{"id":2108437,"date":"2025-10-22T15:33:30","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T15:33:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2108437"},"modified":"2025-10-22T15:33:30","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T15:33:30","slug":"this-internet-theory-of-late-nights-decline-is-the-strongest-one-yet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/this-internet-theory-of-late-nights-decline-is-the-strongest-one-yet\/","title":{"rendered":"This Internet Theory of Late Night\u2019s Decline Is the Strongest One Yet"},"content":{"rendered":"

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There\u2019s been a lot of hair pulling recently about why late-night programming is struggling. The only one who\u2019s seemed to really crack the code is\u00a0<\/span>Gutfeld!<\/i><\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/i>That doesn\u2019t really count, though, because it comes on at 10 p.m. and is watched by people who are so fueled by hate they need 24 hours of Fox News programming. Plus, some of that large audience has to be the old people leaving their TV on when they sleep, right?<\/span><\/p>\n

But, because of the rapid decline in\u00a0<\/span>late-night viewership,<\/span><\/a> there are plenty of people who\u00a0<\/span>blame the hosts<\/span><\/a> for failing to keep a large audience. Gutfeld\u2019s success and the massive numbers of views on YouTube for Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers suggests that the problem isn\u2019t the hosts themselves.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In a Substack post shared to the\u00a0<\/span>r\/LateNightTalkShows<\/span><\/a>, the account ThinkingAndData suggested that the real problem with late night has nothing to do with the white men helming the major network shows.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn the past, late-night was a jack of all trades \u2014 comedy routines, sketches, celebrity interviews, music performances \u2014 but with the dawn of the internet, it has emerged as a master of none,\u201d the\u00a0<\/span>Substack post<\/span><\/a> posits. \u201cThis theme has played out twice before, with two major predecessors of late-night: vaudeville and variety shows.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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The article traces how both prior forms of entertainment were killed by new forms of technology. \u201cWith vaudeville, it was motion pictures, and with variety shows, it was cable TV. With late-night, it\u2019s playing out over the internet and social media,\u201d the post continues.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t an entirely new theory, but the response on Reddit shows that it best reflects most late-night fan\u2019s realities. No one is tuning in at 11:30 p.m. to watch Kimmel or Colbert on TV \u2014 very few people even pay for cable anymore, especially young people. \u201cI actually watch all the late night on YouTube the following day and I\u2019m 34 years old,\u201d one person on the Reddit post commented. \u201cIt\u2019s become a way for me to stay informed without going insane about what\u2019s going on.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou NEVER need to watch anything when it \u2018airs,\u2019\u201d another person chimed in. \u201cYou choose when to watch. And so the communal element and the sense of anticipation is gone from late night and other shows that historically have relied on being fresh with commentary on the day\u2019s or week\u2019s events.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Did you catch ___ last night?\u2019 has been almost entirely replaced with \u2018did you catch that ___ bit on YouTube?\u2019 at this point,\u201d a third Redditor commented.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So, where does this leave late-night programming? YouTube revenue isn\u2019t exactly going to cover the production costs of these massive shows.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Substack post frames it like this: \u201cThe issue with current late-night shows is that they operate on a business model of mass appeal, but today\u2019s attention economy is built on niches. As the economics of late-night become more dire, I expect more of the remaining late-night hosts to either retire, reformat their shows or eventually get kicked out.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Some on Reddit think it might just be time to scrap this form of entertainment altogether, and invest in whatever comes next. \u201cThat 75-year-old format is definitely stale, especially with a middle-of-the-road host,\u201d one person commented. \u201cBut yes I agree the main problem is it\u2019s just a weird old from of entertainment from a bygone era.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

If this is what the people active in the r\/LateNightTalkShows subreddit are saying, it\u2019s likely an even more grim prognosis from the general public.<\/span><\/p>\n

Get more Cracked directly to your inbox. Sign up for Cracked newsletters at Cracked News Letters Signup<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s been a lot of hair pulling recently about why late-night programming is struggling. The only one who\u2019s seemed to really crack the code is\u00a0Gutfeld!\u00a0That doesn\u2019t really count, though, because it comes on at 10 p.m. and is watched by people who are so fueled by hate they need 24 hours of Fox News programming. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2108438,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[23571,23060,22653,23844],"class_list":["post-2108437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-jimmy-fallon","tag-jimmy-kimmel","tag-stephen-colbert","tag-youtube"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/This-Internet-Theory-of-Late-Nights-Decline-Is-the-Strongest.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2108437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2108437"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2108437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2108439,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2108437\/revisions\/2108439"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2108438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2108437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2108437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2108437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}