Tag: Late Night

The Lopsided Humor of Late Night TV

Laughter is apparently built into our DNA, because I recently saw an ultrasound of a pre-born baby in full smile mode.

I don’t know what the little guy thought was so funny, but it’s a pretty sure bet he wasn’t listening to one of TV’s late-night comedy shows. They stopped delivering laughs a long time ago.

It all started when late-night hosts began moving further and further to the political left. Then so many of the jokes went woke. And finally Big Censorship came in with a knockout punch.

It’s no wonder that over the past several years late-night revenues have plummeted. Shows on CBS, NBC, and ABC are down significantly from five years prior, and network executives have even cut back on programming.

The following info may shed some light on what appears to be a major contributing factor in the demise of late-night humor.

While participating in a panel discussion, former host of the “The Daily Show” Trevor Noah stated that he and his team of writers look to the underlying news for their joke inspiration.

“I’ll say, ‘What is the news, what are the facts, what’s the truth?’ and then we will put the jokes on top. It’s the icing on the cake,” Noah said.

The problem is the icing on the cake tastes rotten to a huge segment of viewing audiences.

Some eye-opening research underscores the extreme partisanship that is embedded within late-night television programming.

The Media Research Center (MRC) released some compelling data, which were obtained during the time period between Labor Day and the Monday night that preceded Election Day of 2022.

Results of the study indicated that there had been 47 left-leaning guests who had appeared on late-night shows.

During this same time period, not a single conservative-leaning guest was booked to appear on the late-night shows.

In September of 2023, Bill Maher said out loud what late-night hosts are really up to.

“What they do is say exactly what a liberal audience wants them to say…,” Maher stated.

Maher also responded to a question about why other talk show hosts are handed Emmy Awards, despite having much smaller audiences than his own.

“Because I tell the truth,” Maher said. “I don’t perform for just one-half of the country and say the things that will make them applaud.”

A study recently conducted by the MRC provides additional evidence of the political bias that exists on the part of late-night television hosts and writers.

The MRC study analyzed the comedic content contained within the programming of the major late-night shows, which included ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” NBC’s “Late Night with Seth Meyers,” NBC’s “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” CBS’s “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” and up until the show stopped airing in April 2023 “The Late Late Show with James Corden.”

An extraordinary 81% of the comedic material contained within the programming was aimed directly at conservative-leaning public figures.

Certain shows contained more one-sided material than others. Kimmel’s show led the pack when it came to partisan bits aimed at right-of-center targets. Programming included slanted humor that 88% of the time lampooned conservatives.

Late-night TV took the same asymmetrical approach with the Supreme Court. Conservative-leaning Justices were on the receiving end of punch lines at a ratio of 64 to 1.

Late night shows used to be an American staple. Now at least half the country has tuned out because folks are tired of being the butt of old worn-out unfunny mediocre jokes.

Try poking at both sides and you just might bring back the funny.

Our babies in waiting are already primed to laugh.

Bill Maher, Stephen Colbert and the Death of Late-night Comedy

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With liberals targeting for destruction one cultural institution after another, it was inevitable that late-night comedy was going to have its turn.

Ironically, late-night comic hosts, many of whom were trailblazers in the laugh industry, have slowly but surely morphed into lemmings, substituting smug political claptrap for comedy.

Rather than entertain, the ones who are lucky enough to have actually made it into comedy’s top echelon are now catering to a flimsy fan base of enraged resisters and hate-driven hypocrites.

Bill Maher, host of HBO’s “Real Time,” is the latest example. He recently let it be known how bitter leftists view President Donald Trump’s economic track record.

Recognizing the phenomenal economy under President Trump’s leadership, Maher stated that he believes it is critical for the U.S. economy to collapse in order to rid the country of a president with whom he disagrees.

“I feel like the bottom has to fall out at some point, and by the way, I’m hoping for it because I think one way you get rid of Trump is a crashing economy,” Maher said. “So please, bring on the recession. Sorry if that hurts people but it’s either root for a recession, or you lose your democracy.”

The left is so steeped in hatred it is willing to let the best interests of the nation take a back seat to spite. And like far too many others in his industry, Maher is more than willing to see his neighbor harmed than to see President Trump succeed.

It is hard to fathom how late-night comedy allowed itself to descend to such a pitiful depth. Late-night television was created and branded by the pioneers of the medium – Jack Paar, Steve Allen, and of course the man who defined the forum, “The King of Late-Night” Johnny Carson.

Carson was the guy who dropped in unannounced but you never wanted him to leave. No matter what had transpired in the course of the day, he could make you forget in a single quip. He was simply a friend that taught you how to smile yourself to sleep.

The current crop of late-night hosts could benefit from the master in more ways than one. A single show of Carson’s could bring in as many as 9 million viewers. By comparison, CBS’s “Late Show,” hosted by Stephen Colbert, is currently the highest-rated late-night program, but a good night for Colbert is typically a third of the viewers that Carson had, in part because Colbert’s program generally consists of Trump trashing and partisan punches.

Viewers today admittedly have a lot more options when it comes to the late-night timeslot. In addition to broadcast networks’ offerings of Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, and Jimmy Fallon, there are numerous cable offerings, which include TBS’s Conan O’Brien, Comedy Central’s Trevor Noah, HBO’s John Oliver, and BET’s Robin Thede, along with broadcast networks’ very late-nighters James Corden and Seth Meyers.

Late-night writers generally cater to viewers who use social media to watch highlight video footage from previous programs. Shows with late-night content that stream to viewers include Hulu’s Sarah Silverman and Netlix’s Joel McHale and Michelle Wolf, who is best known for her embarrassingly unfunny performance at the most recent White House Correspondents Dinner. Weekly late-nighters such as Comedy Central’s Jim Jeffries and TBS’s Samantha Bee are also part of the mix.

Virtually all of the shows specialize in targeting the president, and Bee is one of the hosts who clearly illustrates the lowlights of today’s pathetic programming. Referring to the daughter of the president in the crudest of ways, Bee incurred a deserved backlash, which prompted defections by a number of sponsors. Both Bee and TBS later apologized, but the comic was not fired or suspended. In another humorless incident, there was a young man who had attended the Conservative Political Action Conference and was bashed with a comment about “Nazi hair.” It turned out that the young man was actually suffering from Stage 4 brain cancer, and Bee was again forced to apologize.

It is painful to have to say that in this sorry state of late-night comedy, television’s most visible hosts have turned into boring political preachers and in the process have themselves become the joke.