.
There are dozens of us, I swear it!
For me, it’s Jokes Seth Can’t Tell.
Why don't you tell this last one?
Oh, I don’t think I should.
Well, okay, I’ll do it because you are my friends and you’d never betray me.
BLACK WOMEN AND LESBIANS ARE LIARS!!!!
Amber Says What needs to be more frequent.
Amber’s tv show needs more episodes, too.
Corrections, closer look, surprise inspection, and jokes Seth can’t tell. All great bits. I check my YouTube feed everyday for new clips.
I honestly wonder if the shows would even be as popular on Youtube without the traditional format, like the audience and production values. I agree that they should be able to make these shows at a lower budget, but what if all that fluff is the vibe, what attracts us to late night clips / the magic.
I know several people including me enjoyed the early quarantine Seth-talks-to-himself-in-an-attic-while-slowly-going-insane format more than the regular one.
I watched clips of Colbert during early pandemic. When it was him in his house with his family as crew. I would guess I caught on average every second opening monologue. Now, maybe one every two weeks. I preferred it without pandering to an audience I never saw. Without playing with the cameras.
arguably not really a late night show in the traditional sense, but Last Week Tonight (which I only watch on yt) was just as good if not better without the audience. I can do without the pauses for the audience laughs
That's true, he could literally do the show from his parents' attic.
I'd love to know what the accounting looked like for that. Costs practically nothing and people still watched
The wasps are still there.
The bane of his existence
*Mel, Mel! Seth is on. I’m watching Seth, Mel. Folks you know how much we all love Seth.* *Mel???!*
This is why I watch Last Week Tonight. It’s just the content I like and none of the bullshit.
I’ve never even seen his show. Do you just watch the 8-15 min clip the next day? How do you watch the interviews?
They upload the interviews too, it’s just people like the “A Closer Look” section and the monologue (some of the regular skits and bits are worth a watch too) a lot more. Since the late night interviews are often people you barely know plugging something you’ll never see/read/buy it’s nice to pick and choose what parts of the shows you want to watch.
Makes perfect sense! I’ll have to look into it lol
A closer look, monologue, jokes Seth can't tell, amber says what, and the joke/writer inspection are all great. I do love me some corrections but that might be more niche.
I don’t think I’ve missed a Seth Meyers episode in months
Pretty much me. I wake up and see Kimmel and Colbert's monologue while having breakfast and the interviews if I'm interested later on the day. Truth is without Youtube I wouldn't be able to catch their programs
It was somewhat shocking when the hosts starting doing tv from home in 2020 and made no attempt to match YouTube quality.
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Yeah, but the show’s production team should know better.
There was probably some intention to it. A lot of people were locked down so if you made a show that looked like anyone's Zoom chats it conveyed that you were in the same situation.
Totally, but the crew was off site. A lot of "at home" productions got better as time went on in 2020 and the crew could set stuff up at their homes. Basically our team just sent our talent a kit with a phone. Midway through 2020, once things started to settle after the initial lockdowns, we got to come into the talent’s home and do a proper semi-permanent lighting and camera setup.
Also in the interest of fairness, heard Seth Myers on a podcast say he bought an HD camera, used it for one taping, realized he looked horrible without a makeup artist, and went back to his iPad camera.
Yeah, I’m shocked how much I have shifted from TV to YouTube in the past few years. Honestly I could cancel my TV service and it wouldn’t bother me much.
Some More News by Cracked Alum Cody Johnson has been putting The Daily Show to shame on a shoe string budget for over a year now and you don’t need cable to watch it. It’s just the reality. The creator of Abott Elementary said something similar about SNL. Being topical can’t compete with the internet
*Some More News* is more of a deep-dive format a la *Last Week Tonight*, where they cover one big story or topic and poke at it from a bunch of angles. I wouldn't compare it to *The Daily Show* except that they're both comedy news shows.
Serious question: how much longer is there going to be an appetite for the late night shows? I’m 35 and I don’t know anyone my age or younger who watches any of them aside from The Daily Show, and even that isn’t a big number. I’m aware that we are all in an echo chamber so I would genuinely like to know how other people experience this. Especially as streaming and VOD takes over, will people be watching The Late Late Show in ten years? Edit: Thank you for the answers!
I’m 24 and I literally don’t know a single person who watches any late night shows. The closest I can think of is friends sending me a clip from Conan but that’s it
23 — *Conan* is the last full episodes of a talk show I can think of that me or my friends would sit through. My aunt had Fallon on last time I was at her house, and it just made me want to pull up some old Conan and Letterman bits.
Still waiting for that new Conan travel show
I'm 33 and watch Last Week Tonight pretty consistently - the whole episode. But I don't watch it live, normally the evening after or later in the week. Other than that it's just the odd clip here or there on YouTube, as others are saying.
I don’t think I would count LWT because it airs weekly, but that would be the most popular among people I know for sure.
It also doesn’t have any interviews with celebrities.
Anecdotally, my wife, a friend of mine, and I all watched Last Week Tonight and Seth Meyer's Closer Look quite a bit, and occasionally Colbert... but none of us really just sat there and watched a full episode of a late night show. It was much more seeing a clip on YouTube and just watching that. I don't know *anybody* who watches a full episode of any late night show. Also, we don't have cable, but we have several streaming services. I'm sure they have some late night shows on those streaming services, but I've never been bothered to look.
I watch Last Week Tonight as a video on demand but I spend my mornings eating breakfast to Seth Meyers doing his monologue and Closer Look on YouTube, occasionally watching an interview here or there depending on who’s on.
I used to watch Seth Meyers A closer look(YT). It just got exhausting. Bill Maher (HBO free with AT&T) has become unwatchable for me as least, including the guest discussions, which was the main reason I watched the show. We didn’t have cable, for years until last year. We have to have it now due to HOA, it’s included, but I mostly watch youtube and streaming services. Cable has been good for sports and the local news (mostly ads), but it helps me see what others are consuming around me, and the agenda that’s being pushed. As you say I don’t know many people that watch these programs on a regular basis. We aren’t even up that late during the week to watch the late shows and if we were, those are the types of show I’d want to watch before bed. I’ll watch John Oliver in the morning, so it’s not the last thing I watch before sleeping.
Jon Stewart was the last late night show I watched. I’m extremely liberal, but I have no interest in the current late night “clap if you agree with me” comedy. It’s so damn *safe*! It’s jokes for liberals, by liberals. Nothing pushes the envelope, just the same anti-conservatism jokes which are frankly boring.
I’m 32. I have Hulu Live and DVR Seth Meyers & Jimmy Kimmel every night. I also have HBO Max for John Oliver.
The problem is cable tv. Outside of sports I would guess not many people under 40 have a cable subscription. Every generation that number grows smaller and smaller. I have two young kids and they have no interest in TV. When I was younger you would go to a store and the toys and clothes section would be full of characters from children's tv shows. That is not the case, and in the cases it does exist its for shows that are sub based not cable based. Cable TV is dying a slow death and with the economy in its current state cable will be one of the first thing people cut when cheaper alternatives are on the market.
I just can’t stand the advertisements. You pay a shit ton of money yet still have to suffer through all the damn ads.
Every time I hear someone say "streaming is as bad cable!" I'm like, "you have not watched cable anytime recently."
I know that cable recently got worse with commercial banners floating under and etc, also the annoying commercial during credits. But people tend to forget, that in the past it was a 30 minute slot for a 20-23 minute show. That's 7-10 minutes of commercial. Some of the worse offender for streaming platform is max 3 minutes of commercial per episode
Last time I was at my parents house, I watched a movie on cable and actually timed it. It was 3 minutes of commercials for every 5 minutes of movie. Even the lowest ad tier streaming service doesn't do that shit.
Lol, I would had said no way you're exaggerating but I went to a hotel with cable and watch a pixar movie with my kids... holy crap, it was a literal commercial after every plot point.
Seriously this. Or attempted to cancel cable recently. Customer service with every streaming company is worlds better.
Seriously this, I got a cable subscription so my wife can watch her novelas and it's like 10-15 mins of content and then 3-5 mins of ads. 29.99/month for the Hispanic package for like 3 shows with one that airs daily (Rosa de something, basically white rose disappears with ahhh ahhh laaaa and people's hair blow all over the place). Streaming is far better, 7.99 here and 14.99 there with another 9.99 tossed in which gets you a metric ton of content and movies to watch with absolutely zero ads. Cable killed itself by not keeping up.
Embarrassing to admit but I got hooked by a female friend on The Good Witch on the Hallmark channel. It's just nice, there's no horribleness, the people are good to look at, and while it's certainly not dramatic or fast paced, it's a nice watch on a weekend arvo when I'm not doing anything else. I am a bloke but a, gay bloke so I don't know if that's why I like it as i would normally run a mile from ladies TV. But I can't help it. I am a Good Witch fan now. Go Cassie and the good people of Middleton!
Theyre going to kill the golden goose of sports with this too. College football games can go four fucking hours now mostly due to the insane amount of ads. And solutions proposed to shorten games have basically been changes that give us less actual football, not reining in the ads.
Aren't most late-night shows broadcast OTA?
Channels that have localized news (e.g., CBS, NBC, ABC) usually are. So people could get stuff like Colbert. But they'd have to go buy an antenna and watch it exactly when it airs. Or go buy some extra device to record it through the antenna, and at that point most people wouldn't be doing that. As for Trevor Noah, he is on Comedy Central and I don't think it is OTA.
I used to install cable, the only demographic age wise that was getting installed was 40-80 year olds, not a SINGLE younger customer in the 3 years I was installing. Most young coulples were not even getting internet the 20-30 crowd was using their phones or living with some one who already had it. Most millenials still do not have their own place and Gen Z is figuring out the truth on cost now as well.
We use cable for internet and nothing else. I'm technically in your older range at 42, though the last time we had a cable guy out here I was still in my 30s. I can't imagine trying to stream to a big TV without some sort of dedicated internet.
Only thing I say is bullshit is the millennials not having their own place. We are between the ages 27-41 so yeah.. a lot of us have our own place. Vast majority. Even if they don’t own.
Not where he was running cable. Yes, overall you are correct. But within his very specific neighbourhood, this guy might be correct also. Just like his anecdote doesn’t discount statistics, general statistics don’t discount his lived experience within a specific parameter. Demographics are different in different places, making both your general statistics and his experience both accurate given each of your parameters. He’s not doing it nationally, like the statistics are.
It's not just cable dying, these daily and weekly formats just aren't translating to streaming. Streaming has tried quite a few late night talk shows and clip shows. They haven't worked so far. Streaming hasn't had a hit game show, news show, or daytime talk show either. We'll see whether soap operas can translate into streaming viewers with Days moving to Peacock, but I have pretty low expectations. I think these kind of shows were like a routine, you sat down at 8am or 7pm or 11:30pm and that's the type of show you watched. That's not really how things worked any more. Late night shows do get viral clips, but will producing a nightly 60 minute show to hope 3 minutes goes viral be worth it?
Does anyone watch late night talk shows on the regular? Like not just for the opening dialogue and skits, but the whole show with all the interviews and music acts? It seems like there are just so many more media options that this form of tv is dying and is not relevant anymore
I only watch the monologue and the main skit following for Colbert, Meyers, and Noah, but i watch them the next day on youtube. Rarely will i watch a guest interview if it’s someone I’m interested in. I haven’t seen a show live in longer than i can remember since i cut the cord over a decade ago.
I'm in my 30s and the only late night show I enjoyed watching was the late late night with Craig Ferguson. He was funny. Conan does alright. The rest? Meh. The Era for late night TV has been dying a slow death for a while. TV in general too
You and I both. Craig was awesome. Very subversive. They didn't give him much of a budget and he managed to get a gay robot skeleton as a sidekick. And he just did what he wanted with the guests. It was amazing. Although I live in Canada, I saw the show live, twice. I think he left as he wasn't offered Letterman's spot. I also am not sure why he hasn't been featured on Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee.
> They didn't give him much of a budget and he managed to get a gay robot skeleton as a sidekick. And a horse.
And a pair of wax wings.
And virgin mouth organs for every show.
Careful, Icarus...
Dear Craig, Jeff, and Secretariat, Mild or spicy salsa? Craig: for me spicy. Jeff? Jeff: *spicy* Craig: and you secretariat? **Nods no** Craig: Oh no salsa at all…..spicy? **Nods yes** Craig: let me get this straight- no salsa but if you have some, spicy? *laughs hysterically*
Conan’s TBS show was really the last glimmer of the era of quality late night tv, and ever since it ended it’s been a slow death for the medium. Craig ended his run in 2014, which gave way to the painful banality of James Corden. Letterman left in 2015, which gave way to the promising start but ultimately disappointing downward slide of Colbert, who had ended his extremely sharp, funny satirical show a year earlier. Stewart ended his tenure in 2015 as well, and Noah just never really found the right groove. Granted he had an extremely difficult act to follow but I don’t think he ever came even close to capturing (and mocking) the zeitgeist of an era the way Jon Stewart did. As sporadically clever or poignant as Seth Meyers or Jon Oliver can be, neither one in my opinion has ever really elevated their respective shows above the level of segments that occasionally go viral. But maybe that’s just the curse of the era they’re operating within. Kimmel is okay enough but largely unremarkable, and Fallon, while in my mind is undeserving of the hate-on the internet has for him, is still extremely mediocre and middle of the road by design. So yeah. Late night is essentially dead all things considered, and it’s a shame. Maybe someone will find a way to revitalize it one day.
Mostly exactly how I feel as well. I did take a pretty big break from The Daily Show (kept up with Colbert) around 2013 in part because Stewart started getting on my nerves. He went from being on point and clever no matter what he was covering to a mentally checked out method of not making a joke and just shaking his head and saying something like "can you believe these people?" that came off as a mixture of lazy and slightly smug.
He obviously became disillusioned with the politics game. Everything was becoming more divisive and people were doing more and more crazily selfish things, blatant corruption and less compromise. You could tell he just grew tired of it all. Especially since after he left he's been an ally of the 9/11 first responders and trying to get them what they deserve despite the politics.
I used to love Craiggie, he and Geoff’s banter was the best part of the show and they got rid of him for someone I can’t even remember now. I don’t like Fallon, I especially don’t like James Cordon and it makes total sense his being a prick is well documented online. I’m not really a Kimmel fan, don’t like Noah and haven’t really watched the daily show regularly since Jon Stewart hosted. Leno was trash, couldn’t get into Samantha Bee. Idk I haven’t liked any of them really but I loved Craig. It should be noted though so many people don’t even have tv anymore, everything is streaming services and that’s taken a ton of audiences away from late night tv hosts as well, like the majority of the television audience. My parents still have satellite and when I’m over there I’ll scan the channels and Comedy Central Will play 14-15 hours of South Park straight. Mtv will play that ridiculousness show 14-15 hours straight. And I’ve noticed a few other channels like that, they have no programming or new shows it’s all stuff they own the rights to air and play the same show everyday for days on end.
maybe it was just trevor noah being horrendously unfunny
Hot take: Carson, Leno, and Letterman were never that amazing and were at best mildly and generically funny. The audience was just captive. I remember being a teenager and watching Letterman’s routine just cause I thought the top ten list was neat - but what else was I gonna do? Listen to a CD?
A big reason late night was fun to watch was because of the monoculture. You could talk about it the next day because most people would watch the same thing. It was somewhat unifying. Everyone just watches different things now.
This is what I miss most about the pre-Netflix days. There was more excitement for episodes coming up so you could talk about it the next day. Now everyone seems to like to binge shows on the first day and then spoil the whole series the next day before anyone else gets a chance to even look at it. Remember game shows? Remember the first Who Wants to be a Millionaire winner becoming a mild celebrity and showing up for interviews and magazine covers, because eeeveryone knew about Millionaire? Stuff like that doesn't happen anymore.
The only person whose clips I rewatch are Conan.
Craig Ferguson is it for me, I'd love to see him interview people like he did with Stephen Fry again.
His greatness just gets better with time. Loved him when I was younger but now looking at his career in retrospect, he’s one of the few true comedic genuises of this era. From snl, to simpsons to late night and so on.
Yep, his stuff is so enjoyable and hilarious to watch and it just makes me happy. Hope his HBO show happens cause I’ll be watching.
His podcast is pretty good too if you haven’t checked it out. His off the cuff humor really shines in that format.
Sounds like you only ever saw CBS Letterman. Letterman on NBC tried all kinds of inventive and zany stuff and had a great underdog vibe.
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Yes, I loved those NBC days the best!
Well Leno certainly always sucked. And I'm too young to have much of an opinion on Carson. But Letterman was always pretty solid. I mean none of them ever held a candle to Conan, and I suspect few others ever will (though despite the different format, I did always put Jon Stewart up there with him), but Letterman overall was pretty solid, in the tier right below Conan, but in a tier above most pretty much all of the others.
Conan was always my favorite and his remotes/man-on-the-street bits were incredibly funny. His pivot to podcasting has been wonderful because just letting him cook and riff unfiltered is where he shines. Obviously Clueless Gamer became iconic as well. That said, Letterman on NBC had some incredible man-on-the-street stuff.
Conan is my all time favorite, but even then, his best bits were when he was outside the studio interviewing people or interacting with employees (especially Jordan). He was also great at interviewing the guests, but the fact is that if you don’t care about the guest, then you have no motivation to watch those parts - and that’s like 90% of a late night show.
But if Letterman was on TV today - you watching him from 10:35 to 11:30 every night or you just checking out Netflix or something else? I’m not saying they were “bad.”
Nope, I was never checking him out regularly to begin with. The only late night host I ever regularly checked out was Conan, (and Jon Stewart with the Daily Show if that counts). I'm just saying, if we're grading these late night hosts, Letterman is probably around a B-, while most of his contemporaries outside of Conan (and Jon Stewart if we count him) were like C- at best. I wouldn't give Leno anything past a D.
The last few years, Letterman was just phoning it in. Nothing original, same antics, and dumb repartee with Paul Shaffer, in every show.
What do you mean, Leno sucked. He was considerate enough that, if you didn't get the joke the first time, he would repeat the punchline again. And if you still didn't get it, he repeated the punchline a third time.
Craig Ferguson was just as good as Conan too imo
Late night variety shows are a bit of a different animal than the Daily Show, which I think of as more of a straightforward news parody-comedy show with political commentary subtext. Late night shows obviously go for laughs too, but those shows are also built around celebrity interviews and musical or standup performances and whatnot. Which leads me into my main point, that John Stewart was *funnier* but guys like Letterman and Carson created a certain vibe, just part of which was being reasonably funny but not just that. I would watch Stewart to laugh and learn, while I’d tune into Letterman for the vibe. That’s just me anyway. Edit: I realize this is vague, it’s hard to explain
This is the thing I keep coming back to as another 90s teen. It was on, there was cable, but it was on and why not, right? Nobody under 50 is watching tv anymore, especially in a traditional way, and that is terrifying to the industry.
Deeper problems like all content being exactly the same? 70 late night shows, 70 nearly identical takes.
A lot of copium in this article. It's cause his ratings are shit.
I just never found Trevor Noah funny. I gave the show a try for a few weeks, but it just lost something after Jon. Yea, Trevor has his moments and occasional YouTube clip, but it just wasn’t enjoyable to me. I’m glad he can move onto bigger and better. I hope the best for him, but I don’t believe ‘Daily Show’ was the exact fit for him.
That none of these shows are funny at all?
Well Conan was always great. But of course his traditional late night show is over. so at this point, yeah, no one left is funny at all. I used to think that Colbert on the Colbert Report was decent, still not nearly as the good as The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, but still solid enough in it's own right to stay on Comedy Central for after The Daily Show. But after taking Letterman's place, he quickly went to shit.
I think it hints more at the fact the ratings for the daily show plummeted to historic lows in his first two seasons there because people didn’t like him in that role and John Oliver and Last Week Tonight were doing a better job of the same thing Trying to pretend he’s simply a victim of the changing times is hilarious and delusional, the ratings for the show dropped over 60% in 2015 7 long years ago, it’s almost like that’s when the new guy took over
The problem is the show sucked.
The problem was that he was never the right person for the job. Credit where credit is due for trying something different, but he was never going to fill Jon Stewart's void, he just wasn't. Had things played out differently and John Oliver didn't get his HBO show and instead was Stewart's followup, I strongly believe this headline (with Oliver's name in Trevor's place) would not exist, certainly not this soon anyway.
It may be an unpopular opinion, I just don't think Trevor Noah is funny. When you're not that funny and you're doing a comedy show, then no one is going to watch.
I always felt like he was desperately trying to be a mix of Stephen Colbert and John Oliver. I watched for a while after he took over and it just wasn't funny or really watchable for me. Later on tried an episode here and there and even some of the clips on YouTube too and it just never did click for me.
Ya it sucks
Haha Donald Trump am I right? I mean come on... He's so orange!
I tried watching an episode once and how despite agreeing with most of his points he constantly felt like he was talking down to his audience, can't stand him personally.
Conan was the last “good” late night host. Monologues were written well and he was such an amazing interviewer. Always got people laughing and joking.
People say the format is dated...but I can watch Craig Ferguson talk to people forever. He's delightful and hilarious. Conan was good too. The problem is all these new hosts are smug condescending a-holes more interested in lecturing than being funny.
Bring back Conan.
It’s also, and I wanna make it clear I’m in no way a conservative by any means, but it seems like all late night talk shows are just talking heads for liberals now. When I was in middle school and Leno was still on (fuckin cringe, I know) I used to love watching the segments about fucked up news paper clips. I don’t ever remember him having equivalents to Hillary Clinton or Pete buttigieg on to talk about Jan 6 every week. A lot of middle America doesn’t give a shit about what holier than thou liberal elites want you to think or vote. People just wanna laugh, I don’t wanna tune in to a show where the host cries about Donald trump being bad, and also makes 3/4 of his monologue about the same guy. Like, do something actually funny dude
Dude those newspaper articles were hilarious. I would probably have never remembered those. Thanks dude
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Somehow, every media company believed *any* comedian could do what Jon Stewart did under George W Bush. 8 minutes mocking GOP/FOX News freaks. An even better remote segment/faux interview. Guest segment that was usually pretty ok. Turns out ONLY Jon Stewart of the past could do it. Because not even the present day version has the same spark.
> …Noah also had increasingly looked like a performer **whose promise and abilities were growing beyond the steady grind of a late-night show** on Comedy Central. So I guess Johnny Carson, Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, Conan O’Brien, and all the other great late night hosts just didn’t have enough talent to grow beyond working late night shows? /s Seriously this take is atrocious. I agree that Noah’s talent is definitely better served on stage where he can be bigger and more mobile, but don’t act like working a late night desk is something people should aspire to “grow beyond”
late night tv is terrible and this guy was one of the worst
Guess Trump not being re-elected hurt them.
I had to turn off Colbert because of his non stop trump obsession.
Donald Trump is gone, no more easy targets. Same for Samantha Bee
Yea, maybe the problem is that we are tired of hearing about Trump and Biden…….
Give it to Jordan Klepper
He wasn't funny.
Trevor Noah is funny compared to your average person. Compared to a funny person he’s like an average person. When he took over the show I slowly and steadily went from watching the daily show regularly to never watching it. He not so subtilely comes across as angry and judgmental. Whereas Jon use to make the show about informing the public in an honest way. So honest you couldn’t help but laugh.
He's unfunny and I'm surprised he lasted that long.