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\t\t\t\t\t\tPhotos: NBC, CBS, ABC\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
When a Trump spokesperson insulted Jimmy Kimmel Live!<\/a> guest host Tiffany Haddish<\/a> after she delivered a monologue on the show last month, the comedian celebrated<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe White House is mad at me, y\u2019all!\u201d she exclaimed that night. \u201cThis is the day that I finally become Jimmy Kimmel.\u201d<\/p>\n Haddish\u2019s victory lap is the latest evidence that the late-night monologue is more of a cultural lightning rod than ever. Witness the firestorms over Kimmel\u2019s own monologue-triggered suspension and Bill Maher\u2019s Real Time <\/a>opening bits that infuriate the left or the right, depending on the week.\u00a0<\/p>\n From Tonight Starring Steve Allen<\/a> to Everybody\u2019s Live with John Mulaney<\/a>, the monologue has been a late-night constant for more than 70 years. But the talk-show staple is far from static. The jokey open has shapeshifted over several distinct eras, each reflecting the times in which the punchlines were delivered.\u00a0<\/p>\n LateNighter spoke with several late-night monologue writers about how our nation\u2019s nightly ritual has evolved over the past fifty-plus years. <\/p>\n Those observations are supported by an informal quantitative analysis of the time late-night shows devote to monologues, using representative episodes from streaming services, online archives, and social media.<\/p>\n The Only Game in Town (1962-1982)\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Johnny Carson<\/a> didn\u2019t invent the late-night monologue\u2014that accidental discovery<\/a> is credited to Steve Allen<\/a>\u2014but the King of Late Night made it an institution<\/p>\n Carson \u201cwas a 30-year boarder in our bedrooms, crooning monologue lullabies to make love by,\u201d wrote Raymond Siller<\/a>, one-time head writer of The Tonight Show<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Carson\u2019s monologue lullabies dominated and defined late night during the first two decades of his Tonight Show run.\u00a0<\/p>\n Les Crane, Joey Bishop<\/a>, Merv Griffin<\/a>, and Dick Cavett<\/a> all attempted to challenge Carson\u2019s late-night dominance, but no one stood a chance against his signature monologue, an early example of appointment television.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The Carson era, according to Conan writer Berkley Johnson, represented \u201cthe golden age of monologue writing.\u201d<\/p>\n Carson perfected the art of mining the day\u2019s headlines for topical gags. \u201cSince I do the show every day, I like to talk about things that are going on in the news, the political situation, whatever is happening,\u201d Carson told Larry Wilde in Great Comedians Talk About Comedy<\/a>.<\/p>\n Carson\u2019s monologue was disaster-proof, as he established a reputation for hilarity even when his jokes bombed. He was the master \u201cwhen a joke didn\u2019t work\u2014his acknowledging of it, his embracing of it, talking about the writers,\u201d notes comedy historian and former Late Night with Jimmy Fallon<\/a> head writer Wayne Federman<\/a>. \u201cIt was just a state-of-the-art job.\u201d<\/p>\n For many, Carson\u2019s opening jokes were the last thing they heard before falling asleep. \u201cA lot of people would tune in just for that monologue,\u201d notes Federman.\u00a0<\/p>\n Carson made those eight minutes worth viewers\u2019 while. Like The Daily Show<\/a> would for later generations, his monologue told audiences what cultural news was worth knowing.<\/p>\n \u201cBeing out there every night,\u201d Carson told Rolling Stone in 1979<\/a>, \u201cit\u2019s the only show that I know of on television where anybody is commenting on what\u2019s going on in the country every single day.\u201d<\/p>\n Carson\u2019s Rules (1982-1992)<\/strong><\/p>\n Carson governed late night as the 1980s began, thanks to an NBC contract that gave him veto power over his network\u2019s post-primetime schedule.\u00a0<\/p>\n And when NBC wanted to develop a second comedy\/talk program to follow The Tonight Show, Carson\u2019s permission came with stipulations.\u00a0<\/p>\n The new kid, David Letterman<\/a>, wasn\u2019t allowed a full orchestra. He couldn\u2019t book guests who regularly appeared on The Tonight Show.<\/p>\n And most importantly, Letterman wasn\u2019t allowed to perform a full monologue.<\/p>\n At Late Night with David Letterman<\/a>, the writing staff didn\u2019t even refer to it as a monologue. Instead, Letterman delivered \u201copening remarks,\u201d a segment that averaged just over three minutes in length throughout the decade. That was less than half as long as Carson\u2019s trademark open.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n 1980s monologue length<\/p>\n Tonight Show vs. Late Night \u00b7 average minutes<\/p>\n Carson<\/p>\n Letterman<\/p>\n Hover or tap a point for exact values. Tap a name above to isolate a line.<\/p>\n Unlike Carson, whose show turned on the monologue, Letterman made his name on produced bits\u2014Viewer Mail, Stupid Pet Tricks, and his signature video remotes.<\/p>\n Of course, Carson couldn\u2019t impose his rules on everyone. In 1989, Arsenio Hall<\/a> launched his syndicated late-night talk show<\/a>, leaning into an energetic monologue punctuated by his audience\u2019s trademark barking and fist-pumping that drew in young viewers. <\/p>\n Like Carson, Hall emphasized jokes in an opening segment that averaged more than eight minutes a night. While Hall\u2019s total audience was smaller than Carson\u2019s, his popularity in the younger demo brought in big advertising dollars and signaled that younger viewers were ready for an alternative to Carson.<\/p>\n The Monologue Wars (1993-2002)<\/strong><\/p>\n After Carson retired in 1992, late night saw its first true battle for supremacy when David Letterman decamped to CBS after being passed over for The Tonight Show job by Jay Leno<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n The competition was nowhere more evident than in the monologue. No longer bound by his agreement with Carson, Letterman began devoting substantially more time to his opening jokes even before wrapping up his NBC run\u2014a shift Leno quickly recognized.<\/p>\n At Late Show, Letterman\u2019s monologue ended up averaging more than twice as long as it had on Late Night.<\/p>\n David Letterman monologue length<\/p>\n Late Night vs. Late Show \u00b7 average minutes<\/p>\n Letterman \u201chad never committed to it before,\u201d\u00a0 Peter Lassally<\/a> recalled of the shift in Bill Carter\u2019s The Late Shift<\/a>. \u201cNow he would just do a joke, stand there, and receive the laugh with a big, warm grin on his face.\u201d<\/p>\n Leno doubled down in response, adding even more jokes, stretching his monologue to eleven to twelve minutes a night. Leno\u2019s jokes strategically ran \u201cpast Letterman’s first commercial,\u201d Tonight Show with Jay Leno<\/a> writer Marvin Silbermintz told LateNighter, giving wandering channel-surfers a chance to sample his comedy.<\/p>\n Leno believed the monologue was his superpower, and represented his best chance to beat Letterman, says Jon Rineman<\/a>, who began submitting jokes to Leno\u2019s show by fax before becoming a lead monologue writer for Jimmy Fallon<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Leno was tireless, staying up late writing the next day\u2019s monologue gags after each night\u2019s\u00a0 Tonight Show taping. His workday was more of the same, sifting through an estimated 500 jokes a day to find the perfect mix.\u00a0<\/p>\n While Leno and Letterman jockeyed for number one, they weren\u2019t alone in the late-night landscape. Conan O\u2019Brien<\/a> took over NBC\u2019s Late Night, and the network hosts\u2019 monologues competed with cable and syndicated upstarts like Jon Stewart<\/a>, Keenen Ivory Wayans<\/a>, Bill Maher<\/a>, and Dennis Miller<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Monologue writers in that post-Carson era faced a new challenge, Late Night with Conan O\u2019Brien<\/a> writer Brian Kiley<\/a> told LateNighter: Too many shows mining the same topics for laughs.\u00a0<\/p>\n Letterman and Leno, whose shows aired an hour before Conan, got first crack at topical jokes. \u201cWe might have written a joke earlier in the day than they did,\u201d Kiley said, \u201cbut they got to have it on the air earlier.\u201d<\/p>\n Sometimes, the jokes collided. Kiley recalls O\u2019Brien, Leno and Letterman all telling the same joke on Madonna<\/a>\u2019s birthday: \u201cWhat do you get the woman who’s had everyone?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThat’s the kind of thing that would happen,\u201d Kiley said. \u201cWe were all working off the same premises.\u201d<\/p>\n The Digital Shift (2003-2015)<\/strong><\/p>\n Those premises were found in \u201call newspapers at the beginning,\u201d Silbermintz remembers of his Leno days. As the 1990s progressed, a Tonight Show staffer would be assigned the task of\u00a0 summarizing fresh material from the still-developing Internet.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Reviewing jokes was also \u201cvery analog,\u201d remembers Johnson.\u00a0 During his Late Night tenure, Conan O\u2019Brien would receive a printout of jokes, making \u201ca check mark by jokes he liked, a squiggle by jokes where there was something there, but he wasn’t sure about it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n While Conan\u2019s early review process was decidedly old-school, late night ultimately went digital, and monologues were changed for good.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cTwitter changed everything because now the whole world’s writing jokes,\u201d says Kiley. \u201cThat made it very difficult because you’d write a joke at 9 a.m. and then at 3 o’clock, some random person would tweet the same joke.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Viewers in Carson\u2019s era tuned in for topical jokes, but in the 21st century, \u201cyou’re getting that somewhere else,\u201d says Johnson.<\/p>\n Even everyday obscurities weren\u2019t safe for joke writers. \u201cI just was watching an Instagram reel about some dumb thing, like a woman locked the pizza delivery guy in her house for movie night,\u201d says Johnson. \u201cAnd there’s 50 bloggers that were all jumping on the same story and giving their little take on it.\u201d<\/p>\n With late-night competing in a digital world, some hosts shifted from a monologue emphasis to comedy that was harder to replicate.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cFor a while there, late night shows got very gamified,\u201d says Johnson.\u00a0<\/p>\n Think Jimmy Fallon\u2019s “Lip Sync Battle,” James Corden<\/a>\u2019s “Carpool Karaoke,” or Jimmy Kimmel\u2019s YouTube pranks\u2014if the Internet was coming for late night, why couldn\u2019t late-night create material that went viral?<\/p>\n At Fallon\u2019s Late Night, writers took to \u201cplaying to Jimmy’s strengths,\u201d recalls Rineman. While Leno expanded the monologue, Fallon cut the segment in half in favor of produced comedy bits like \u201cWheel of Musical Impressions,\u201d \u201c#Hashtags,\u201d and \u201cSlow Jam the News.\u201d <\/p>\n Fallon\u2019s monologue expanded once he took over The Tonight Show, but it never approached the length of Leno\u2019s.<\/p>\n Leno vs. Fallon<\/p>\n Average monologue length in minutes<\/p>\n *Leno hosted The Tonight Show 1992\u20132009 and 2010\u20132014.<\/p>\n Deemphasizing the monologue worked, at least in the short term. Early on in his Tonight Show tenure, Fallon\u2019s ratings consistently topped those for Late Show with David Letterman<\/a> and Jimmy Kimmel Live!<\/a><\/p>\n Not Politics as Usual (2016-2025)<\/strong><\/p>\n The 2016 election reversed that trend, putting lengthy political monologues back at the center of the late-night ratings race.<\/p>\n \u201cI remember Fallon had been number one. And then the night of Trump’s inauguration, like that, it switched over to Colbert being number one,\u201d remembers Rineman. \u201cThere was a new president, and people wanted to hear what Stephen had to say.\u201d<\/p>\n Colbert\u2019s pointed monologues represented a shift from earlier eras when late-night comics opted for broader, less personal punchlines.\u00a0<\/p>\n Carson set the tone. \u201cI\u2019m an entertainer, not a commentator,\u201d he told Playboy in 1967 about political material. \u201cIf you\u2019re a comedian, your job is to make people laugh.\u201d<\/p>\n Leno and Letterman were similarly determined not to alienate half their audience.\u00a0 \u201cWe didn’t care about our own political feelings,\u201d Silbermintz said of Leno\u2019s Tonight Show tenure.\u00a0<\/p>\n On earlier late-night shows, including Saturday Night Live<\/a>, politicians were cartoons, identified by comic stereotypes rather than ideology. \u201cWe made caricatures out of the president,\u201d says Conan writer Kiley. \u201cBill Clinton was the horn dog and George W. Bush was dumb. You could write those jokes all day.\u201d<\/p>\n But The Daily Show\u2019s pointed satire set things in a new direction. \u201cThey did an incredible job,\u201d says Late Night with Conan O\u2019Brien\u2019s Johnson. \u201cEven though it was not a late night show in the sense of Letterman or Leno, it was still in that same rough time slot, still beating the shit out of us at the Emmys every year.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe didn\u2019t live in Carson’s world anymore,\u201d recalls Federman. \u201cWe lived more in a Jon Stewart world.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cStewart was so successful and so good at it,\u201d says Kiley. \u201cHe was very influential. Colbert took over the mantle from Stewart and had that built-in left-wing audience.\u201d<\/p>\n The Late Show with Stephen Colbert<\/p>\n Monologue length, in minutes<\/p>\n The more Colbert leaned into political monologues, the more his Late Show thrived. In his early episodes prior to the 2016 election, his monologue segment averaged just under six minutes. After Trump became President, Colbert supersized his nightly political critique to roughly 11 minutes a night, approaching Leno-era length. Top ratings followed.\u00a0<\/p>\n Late night was experiencing a version of the audience fragmentation seen in cable news. Shows with clearly defined political identities\u2014including Gutfeld!<\/a> on the right and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert<\/a> on the left\u2014built loyal audiences, while Fallon\u2019s more politically mixed approach struggled to maintain its earlier ratings lead.<\/p>\n In a partisan late-night world, topicality became more important than ever. \u201cWhen we started losing to Colbert, I started paying attention to what Colbert was doing,\u201d says Rineman.\u00a0 \u201cI found out that Stephen, when there was breaking news during taping, would actually go [back] over to his monologue mark and film three or four jokes about that breaking story. And then they would edit it into the monologue.\u201d<\/p>\n Rineman brought a similar idea to a Tonight Show showrunner. \u201cThe response I got was, \u2018That’s bleeping crazy,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cAnd that’s when I knew that we weren’t going to win against Colbert.\u201d<\/p>\n Back to the Future (2026-Present)<\/strong><\/p>\n But politically charged monologues have other consequences, as Kimmel and Colbert discovered this past year. Though CBS has insisted that politics played no role in Colbert\u2019s cancellation, many viewers and commentators remain skeptical. And no comedian is showing up to replace him, at least not in a traditional late-night capacity.\u00a0 <\/p>\n The old boundaries of late night are beginning to break down.<\/p>\n \u201cLate night has morphed into something else,\u201d observes Federman. \u201cIt’s a different universe from David Letterman or Jay Leno or Conan. That’s how far we are down this road.\u201d<\/p>\n The monologue, however, has proved unusually adaptable. Even as traditional late-night viewership declines, the format continues to thrive on social media and other online platforms. A Kimmel monologue on YouTube can garner 5 million-plus views.<\/p>\n