Why Are Late Night Comedy Shows Dying…Fast?
You know those four-day work weeks everybody wants? Well, Jimmy Fallon is finally getting one. The “Tonight Show” is going to four days a week. So much for late night every night!
There was a time when pretty much all of America tuned into one late night show and that was the Tonight Show with the all time greatest host, Johnny Carson. If you wanted to take the proverbial “pulse” of the country, all you had to do was watch his nightly monologue which covered the events of the day.
Johnny would poke fun of the nation’s leaders and you wouldn’t know which side of the political aisle he was on. He would never let on as to who he would vote for on the Presidential election side of things.
Boy have things changed on late night shows
Gone are the days of non-political hosts, now you now exactly where they stand (all Democrats) and who they can’t stand (Republicans). It started to lean in this direction during the Late Night with David Letterman days when he would poke fun and sometimes very mean spiritedly of George W. Bush.
He was relentless on him and made it clear that for him, it was personal. There were times during those years that it became so obvious of Letterman’s leaning that you would think he was on the DNC payroll.
After Letterman, all the hosts, Kimmel, Colbert and Fallon felt very free about their obvious disdain for Trump and the result of that was they lost half of their potential audience and that’s why they are where they are now in my opinion.
If you don’t lean in the political direction of the late night show, then odds are you are probably not going to find it funny and tune out. Hence…
Starting with the new fall season, there will be new episodes on Monday through Thursday, then a repeat on Friday night.
“Tonight” was actually the ONLY late-night show still doing five nights a week. “Jimmy Kimmel Live”, “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert”, “Late Night with Seth Meyers”, and “The Daily Show” all do four.
And Kimmel has been taking summers off for the past few years.
Fallon is signed with the “Tonight Show” through 2028.
It does beg the question; why are all of the late night talk/comedy shows dying? What is it that is killing off these shows one by one? Sure they’re all still hanging on by a thread waiting for the others to die off first in the hope that less is actually more.
