{"id":158767,"date":"2025-08-19T16:01:16","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T16:01:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/158767\/"},"modified":"2025-08-19T16:01:16","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T16:01:16","slug":"your-late-night-comedy-formula-expired-a-decade-ago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/158767\/","title":{"rendered":"Your Late-Night Comedy Formula Expired a Decade Ago"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jay Leno recently earned praise from MAGA media figures for hearkening back to a simpler era of television, pining for the day<\/a> when late-night comedians were equal-opportunity offenders, gently poking at both sides of the political aisle.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy shoot for just half an audience all the time? You know, why not try to get the whole? I mean, I like to bring people into the big picture,\u201d he told David Trulio of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute in an interview posted July 22.<\/p>\n

But in lamenting the anti-Trump sentiments coming from the likes of Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart and Jimmy Kimmel, the former \u201cThe Tonight Show\u201d host and his recipe to Make Late-Night Great Again reveals an obliviousness to how the world has changed when it comes to media and politics: more content chasing a highly fragmented audience that increasingly finds news and entertainment within their own ideological silos.<\/p>\n

To be fair, Leno wasn\u2019t directly addressing CBS\u2019 cancellation of \u201cThe Late Show\u201d when he made his widely circulated comments, since the interview was conducted prior to that decision. Leno was nevertheless cheered by the right when the remarks surfaced,<\/strong> on programs such as \u201cFox & Friends\u201d and \u201cThe Five,\u201d for telling Trulio that comics \u201cwind up cozying too much to one side or the other.\u201d<\/p>\n

The assertion that late-night comedy has become too political also received a robust workout on Fox News this month, after Jimmy Fallon hosted Fox\u2019s resident jester Greg Gutfeld on Aug. 7, for a light-hearted segment devoid of politics. Ever since, Gutfeld and his colleagues used that appearance to celebrate Fallon, bash the other late-night hosts and gloat about \u201cLate Show\u2019s\u201d demise.<\/p>\n

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For the more than two decades that Leno hosted \u201cThe Tonight Show,\u201d keeping your personal politics a mystery was considered a smart move as broadcast TV dominated viewership. It\u2019s a tightrope act his predecessor, Johnny Carson, also walked for his 30 years on late-night television.<\/p>\n

During Barack Obama\u2019s presidency, however, the political climate changed, while broadcasting\u2019s power gradually faded. By the time Donald Trump entered politics a decade ago, the major networks were shrinking into more of a niche business.<\/p>\n

Leno\u2019s perspective ignores the reality that media has gotten far more fragmented, with everything from TikTok to social media feeds and streaming services competing against traditional broadcast and cable networks. In this era where reaching any audience is the goal, doing so by sacrificing the \u201cother half\u201d is a perfectly smart strategy.<\/p>\n

Put another way: Leno\u2019s \u201cdown the middle\u201d formula expired not long after he left \u201cThe Tonight Show,\u201d and going after a segment of the audience with a distinct spin <\/strong>is a perfectly viable business model.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s equally hard to blithely accept Trump and his acolytes decrying political polarization in late-night TV when his actions have done so much to divide American society, in many ways forcing people to choose sides. <\/p>\n

In the pre-Trump era, comedians had seen the value \u2014 or sense of civic duty \u2014 in tackling key issues, but Trump\u2019s unprecedented grab for power, including dispatching National Guard troops to Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., has altered the calculus in terms of what comics can overlook if they have any desire to address the political moment.<\/p>\n

As for the commercial rationale for taking a stand, just ask Fox News and the highly opinionated Gutfeld, who has understandably crowed about his ratings topping Colbert and the rest of the late-night comedy field. (The achievement does warrant an asterisk, since \u201cGutfeld!\u201d has the advantage of coming on at 10 p.m. ET, when more people are generally up and watching.)<\/p>\n

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The irony is those praising Leno\u2019s comments on Fox regularly sacrifice a big chunk of the audience too, just as their counterparts at MSNBC do. Nor should it be lost that the least-watched major cable news network, CNN, seeks to straddle the elusive middle as Leno counseled.<\/p>\n

Leno didn\u2019t respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

The most vanilla-flavored current late-night host, Leno\u2019s successor Jimmy Fallon, attracts fewer viewers than Colbert, with the two averaging 2.4 million and 1.2 million viewers, respectively, during second-quarter 2025<\/a>. But on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, Fallon\u2019s concerted effort to create viral content with his celebrity guests has resulted in numbers that have dominated the competition.<\/p>\n

That would be the same Jimmy Fallon who treats politics gingerly, revels in silly viral videos and who memorably drew the ire of the left in 2016 by yukking it up with Trump during his first presidential run and playfully tousling his hair.<\/p>\n

\"JimmyJimmy Fallon tousled Donald Trump\u2019s hair in a 2016 \u201cThe Tonight Show\u201d appearance during his first presidential run. (NBC)<\/p>\n

Fast-forward to 2025, and Fallon is the subject of Gutfeld\u2019s continued praise for having the \u201cguts\u201d to book him<\/a> as a guest. \u201cGreg\u2019s \u2018Tonight Show\u2019 Appearance Triggers the Left\u201d read the chyron on Gutfeld\u2019s show, though even he admitted the griping amounted to a handful of tweets assembled as clickbait stories.<\/p>\n

Like his Fox colleagues, Gutfeld\u2019s criticism of Colbert and Kimmel for adopting a political point of view overlooks the many who have thrived commercially by doing precisely that.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Five\u2019s\u201d resident one-on-four liberal, Jessica Tarlov, was shouted down as usual when she said, \u201cWe are in a very different political time than when Leno was doing this,\u201d with Gutfeld insisting his show is a success because of \u201cthe arrogance and ego\u201d of liberal comedians, which explained why people watched him.<\/p>\n

The words Gutfeld conveniently omitted are \u201clike-minded people,\u201d which underscores where Leno gets it wrong: Shooting for \u201chalf an audience\u201d makes sense, because trying to please everybody risks leaving you in a comedy no-man\u2019s land that pleases nobody. <\/strong>And while it\u2019s slightly misleading to lump \u201cGutfeld!\u201d in with traditional late-night comedy \u2014 it\u2019s basically just a Fox panel show with extra jokes \u2014 the host and his fawning guests notably made a point last week of attributing his success, in part, to appealing to those turned off by anti-Trump humor elsewhere.<\/p>\n

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To the extent Gutfeld\u2019s argument is that his show has flourished as a reaction to Colbert and Kimmel\u2019s liberal tilt, Jon Stewart would agree. On his \u201cThe Weekly Show\u201d podcast, Stewart noted that Gutfeld is \u201cnot popular because he\u2019s a both-sides guy,\u201d while calling out the hypocrisy of those who support Gutfeld mixing comedy and politics while decrying what Colbert does, saying they are \u201ctrying to police and create rules that they would never follow.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth noting the late-night personality that Colbert, Kimmel and their contemporaries most admired wasn\u2019t Leno, but his rival David Letterman, whose political material became much more pointed and partisan in his later years on CBS, before handing the keys to Colbert in 2015.<\/p>\n

\"\"Kamala Harris on \u201cThe Late Show\u201d with host Stephen Colbert (CBS)<\/p>\n

Asked by The Hollywood Reporter<\/a> about Leno\u2019s remarks, HBO\u2019s John Oliver began by saying he would \u201ctake a hard pass on taking comedic advice from Jay Leno,\u201d before expounding on why his bigger-tent theory doesn\u2019t work: \u201cComedy can\u2019t be for everyone. It\u2019s inherently subjective.\u201d Oliver added that it\u2019s \u201ccompletely legitimate\u201d to play to a broad audience or a narrow one, \u201cbecause I don\u2019t think comedy is prescriptive in that way. It\u2019s just what people want.\u201d<\/p>\n

Plenty of people still want what Colbert, Kimmel and Stewart have to offer, at least by today\u2019s standards, and many of them are insanely loyal. It\u2019s another matter whether that justifies continuing to produce those programs, which lack the shelf-life and repeatability that\u2019s conducive to streaming \u2014 bottom-line factors that CBS cited as its rationale<\/a> for dropping \u201cThe Late Show,\u201d even if many remain skeptical that was the only reason.<\/p>\n

Then again, despite Gutfeld\u2019s endorsement of Fallon, even his innocuous brand of comedy has irked Trump, who said in July<\/a> that Fallon and Kimmel have \u201cabsolutely no talent\u201d and would soon be dropped as well. That\u2019s because for all the defenses used to explain Trump\u2019s more outlandish pronouncements, the president clearly has no sense of humor about jokes made at his expense.<\/p>\n

So memo to Leno: If you were hosting \u201cThe Tonight Show\u201d now the way you did 20 years ago, guess what? You\u2019d occupy a shrinking center <\/strong>that would deprive you of loyal viewers, and Trump and his supporters would still call you a no-talent hack while urging NBC to fire you, too.<\/p>\n

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