In a way, it’s a shock every time the biggest talkshow hosts assemble into their “Strike Force Five”, the podcast-born group consisting of Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers and John Oliver. No, the shock isn’t the lack of Greg Gutfeld, the highly viewed Fox News talkshow host who has nonetheless only ever been funny as a punchline unto himself, and was playfully name-checked on the final episode of Colbert’s The Late Show, after the deposed king of late-night was informed the highest-rated host was getting the boot. (“They’re canceling Gutfeld?!” he cried in fake panic.) The real repeated surprise is the realization that there are (or were) five major late-night hosts still standing.
OK, even before Colbert got the axe, it was actually four: Oliver hails from a weekly perch on HBO, which, given similar jobs held by Dennis Miller for nine years and Bill Maher for 24, seems likely to last for at least 200 seasons. But still: four big-name network talkshows? In this economy?! Strike that down to three, now that Colbert’s tenure is officially over, and his David Letterman-founded late-night franchise with it. Though Colbert is the exact wrong one to cull – the group’s best interviewer, strongest comedy bona fides, and highest-rated show to boot! – it’s hard to argue that network TV is in need of the late-night chatshows that used to be such a major status symbol and, presumably, cash cow. Though the shows are notoriously expensive (such that CBS was able to claim that their king of late-night also lost money), they must have once generated substantial revenue, given the amount of jockeying the 11pm-and-beyond slot inspired throughout the 1980s and especially 90s.
Today the landscape is becoming both more and less competitive; fewer actual late-night shows, their numbers decreasing because a lot of people can watch any number of things at whatever time works best for them. (Basically, everything is now a late-night show if you want to stay up.) NBC’s Saturday Night Live has managed to remain relevant, much to the consternation of its most virulent anti-fans, by providing stuff that other late-night shows, or TV shows in general, do not. It offers a comedy focus that, mainstream and toothless as it can appear, doesn’t pull punches in quite the same way as a talkshow forced to rely so heavily on current events; a sketch-variety format and expanded running time, allowing it to hit all of the late-night hallmarks (monologue, topical jokes, sketches, musical performances) without (always) feeling rushed; and the event status of actually broadcasting live, rather than taping the same day (even if much of the audience catches up with it via YouTube – a format even friendlier to sketches than it is to interview segments).
But it’s sort of the exception that proves the rule: every time there’s talk of SNL head honcho Lorne Michaels retiring (or dying at his desk), someone at the network will salivate via the press about how much more profitable the notoriously expensive show could be with just about anyone else producing it and some major budget tweaks. As untouchable as it seems as one of the highest-rated entertainment shows on network TV – including primetime stuff – it can’t be considered fully exempt from the overall warning issued on Colbert’s finale: “At some point, this may come for all our shows,” the Strike Force Five mused about the sucking CG void symbolizing his cancellation.
Are we, as the former kids might say, losing the recipes by letting these network standbys drop out of sight? On one hand, there have been plenty of stretches of TV history where not every major network carried a talkshow with the fairly rigid format, followed by the last three standing. As such, some retreat may only be a natural after-effect, perhaps overdue, of the decades-ago late-night boom. On the other, it’s been the shows and hosts more prone to format-breaking that have been earlier to go, such as Craig Ferguson’s more freewheeling version of the Late Late Show (the former companion piece to the Late Show, later hosted by James Corden) or Conan O’Brien’s quirkier, funnier iteration of The Tonight Show. The sorta-gameshow After Midnight (which replaced Corden’s Late Late Show) died as soon as host Taylor Tomlinson wanted to move on. With so few options, traditionalism reigns – or worse, those Fallon mini-gameshows will count as innovation!
The real shame is that the CBS slot isn’t up for grabs: not for a new Late Show host, which Colbert has publicly wished for, and not even for a new CBS show trying out something else in late night. Byron Allen has made a “time buy” for the Late Show time slot (and the one after it), meaning he’ll pay CBS for the airtime, into which he will plug his longtime, low-budget hackfest Comics Unleashed, a formerly syndicated showcase for low-wattage comedians to do their bits while sitting down. (Think something like Politically Incorrect or Tough Crowd from the 90s or 00s, only with fewer celebrities and far less chance that anyone will care about anything anyone says.)
Maybe you have to hand it to CBS and Allen for engineering something genuinely retro: this is the kind of show you used to be able to catch at 1am during a bout of insomnia, just before a time when you could stream 30 Rock episodes instead. By letting that kind of low-rent, after-hours programming creep on the air before midnight, it feels like CBS is abandoning exactly the totems that should make them an obvious national network. Sure, buzzy prestige shows and laugh-out-loud comedies might migrate to streaming services with fewer content restrictions, but now-imperiled institutions such as a nightly news broadcast or a late-night talkshow serve as flags planted on the airwaves in ways that streamers have approached, but can’t quite replace. John Mulaney had a beloved and inventive talkshow on Netflix – airing weekly, to the tune of just 12 episodes a year (like one of the aforementioned HBO talkshows, but way less of it).
If there’s an upside to this inevitable loss of the actual airwaves, maybe it’s that people as brilliant as Colbert, O’Brien and future talent like them will be freed of the compulsion to become part of that TV-history firmament. As great as O’Brien has been as a talkshow host, awards show host and traveling improviser, the man wrote for some of the best eras of SNL and The Simpsons – he penned Marge vs the Monorail, for God’s sake! Shouldn’t he be creating stuff outside the jolly-emcee grind? Colbert, too, has a rich history of satire as a co-creator of Strangers With Candy and the face of the overtly satirical Colbert Report. He’s apparently going to be involved with a Lord of the Rings project in some capacity, which won’t necessarily play to his comedy roots but at least will be a change of pace from monologue jokes about Donald Trump’s shenanigans. Look at all of the shows Tina Fey has been able to work on, apparently unburdened with the desire to host a talkshow. Colbert or Conan or whoever else could make their own Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, The Four Seasons, Girls5Eva, or The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins. Or they could, you know, write a novel or make a movie. O’Brien was great in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.
Really, network TV should count itself lucky that guys including Colbert or O’Brien were such enthusiastic employees for so long. If they’re now looking at hawking their airtime like a tinpot real estate mogul instead of programming it like a network, maybe someone who cares about comedy, or variety, or television in general, will buy it up. Or maybe the networks will start to look like vacant lots, in a neighborhood where no one wants to live any more.
