Late night’s Javan Rhino
Once upon a time in America, late-night television talk shows were nightly viewing for many following their local news. For decades this enduring format echoed the country’s collective mood, making them the embodiment of the culture’s topical humor.
However, that was when broadcast television only had three commercial networks.
The genre is struggling mightily to find relevance upon a deeply fragmented media landscape. To wit: Effective May 2025, Stephen Colbert’s Late Show on CBS was DOGE’d and will join the ash heap of broadcast television history.
Late-night shows’ Nielsen ratings have joined the Javan Rhino on the most endangered list. Colbert’s defenders say it was the top-rated late-night show. Such an honor nowadays is like being valedictorian of your prison GED class.
The late-night format is like drive-in movies – dead. Today, you can watch the highlights on the internet, while getting a full night’s sleep.
There are at least 40 million reasons why Colbert’s plug is being pulled. Colbert’s operation costs north of $100 million yearly, while in 2024 the show hemorrhaged $40 million. Twenty million of it was Colbert’s salary.
Colbert could restructure his contract to offset the network’s losses saving his staff and show. Jay Leno gave up 50% of his salary in 2012, to save jobs on The Tonight Show. Colbert is only generous with other people’s money, not his own. Colbert talks big while failing to lead by example and “share the wealth” the left is so fond of pontificating when it’s other people’s money.
Late night television has devolved into a medium for nonstop political debasing. The same is true for NBC’s Saturday Night Live where leftist activism rules over entertainment. Colbert’s decade tenure turned The Late Show into a bastion of DNC talking points masquerading as comedy. Colbert is a conduit for Democrats to attack President Trump and Republicans with nonstop leftist pablum.
Laughter has been replaced by awkward silences and forced smiles as the left is perpetually offended and judgmental. Stand-up comedians, once intrepid truth-tellers, now tiptoe around topics like race, gender and politics, afraid to offend thin-skinned, politically correct sensibilities. People peak to see if it is acceptable to laugh. The days of raucous, unapologetic humor are as distant a memory as Richard Pryor and George Carlin.
The longtime host of The Tonight Show, Johnny Carson, was funny, engaging and gave it to both political parties with light-hearted humor. Carson went to great length to mask his political leanings focusing on comedic entertainment that found a bipartisan home from sea to shining sea. Do you know how Carson voted?
Me neither.
Carson’s farewell broadcast in May 1992, drew a staggering 55 million, in an America whose population was 100 million less – making it the highest-rated late-night TV show – ever.
Colbert, like the rest of the late-night gang, are banal, humorless and sanctimonious who reside in an echo chamber. Jimmy Kimmel used to produce The Man Show whose introduction had women jumping on trampolines wearing tight shirts. Now Kimmel is an authority on wokeness and, naturally, women’s rights.
Comedy has been held hostage by left-wing wokesters as comedians Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock have noted time and again.
Politics can be humorous but not to the point of unceasing gratuitous bashing of one party. Then it becomes political activism under the guise of comedy. There was an abundance of Biden and Harris material that ran four years that somehow Colbert missed. Bernie Sanders reportedly was on Colbert’s show at least 15 times. That’s 14 times more than he shows up in Vermont.
Late-night comedy hasn’t been funny for years, while Colbert’s mean-spirited and partisan monologues only underscore our culture’s fragmentation. The old TV test pattern is funnier than Colbert who beclowned himself as a partisan hack masquerading as a comedian who confuses hate for humor. People want to be entertained, not lectured to and insulted by the late-night version of NPR.
If I want to hear nonstop babble and hate from a wrathful leftist, I’ll visit any Planned Parenthood with a sign that says: “Abortion isn’t healthcare – it’s murder.”
The free marketplace corrected the broadcast proving: “Go Woke, Go Broke.”
Like everything the left touches — it destroys.
Here is where CBS can produce a comedy show that appeals to all. But with Colbert’s exit not until May, don’t expect anything different.
On deck: The ladies of The View.
