"In 2018, seven late night programs — NBC’s “Tonight” and “Late Night,” CBS’ “Late Show” and “Late Late Show,” ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” Comedy Central’s “Daily Show” and NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” — drew more than $698 million in advertising in 2018, according to Vivvix, a tracker of ad spending. By 2022, that total came to $412.7 million — a drop of approximately 41% over five years. Fallon, Kimmel, Colbert and the others have all in recent years had to grapple not only with viewers moving to streaming, but with a coronavirus pandemic that forced their shows to embrace performances without a band and live audiences and absences due to infection."
Late night died when it gleefully cut its own audience in half.
Leno was already minding the corpse. His audience was 90% boomers who had been there since Johnny Carson.
Carson is King and he always will be. Modern late nite talk shows can’t hold a candle compared to 50 year old clips from the Tonight Show.
"In 2018, seven late night programs — NBC’s “Tonight” and “Late Night,” CBS’ “Late Show” and “Late Late Show,” ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” Comedy Central’s “Daily Show” and NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” — drew more than $698 million in advertising in 2018, according to Vivvix, a tracker of ad spending. By 2022, that total came to $412.7 million — a drop of approximately 41% over five years. Fallon, Kimmel, Colbert and the others have all in recent years had to grapple not only with viewers moving to streaming, but with a coronavirus pandemic that forced their shows to embrace performances without a band and live audiences and absences due to infection."
Excuses, excuses. . . .
They’ll say anything to avoid the truth: TDS ended the late night shows.
... and nothing of value was lost.
Conan went from “masturbating bear sketches” to “claiming Haiti isn’t a shithole because he spent a few days filming in a luxury resort”.
Conan knows his handlers, who pays him, and what audience they want him to have. The path that follows is an obvious one.
Remember when Conan was good?