Downsizing Comes to Late-Night TV, So They Finally Got a Laugh Out of Me

Late-night tv, the original state of audience-pleasers like Johnny Carson with a near-universal charm, “is now strongly in belt-tightening mode”, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Although it took years, Stephen Colbert eventually made me smile.

The reductions have been roiling for the entire time.

The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Falon on NBC was made last week, the last of the popular late-night chat shows to have a four-night-a-week plan ( it hurts this lifelong Carson lover to also type those words ). &nbsp,

Before that, NBC’s” Soon Night With Seth Meyers” had to let its home circle go to save money. When David Letterman was still presenting” Slow Night,” you never saw that happen to Paul Shaffer and the World’s Most Dangerous Band.

I’d forgotten CBS kind of forgot to find a new host after James Corden left last year and replaced it with” the less expensive’ After Midnight ‘ comedy game show” because I’d heard so little about it in recent years.

At a Carnac the Beautiful prank, this GenX aficionado makes more of a joke than Ed McMahon.

I grew up watching Carson and Tom Snyder, and therefore David Letterman after NBC stuck him in Snyder’s post-Carson gambling. Late-night software made a forbidden fruits appeal to me. primarily because the displays ran so late at night. Mostly because the customers and gags gave me a look into the adult world. &nbsp,

The Hollywood Reporter attributes the decline to streaming competition, and while I think there’s a lot of truth to that, I do n’t think it tells the whole story. Since cable channels started to really grow in the ’80s, one fact is that the main broadcast systems have been dealing with splitting people. &nbsp,

There’s something else around at play, things left-dominated Hollywood might not want to say.

Recommended: &nbsp, That’s One Small Walk for a Man ( and a Woman )…

Carson himself went to a three-night-a-week plan in 1981, but not because of any expenditure reduces. After a long-running debate with NBC, he settled for a new agreement, and the network was determined to stay him. ” The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson” was one of the network’s few moneymakers during the dark days of shows like” Supertrain” and” Hello, Larry” before NBC began turning its fortunes around in the early ‘ 80s. &nbsp,

By the ‘ 90s, broadcast supremacy was becoming a remembrance. The cable companies appear to have suffered more as a result of streaming than standard community content.

But, to me, who witnessed all of this happen a long time ago, the idea that late-night broadcast could turn into a money pit shocks me.

But just a little.

There’s another element to late-night programming that does n’t often get mentioned: its intimacy. People who continues to watch the news on TV after 11 o’clock is possibly presently asleep. You must like and respect the host so much that they can practically enter your home without the lights on. &nbsp,

It’s enough to make you wonder how many GenX children were born immediately after Carson finished his speech. &nbsp,

How many people are left to welcome guests like Colbert or Fallon when they boldly mock and attack quarter of their potential market?

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