Late-night television just ain't what it used to be. Those of us who grew up when Johnny Carson was late-night television often wonder how the genre has managed to survive for 34 years after his retirement. Johnny was the gold standard, and everyone who followed him knew that, at best, they would be pale imitations.
There has been a lot of drama in late-night in the past year. CBS canceled The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel for being a bottom-feeding scumbag and liar. Both hosts decided to make Trump Derangement Syndrome-induced polarizing politics their brands, so they blame the president for all of their misfortune.
Both are, of course, completely full of crap.
Late-night television is dying for an extremely mundane reason, which I have written about several times. In a recent interview with Deadline, Carson's successor Jay Leno summed it up rather succinctly:
It’s not that people are better or worse, it’s the fact that the whole medium has changed. The idea that you have to turn the TV on 11:30 p.m. to hear what was being said, like appointment television, that sounds ridiculous now.
It's that simple — we just don't watch television the way we used to because we don't need to. The entire nature of television is changing. Most younger people only look at their TVs when they are playing video games. They're watching YouTube, TikTok, and any other media they can consume on their phones or tablets. When CNBC canceled Jay Leno's Garage, the television veteran moved it over to YouTube.
Leno is being very diplomatic when saying that the "people" of late-night aren't worse. Again, they've all decided to be deliberately polarizing, which Leno himself is on record as not being a fan of. Colbert was, and Jimmy Kimmel is objectively worse in a highly subjective business. The success of Seth Meyers in comedy remains a mystery to sane people everywhere.
In the interview, Leno also said that "Joe Rogan is the new Johnny Carson." That's certainly going to cause a collective bunching of the panties among American leftists.
Colbert, Kimmel, and their fans are all raging leftists, which means that reality and responsibility for their own actions are anathema to them. They can't acknowledge that late-night television shows are bleeding relevance. Although I do believe that the shifting nature of how we consume entertainment is the largest determining factor in the demise of late-night, I also believe that Colbert and Kimmel have done everything they can to hasten its demise. Colbert was probably thrilled that he was canceled while President Donald Trump was in office because he could blame everything on him.
If he wants a bigger audience for his whining, he should have his agent get him booked on Rogan's podcast.
Related: David Letterman Sowed the Seeds of Late-Night Television's Demise
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