March 17, 2026 • 39 mins
It's been a crazy year for late night TV -- from ratings on the decline and budget cuts to cancellations and political influence. Bill Carter, the journalist and author behind The Late Shift and The War for Late Night, joins the show to talk about the evolution (and de-evolution) of late night.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Oh, I'm excited for this conversation. Here's the background. In
twenty twenty three, after Trevor Noah left the Daily Show,
I got to guest host for a week that then
turned into a second week a few months later, and
we were told that there were a bunch of us.
There were like four or five of us that were
shortlisted to potentially take over as host of the Daily Show. Now,
as a diehard Daily Show fan, this was a dream
(00:22):
come true. So I asked some friends for advice to
make sure that I didn't manage to completely screw up
the opportunity that I had in front of me, and
I kept getting the same advice. One, don't completely screw
up the opportunity you have in front of you. And
two read Bill Carter's books about late night television, and man,
am I glad I did read the books. That is
not screw up. I've always been into late night in general.
(00:45):
I mean, it kind of makes you make sense of
the world. It makes you feel a little bit of levity.
You might feel kind of fun and good when you
go to bed in the evening. And now, as I
know from reading Bill's books, some of the behind the
scenes drama at late night shows over the years, makes
Real Housewives look like besties. Twenty twenty five was a
crazy year for late night right. I mean, ratings are
(01:06):
on the decline, budgets are down. But then also networks
were doing crazy things like canceling The Late Show with
Colbert and Disney taking Kimmel off the air briefly. Tons
of political reasons tied up in both of those decisions.
So are we witnessing the end of late night television
as a medium or is there something else going on here?
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Since Carthon, your late night star is the signature star
of your network, He's seen by more people, he's on
more often. So they had a signature star in Colbert
and they decided to walk away. So that's why people
believed there was politics involved.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
There's no one who knows late night like Bill Carter.
He's an editor at Late Night Or. He is reported
on the television industry for over forty years, mostly at
The New York Times, where he was the chief television
correspondent for over two decades, and he's the author of
four books, including The Late Shift and The War for
Late Night. Today. On the show, The Evolution and Devolution
(02:02):
of Late.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Night, Pere we Go again again.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Hey, I'm cal Penn and this is Here we Go Again,
a show that takes today's trends and headlines and asks
why does history keep repeating itself?
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Here we Go?
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Bill, Thanks for doing this. I was most excited to
talk to you because you know, obviously I'm a fan
of Late Night, But two years ago now, I had
the chance to guest host two weeks on the Daily
Show after Trevor Noah left, right, and they had shortlisted
like five of us and kind of toll four or
five of us and kind of said to each of us, like,
it's going to be one of you who takes over
(02:55):
for Trevor, And my writing partner Ram was like, you know,
you you have to read the Late Shift because I
think it'll give you an insight into like who at
the network you kind of privately need to talk to.
You can't just base it on your ratings for those
two weeks. There's a lot going on behind the scenes.
So anyway, I loved I obviously loved your books. Because
of that, I ultimately did not get the job. They
(03:16):
brought John Stewart back, and I heard that how can
you argue with that? He's great. But anyway, all of
which is to say, I'm glad to talk to you today.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Did you enjoy the experience, cal?
Speaker 1 (03:26):
I loved it. I loved it. I'm a big fan
of satire, and I think, especially especially on that network,
it's less of a traditional late night show and much
more of a political satire show.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Exactly, Yes, when did.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
You first start watching late night or do you have
any specific memories of that as a kid.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
You know, my early memories that my dad was a
big fan of TV, and when I was a little kid,
I would be down the hall and I could hear
like him watching Jack Parr. You know. He was a
huge fan of Steve Autain, who really started Leanean. Steve
Alan left the Tonight after only two years because he
(04:03):
was so popular. They said, what are we doing? Move
them to primetime, and so they moved into primetime and
then Jack part took over. So I could hear the
laughter and I knew there was something going on there,
you know. And then just he was not a massive
Carson fan. He wasn't watched Carson that much, but what
he did if I was up, I would watch a
little of that, you know, but I wasn't really into
it until Letterman started. I guess Letterman was crazy inventive film,
(04:29):
and I think he just absolutely changed the genre and
that got me into it. But I mean, I wasn't
into it like I'm going to write a book about it.
And I started writing my television and when the whole
business with Who's going to Replace Carson came along and
I was writing at the New York Times that was
just a story, you know, what was going to happen?
And I got into the story. I found it really
(04:52):
fascinating what was really going on behind the scenes. And
I also knew already from experience that even if you're
really good reporter and you're working at a really good place,
you don't get the whole story. You get the surface.
Unless you decide to write a book and interview everybody,
you know what I mean, Then you're like, wow, that
one really And that's sort of what happened. I decided
(05:15):
to write the book, and people at both the Letterman
and Leno camps started talking to me, and I started
hearing all this and I was like, there's a book
here for sure, you know. So then I became because
the book was very successful and they made an HBO
movie and I got to write the movie. I became
an expert in late night.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
So is it fair to say, like, were you aside
from Letterman? It sounds like you weren't a huge fan
in the sense that that's what drove you to write
about it.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Well, it was really yeah. I mean, I like, I
really enjoy I mean I actually saw a Letterman's daytime show.
He had a daytime show before he got moved to
a late night and I just thought, who is this talent?
So his career a bit after that, but I mean,
once I started to get interested in I love the
idea of it, the daily production of it, which I
(06:08):
think is extraordinary. You start out in the morning, there's nothing,
you don't have anything. By you know, five in the afternoon,
you're doing this polished show. It's like, it's a fantastic
thing to do and it's an amazing feat I think
they do it. So then I just paid attention. I
watched the other guys. I mean, when people would come along,
I'd say, is this person good? I mean, in the
middle of writing that book, Chevy Chase started a show,
(06:30):
right and I was going in today, I thought, well,
this guy's unnatural for this, you know, but he wasn't.
It's a different skill, you know, it really is a
different skill. He has to be very likable, you know,
you have to have be flexible, you have to be
kind of human and connect with people. So anyway, I
just enjoyed it. I thought it was a uniquely American genre.
(06:51):
It's really our thing. We invented that thing.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
I love the the what late night means to us culturally,
which I'm going to ask you about a little bit later.
But for people who have not read the book. In
the books, and I highly recommend them for anybody listening,
how would you describe the early days of late night?
Speaker 2 (07:10):
So, you know, television was still kind of experimental in
the fifties, and it really went off the air by
midnight in most cities and then there'd be like a
test pattern on. So you know, the guy who invented
the Today Show was a guy named Pat Weaver at NBC,
who was, by the way, Sigourney Weaverner's father. Oh, he
(07:30):
had invented the Today Show, which became a phenomenon. Oh,
the Morning Show, like you know, not some prepackaged reruns
of you know, Burns and Allen or something but a
show and that was a phenomenal. So he was just
noodling and said, well, maybe we can do that at night.
And he started with a little experimentation in New York
(07:51):
with this local talent Steve Allen, and then he launched
the show and Steve Allen invented it. Steve Allen was
not a formal anything. I mean he was he played
piano and wrote songs, but he didn't read music. Actually,
he just was a piano player and he was very funny,
(08:11):
but he was never a stand up and he just
had this magical combination of talents and he just pull
it all together. Mean, if he watched the first Tonight show,
it's very interesting. He has a pad, like like a
legal pad, and it was ninety minutes or two hours long,
and you know a lot of it he's just kind
of winging it, you know, like he's doing, let's do this,
(08:34):
let's do that. He's the first guy who did like
physical experimentation. He jumped into a huge vat of jello
for example, right as a bit. So later you saw
Letterman put on a velcrow suit and jump against a
velcro That was Steve Allen. That He got that straight
from Steve Allen and he did Man on the Street interviews, right,
(08:54):
he went outside and saw to New Yorkers and stuff
like that, all kinds of stuff that became late He
invented them that And it was a wide open thing,
like I've got two hours to fill and whatever it was,
I mean, and it was live as a middle it's live,
so yeah, I had these guests coming in, you know
after they would have been in a Broadway show and
come out of the show. I mean, so it was
(09:15):
very spontaneous and all that. And he was just so
talented it it became a thing, and and I think
it just used the television, the idea of television in
the way that has later expanded. But you could see
all of its possibilities. So really that is That's why
I said it's an American genre. Nobody has tried that before.
(09:38):
And because television was new, you know, it became a
wide open field. It's like when the Beatles started, you know,
rock and roll was do wop, right, and they started
sort of like that bubble gum like way. It was
very raw, and then they just saw the possibilities. That's
what happened with late night. You saw the possibilities.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
I can't get over the the fact that it was
all live, And the first thing I'm thinking of is
today and for at least for as long as I've
been doing late night shows as a guest, which is
what almost twenty years now. Ever since I've been doing it,
I think the first one I did was probably Leno
is you know, everything is discussed beforehand, so you have
your pre interviews, you go in for the day, and
(10:19):
especially in the Leno case, if I remember correctly, it's
not just every question but every answer that you're giving.
You've gone over with the producer before at least twice,
and there were others who were much looser than that.
But just that evolution from leg literally just a legal
pad to something heavily produced in a relatively short amount
of time.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Yes, because they became a gigantic money maker. That's the
other thing. I mean. It's production costs or modest if
you consider what they're spending to develop a show and
write a show and shoot a show, and they're doing
it five nights a week. In those days, five nights
a week for at least ninety minutes. Tonight Show quickly
moved to ninety minutes. When Carson took it over as
(11:02):
ninety minutes, ninety minutes, he's a whole low of commercials.
You can see fty minutes. There was revenue, revenue, revenue,
and then it became well, let's hire more producers. Let's
not take a chance because if you watch the early
even Carson shows, there's a lot of really dull guests on,
you know, and they haven't really prepared that much, and
(11:23):
so they're just He's just trying to get something out
of them, and sometimes they're just dull. And it got
to the point we can't adult. Let's let's do a segment.
Let's have a segment producer to talk to them. Get
it here with anecdote they have, you know, when they started,
I think Steve Allen had five writers, maybe four, right,
and they want help with like twenty five writers. There's
(11:44):
some crazy thing like that, which did improve the comedy
because you know, they had more time to write comedy
bits and jokes. But it was it was very raw
at the beginning, and there was something very appealing to
the average viewer watching because there was nothing else like that.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
What So from that point to where we are now,
was there a period that you would define as the
peak of late night when was it the hottest.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
So NBC was the late night network, right, they had
the Tonight Show, then they hired Letterman. Now they had
two really huge shows, and the other networks would try
to compete with them, but when Carson was on, he
just crushed everybody. He just crushed the competition. So it
(12:32):
was when Letterman and Leto both had this realistic claim
to be Carson's successor that the door started to open
because one of them was not going to get the job,
and therefore one of them could go to another member.
They were both in their early forties at the time,
and of course CBS took Letterman because of his rejection
(12:54):
by NBC, which was what was great about writing the
story because there was real conflict and emotion in it.
But anyway, so he goes to CBS and finally there's
another there's a real another, genuine competitor, right, So but
NBC has to replace him, and they wind up finding
this guy Conan, who you might have taken a kid
from the basement and put him on. Conan it never
(13:16):
performed Attle, it was like writer. But and he turns
out to be this other crazy, wildly inventive guy. So
now you have these three guys on the air at
the same time, and then Cable starts say, well, why
can't we get in the game, and they start with, well,
the early iteration of the Daily Show with Craig Kilbourne
(13:36):
was not what it became with John Stewart, but it
was an idea. It's a mock newscast, right, It's an
idea that's different, and when Stewart goes there, that explodes that.
And then Stuart has this incredible correspondent, Colbert, and he
puts Colbert in. So I can remember this period of
time I'm watching. I'm now writing so much about it.
(13:58):
That you could watch Stuart because he was on an
eleven huh, right, And then at eleven thirty you could
see the first part of Colbert because the other shows
didn't start to eleven thirty five, right, And then you
could watch a little bit of Leno's monologue, cause Leno's
strength was his monologue, and then switched over to Letterman, right,
and you could see all these shows in one night.
(14:20):
And then Conan was on it and you're like, I
don't want to go to sleep. This is really good,
So that I would say, is really the golden period
for me?
Speaker 1 (14:29):
What was the impact and influence of those shows? Because
I would imagine you're, I mean, yes, because of what
you do for a living, you're watching all of them,
but you you were not the only one who was like,
you know, watching all of them and then going to bed.
So I'm just thinking, like, you know, everything is newsy.
A lot of the monologues obviously are reflective of what's
happening in the world. What was that impact and influence
(14:51):
like for for audiences?
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Well, you know, Carson's monologue became like the daily commentary,
and he had such an enormous audience he had, He
had double digit millions people watching him, and he commented
on the events of the day. And Parr had done
it somewhat alan not that much. But Parr was a
quirky sort of guy and he was funny, but he
(15:16):
didn't do this brilliant monolog which is what Carson did.
He was just brilliant at that. And Carson pulled in,
you know, the the threads of the daily events, and
you knew if he commented on you that was kind
of we could elevate you or drag you down. But
he was not. He didn't have a point of view.
(15:37):
That's what Stewart did. Stuart made point of view comedy,
which was entirely new, but essentially you got a sense
of what was going on in the country just from
watching the jokes. You got a sense if you hadn't
watched the news that day, he'd find out something. This
was particularly true when Stewart came along because the generation
that started to watch the Daily Show, they weren't paying
(15:57):
attention to. Young people don't pay that much attention to
the news, right, you know, then I watch him CNN
all day. They would say, oh, I get my news
from John Stewart, and he had real impact. I remember
doing a event with John on stage in in New
Jersey and I said to John, you know, John, a
lot of people think you're a tremendous community but you're
(16:18):
also kind of a journalist, right, And he was like,
I am not a journalist. I am not absolutely I'm
a comic. I'm a comic. I'm a journalist. And I
was like, I think what you're doing is journalism. I mean,
if you think about political cartoons, they've been around forever
and there that's journalism. And I think you're doing that,
and he would he's sort of disavowed. He wouldn't disavow
(16:39):
it now. I mean, but but it was interesting because
he to me as a journalist, I would listen to
him and think he is a commentator. He's like an
opinion columnist. That's what he That's what he is. But
he happens to be very funny. So I mean, yes,
it had tremendous cultural impact and and you know, not
just in terms of politics, but you know, the whole
(17:01):
business with oj was I played out hugely in late
night and whatever was current. They would tell jokes like
LetterOne say. We would tell the joke until it was
beaten to death, and then we beat it some more.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Yeah, I hadn't thought about people getting their news from
the Daily Show in a long time. I mean, I
am the generation that grew up on the Daily Show.
But I also read a lot, and you know, my
parents subscribed to the New York Times and so we
would read. To me, that's what made the Daily Show
so much funnier is that you understood the satire. And
it wasn't until I got to college that I started
(17:34):
meeting kids who you know, they were not watching the news.
To your point, nobody's watching CNN and they're not reading
the news, and they're legitimately getting all of their news
from John Stewart. And I just remember being horrified at
this because I was like, wait, what do you mean.
It's very funny and it's a mirror. But if you're
only getting it distilled through opinion and joke, like, that's
(17:57):
I feel like that's a fair criticism. How are you
a appreciating the levels of John Stewart's genius if you
don't know the story beforehand?
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Yes, well, remember he did. He was particularly big on
the Iraq war, right, that was huge. Messopotamia was his
every right. And you know, if you hadn't really even
paying attention, yes, he would make jo He would tell
you something you didn't know, you know, like they haven't
found the weapons of mass destruction right in the back
(18:28):
of your mind, we're like, well, isn't that why they
went to war? They didn't find him? Like you did
learn stuff, you know, but it was extremely funny. But
I have to say, cal Then you go into Colbert, right,
and Colbert is doing this is for nine years he
did a sketch. He was a character for nine years
(18:49):
he did it, and he did it so well that
when he was funny, he was over the top funny.
He was so good at that, and that really added
to it, because you know, he made you see the
folly of some of the commentary on this news and
he was doing Bill O'Reilly kind of as a blowhardy guy.
(19:11):
But I mean, I thought that was also brilliant, so
that if you watched that hour, you're like, wow, this
is sophisticated stuff.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
What were the network's responses to this? Like I assume
Comedy Central they knew that they were signing up for
a political show, But were there were networks or shore
runners from your writer friends who you spoke to as
you were researching things.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Was there were.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
There ever red lines they couldn't cross. Was there weekly
pressure that hey, don't talk about this issue or this
is too dicey?
Speaker 2 (19:44):
I don't think so, because they didn't. Especially the Letter
of the Big Guys, Lenno never showed point of view, right.
He really made a point of trying to follow Carson's theory,
which was a good theory because he was trying to
appeal to everybody, which is, if you show your all,
your opinions, your half your audience wants to quit on you,
(20:06):
so you don't want to do that. And you played
in the middle of the country. So Jade ever did much,
although he did occasionally do a joke that went over
the line, but not politically, you know. He and the
same with Dave. I mean, Dave could screw around people
in a way that pissed them off. He really did. He,
you know, mainly with guests, you know. I mean, you
(20:28):
know the famous episode where Share is on the show, right,
and he says to her, Share, you know, it's been
you know, a year and a half. I've been trying
to book you for you you haven't come back in
a year and a half and and she says, yeah,
well I didn't want to come back, and she did.
He says, well, why do you want to come back?
And she said, because you're an asshole? And and funnily
(20:49):
fun I was doing I did this documentary series about
the history of Late Night, and I was talking to
Robert Morton, who was the producer at the time, and
he said, and I said, in those days, you couldn't
say that on TV, right, you could and say that
on TV. So what happened he said, well, it was
so funny. He got a screeching laugh. Of course, right,
and he said, so we went to the sensors and
(21:10):
they're like, you can't use it. Answer, well, my guy,
well they're not gonna know what she said. They're gonna
think it was even worse. They're gonna and the guys
whoever the I think was a woman. She said, okay,
but you can use ass or whole over clip in
the other part.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
So good. Can you walk us through what the Bill
Clinton saxophone moment meant? I remember that when I was
a kid, and I just remember that the only thing
people talked about for weeks after that.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Well, that was very interesting because you bring up that
is Arsenio Hall, and when you bring up our sene
of Hall, you have to say that was a breakthrough
because as big as Carson was and then Learterman was,
their audiences were mostly white. Yeah, and here's this guy
who comes on and now he's doing what they had
started to label an urban show. They let's say it's
(21:58):
an urban show. No, it was its appealing to more
black viewers. And so here's Clinton running and he's trying
to reach people that maybe aren't watching those other late
night shows. So he decides to do this on our
Sineo and instead of just being the get they I
think they asked him, is there something else? And he said, well,
(22:18):
I you know, I played saxophone in high school or whatever.
By the way, I think you did too.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
I did okay, not very well. I couldn't do it
on our sinew Well.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
I was surprised Clinton could, to be honest, because if
you played in high school, it's been a long time
since you played right. So they made this thing for
him to play saxophone and he and one section of
America was like he was pandering, right because here he
is trying to be hip or whatever with the black viewers.
But in a lot of America they're like, this is
(22:49):
kind of cool. You know. He could have really looked
like an amateur. But he got through it. He played
all right. He played all right. So I think it
was a benefit to him to have done that, and
particularly to have done it on Ursinio.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Particularly, I in looking back, I also think like this
could this could have gone terribly right. It could have
been his Michael Ducaucus in an oversized helmet.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
That's a good comparison.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
I want to fast forward to present day relatively like
twenty nineteen and onwards, and even last year twenty twenty five,
especially tumultuous year for late night, And so for context,
there had been full time slots that were eliminated. And
I'm thinking, you know, before COVID of a Little Late
with Lily, which was Lily Singh's show that took over
(23:37):
for Last Call with Carson Daily and the network it
was interesting network didn't cancel Lily's show and replace it
with anything else. They just fully canceled the programming in
that time slot, right, so the time slot went away.
That was before COVID. And last year, of course, CBS
announced it's canceling the Late Show franchise and Colbert's last
(23:57):
show would be May of this year, and Kimmel was
temporarily taken off the air. As you've watched the last
I guess now you know six seven years of the
devolution of late night. What goes through your head? Is
your seeing all this play out?
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Well, I mean it's a product of a totally upended
the system of a broadcasting it because people, especially younger people,
don't really watch television very much. They watch video, they
watch TikTok and especially YouTube is huge numbers, and they
(24:33):
watch streaming, but they don't sit down and watch television
very much.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
So, and partly that is the network's fault in my opinion,
because they when streaming started to come in, they panicked,
in my opinion, and said, oh, this is it, we
got to do this, we got to do this, and
sort of abandoned what they did well in my opinion anyway,
But late night particularly seems like a foolish thing for
them to start punting on because it's a fresh thing
(25:03):
every day, like it's a new thing every day. And
I do think some of the late night shows were
not creative enough. But essentially there was too many late
night shows. That's absolutely the case. You know, when there
were three or four, there was what He's rolled, there
was like twelve, you know, like it was a little
tremendous number of shows. Yeah, but they really started to,
(25:26):
like everything on network television as shrunk to a tremendous amount.
I mean, you were on House, Okay. At one point,
House was the most watched show in the world.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
In the world, Yeah, in.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
The entire world. They had a show on a network,
a broadcast network that was watched by the entire world.
How do you give that up? How do you back
off from that? You should be trying to replicate that.
So they allowed themselves to shrink, and the primetime numbers
and primetime numbers for I don't know how many watched
House twenty million people. I don't know, tremendous number people.
(26:00):
They get like three four million people. Now they think
it's good.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
It's wild.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Yeah, the ratings they think it's actually good. So they've
it's it's that's that's a big function of it. That
a's chunk. What I think is really momentous was the
cancelation of Colbert, because Colbert actually has the largest audience
in late night. He continues to and yes, the shows
(26:27):
are losing money if you look at it like ad
revenue versus costs. But what they also there's a huge
other stream of money that comes from the station. The
station's pay the networks for programming. And you can't break
it down and say this show is worth that, but
it's on four times a week for an hour. That's
(26:47):
that The value there is is very significant. Plus, since Carson,
your late night star, is the signature star of your network.
He's seen by more people, he's on more often. He
does other things for you. He appears at their upfront,
he goes and talks to affiliates, he does all that stuff.
So they had a signature store in Colbert and they
(27:10):
decided to walk away. So that's why people believed there
was politics involved. I will say another aspect of this,
which is fascinating is that they had started a show
after Colbert called After Midnight Right with this really great
young stand of Taylor Tomlinson as the host, and it
had a pretty good younger audience going for it. And
(27:32):
she did it for two years, and she decided that
she'd rather do stand up because she has a huge
stand up career and plays like big arena type place
and makes a lot of money. Even though they had
made it really easy on her. They take like four
shows in two days, so she could do all the
stand if she wanted ye, but she walked away from it.
In my opinion, if she hadn't walked away from it,
(27:53):
they would have said, we got an investment in her,
we had to keep her, and she's not maybe ready
for eleven thirty yet, and they would have maybe kept
Colbert for another contract. Sec. So I think that was
a fact interesting in the economics certainly was a factor
of them deciding to kill the whole genre. I mean
the idea that Letterman started. That friend, as I said,
he moved to CBS, he started this alternate franchise thirty
(28:17):
years ago. Whatever it was, gave them. You know, it's
like it's like taking territory in the world. We now
have this beachhead. Don't give it. How do you give
it up? They gave it up if they think Colbert
is not doing it. If you hire the next great
young talent, that's what's happened over and over again. So
they wiped out the time period, and you know, they
(28:41):
claimed it was all economics. But we have to acknowledge
Colbert is an enemy of the president. The president hates
the guy. CBS's owner, Paramount Viacom, was selling it and
they want They wanted that sale to go to They
wanted to collect the money, and Trump could hold it up.
He could, he could block it. So the people who
bought it are very friendly with Trump. He was willing
(29:01):
to give them the thing. But you know they decided
to cancel Colbert first. You can put the things together
if you have the right suspicion. Certainly Stephen has that suspicion.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
I'll say that, I mean I share that suspicion, and
part of it is everything you just described, But then
the other part of it is actually you would obviously
know way more about this than me because you've spoken
to so many people, But just as a you know,
at the face value, it seems like there are multiple
examples of networks that either green light shows or keep
shows on the air because they understand the cultural importance
(29:34):
of it. It's creative accounting, the kind which what was
it showed people that Titanic made no money of not
made a billion dollars like that, creative accounting is always
going to be there. You can always say that something
didn't make money and so it needs to be pulled
off the air. But I don't know that I necessarily
buy it, especially knowing the cultural significance of what Colbert's
(29:55):
show means for a network.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Yeah, and I have to say, okay, we've never seen
what we see today, which is that the hosts are
righteous spokespeople for a point of view. They are speaking
comedy to power. But of course every president has been
criticized by late made fun of everyone, every single one,
(30:18):
and no one's ever tried to go to the FCC
and bully a guy off the air that is completely
out of bounds. And you know, only because I think
Disney is more conscious, especially Eiger, I think is very
conscious of his reputation. And there was really no financial
(30:38):
excuse really to get rid of Kimmel like there was
for Colbert. Did they back off from that? And I
give them some credit. People have kicked them around for
pulling Jimmy off, but I give them some credit because
they did say no, we're putting him back on, and
they incurred the wrath of Trump for that. And the
FCC guy is not backing down. He's pulling all kinds
(31:00):
of other things now to try to go after them
because they hate the guy. They just hate the guy.
And Jimmy's not a back down guy. He's just not.
And so that was very interesting to see and I
admired him for his gods to stand up with this.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
You're right, obviously, if you look at the nineties, it's
very different than the point of view that hosts have today,
and we live in a different world. But the sensitivity
around oh, you're saying something that thisses off. This audience
of one in a regulatory environment where we need something
is to me just very shocking and overly sensitive. Like
it doesn't it make Doesn't it make the person stronger
(31:44):
to have jokes about them out there to begin with? Like,
isn't that kind of what you know, what are you
hiding from?
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Sort of thing? Yeah, but you're not to expose my
own point of view or analysis. You're dealing with a
different person. I think you have a disturbed person here.
This is a person who can't accept criticism. He can't
lose He his narcissism. And I know Trump and I've
written about him and I spent time with them. He
(32:10):
his narcissism was always there, but now it's really kind
of aut of controlling. He w what's his name on everything?
He's you know, he's just it's just build up to
the point so if somebody's making fun of him, he
can't just back off and laugh alone. That He used
to go on Letterman, and Letterman would pick on him.
He would say, come on, you know, he said that
in the back of his mind, this is a blowhard.
(32:30):
I'm going to make fun of him, right, And Trump
rolled with it. He rolled with it because he did
like the attention for Letterman. He liked that, he wanted that.
But it's out of scale. Now, it's completely out of scale.
Now he has all the attention. The world's paying attention
to him. So now he's got these guys you know,
you know, nightly going after him. They have to be
(32:50):
destroyed to force him off the area and to take
away there writes the free speech. That's really out of control.
That's the difference their presidents who are very uncomfortable. Nixon
was very, very uncomfortable. We make fellow, but he couldn't
do what. He wasn't going to order the FCC to
pull somebody off to I should say, I gotta go
back one step cow. This did happen before. It was
(33:13):
the Smothers Brothers. Okay, okay, the Smothers Brothers had a
show very anti Vietnam War late sixties, right in the sixties, right, yeah,
Johnson was president, right, and they pressured CBS and they
canceled that show when it was a hit. Wow, it
was really tough because it was Johnson. And then it
switched to Nixon, and Nixon had the Smothers Brothers on
(33:36):
his enemy's list and all this stuff, and Bill Paley,
who was running CB at the time, it's just it
was a headache. He didn't want to do it. That
was a time when I did give into it, and
then of course everyone said that'll never happen again. But
we live in a very troubled time. The dark times,
Cow they're dark.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
You know, when when CBS obviously made the Colbert announcement,
or when ABC temporarily pulled Kimmel off, there was such
an uptick in interest in these shows obviously, so I
you know, do you think that that will lead to
kind of saving the format or are things moving in
the video, podcast and digital space too fast?
Speaker 2 (34:16):
You know, those are the oasis that still watch the show,
which are not bad. Actually, by the standards of prime time,
they're not bad. If you counted them up all the
entire week, they probably reach ten million people. They're still
reaching people, and that only counts the live broadcast. They're
on YouTube and they're getting hits, hits and hits all
the time. They just can't monetize it. But you know,
all of television faces this, you know, I mean, I
(34:38):
don't understand why a streamer couldn't do it. You know,
their initial efforts have been bad because the essence of
streaming is that it's always there, you can watch it anytime,
and the essence of late night is it's every day.
It's commenting every day. But they're they're getting into football,
they're starting Amazon. You know, they're playing football games on live.
(35:01):
If it really folds out, Brooka, I think someone will
try this format because if you have the talent, as
Johnny Carson said, it's all about the guy behind the desk. Yeah,
I want to see that guy. He's funny. I want
to see him.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
Yeah. So after the after John came back to The
Daily Show, I had a number of very well meaning
producer friends and agents say, look, just distill a version
of what you would have done on the Daily Show
as a video podcast and just try to sell that.
(35:35):
And I didn't necessarily have I mean, I clearly see
there are tons of shows like this that do quite well,
but I was sort of holding out for what you
just described, which is a streamer. At some point, will
we'll try their version of what a late night format
show should be for on Netflix or a or an Amazon.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
And that the people doing the podcast, they don't have
a staff of great writers, right, No.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
I mean they have They usually have decent teams, but yes,
there aren't twenty writers around a room every day.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
They can't generate the energy that a show like this
is in a theater. And you know what I mean,
I mean, do they have do they have audiences? Interestingly,
during COVID they did shows with no audience, right, Yeah,
and they're talented and so they could do them. But
there's a difference between you're telling a great joke and
nobody laughs because there's nobody there to a huge, gigantic laugh. Yeah,
(36:29):
you know, so that is a thing. You need all
of that to do this kind of show. You can't
really do it in your basement very effectively. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
Are there things that you are hopeful about for the
next iteration of these types of shows?
Speaker 2 (36:45):
Well, what I'd be hopeful about is that we're seeing
enough people saying these guys are necessary. Now. I mean,
the blowback for Kimmel was amazing. I mean, more people
than probably watched him. So this is outrageous. We need
this guy. We can say what we want in this country,
we can make fun of you, and you can arrest us.
(37:08):
I think one thing is possibly we're seeing especially with
Stuart coming back and doing one day a week. Maybe
you can't do it at night off to night. I mean,
you know, Bill Maher's been on forever doing it once
a week. John Oliver wins Emmys every year doing it
once a week. So I mean, I just feel like
it has to exist. It's culturally imperative for America to
(37:29):
have this format because no one's had it, no one's
done it like we've done it, somebody is going to
continue to do it.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
What would we need to have to do? This is
a bit of a fantastical question. What do you think
we would need to have to do to get back
to peak late night?
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Well, we need enormous talent. We need talents that are
so special that they can arise above what the expectations
of a regular show is. Because during peak light you
had like a mount rushmore of incredible comic talent. And
what I think it has to do is make being
a late night host the goal of a comic talent,
(38:09):
because that was the goal of a comic talent. Get
a sitcom or get a late night show. Now, because
stand up is very lucrative for a lot of these
young comics. They think I'll just do that. I'll just
go around the country and make money. The other thing
I would do is I would do at least somebody
should try to do the show live Saturn than Live
is a late night show, and nobody's talking about that
(38:31):
going away, right. It's been on forever. It costs a fortune,
it's way more expensive than it used to be. But
you know what, they're making it an international version of
it now, make you one in England now, so it's
still reverally viable.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
Very well said. That was my guest Bill Carter. He's
an editor at late night er Here We Go Again,
as a production of iHeart Podcasts and Snaffoo Me in
association with New Metric Media. Our executive producers are me
Calpen Ed Helms, Mike Falbo, Alissa Martino, Andy Kim, Pat Kelly,
(39:09):
Chris Kelly, and Dylan Fagan. Meghan tan is our producer
and writer. Dave Shumka is our producer and editor. Our
consulting producer is Romin Borsolino. Tory Smith is our associate producer.
Theme music by Chris Kelly, logo by Matt Gosson, legal
review from Daniel Welsh, Caroline Johnson and Meghan Halson. Special
thanks to Glenn Bassner, Isaac Dunham, Adam Horn, Lane Klein,
(39:32):
and everyone at iHeart Podcasts, but especially Will Pearson, Carrie
Lieberman and Nikki Etour. Thanks for listening. Everybody, tell your
friends write a review. All of this helps. I appreciate
you listening, and until we go again, I'm Calpen
Oh, I'm excited for this conversation. Here's the background. In
twenty twenty three, after Trevor Noah left the Daily Show,
I got to guest host for a week that then
turned into a second week a few months later, and
we were told that there were a bunch of us.
There were like four or five of us that were
shortlisted to potentially take over as host of the Daily Show. Now,
as a diehard Daily Show fan, this was a dream
(00:22):
come true. So I asked some friends for advice to
make sure that I didn't manage to completely screw up
the opportunity that I had in front of me, and
I kept getting the same advice. One, don't completely screw
up the opportunity you have in front of you. And
two read Bill Carter's books about late night television, and man,
am I glad I did read the books. That is
not screw up. I've always been into late night in general.
(00:45):
I mean, it kind of makes you make sense of
the world. It makes you feel a little bit of levity.
You might feel kind of fun and good when you
go to bed in the evening. And now, as I
know from reading Bill's books, some of the behind the
scenes drama at late night shows over the years, makes
Real Housewives look like besties. Twenty twenty five was a
crazy year for late night right. I mean, ratings are
(01:06):
on the decline, budgets are down. But then also networks
were doing crazy things like canceling The Late Show with
Colbert and Disney taking Kimmel off the air briefly. Tons
of political reasons tied up in both of those decisions.
So are we witnessing the end of late night television
as a medium or is there something else going on here?
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Since Carthon, your late night star is the signature star
of your network, He's seen by more people, he's on
more often. So they had a signature star in Colbert
and they decided to walk away. So that's why people
believed there was politics involved.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
There's no one who knows late night like Bill Carter.
He's an editor at Late Night Or. He is reported
on the television industry for over forty years, mostly at
The New York Times, where he was the chief television
correspondent for over two decades, and he's the author of
four books, including The Late Shift and The War for
Late Night. Today. On the show, The Evolution and Devolution
(02:02):
of Late.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Night, Pere we Go again again.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Hey, I'm cal Penn and this is Here we Go Again,
a show that takes today's trends and headlines and asks
why does history keep repeating itself?
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Here we Go?
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Bill, Thanks for doing this. I was most excited to
talk to you because you know, obviously I'm a fan
of Late Night, But two years ago now, I had
the chance to guest host two weeks on the Daily
Show after Trevor Noah left, right, and they had shortlisted
like five of us and kind of toll four or
five of us and kind of said to each of us, like,
it's going to be one of you who takes over
(02:55):
for Trevor, And my writing partner Ram was like, you know,
you you have to read the Late Shift because I
think it'll give you an insight into like who at
the network you kind of privately need to talk to.
You can't just base it on your ratings for those
two weeks. There's a lot going on behind the scenes.
So anyway, I loved I obviously loved your books. Because
of that, I ultimately did not get the job. They
(03:16):
brought John Stewart back, and I heard that how can
you argue with that? He's great. But anyway, all of
which is to say, I'm glad to talk to you today.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Did you enjoy the experience, cal?
Speaker 1 (03:26):
I loved it. I loved it. I'm a big fan
of satire, and I think, especially especially on that network,
it's less of a traditional late night show and much
more of a political satire show.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Exactly, Yes, when did.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
You first start watching late night or do you have
any specific memories of that as a kid.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
You know, my early memories that my dad was a
big fan of TV, and when I was a little kid,
I would be down the hall and I could hear
like him watching Jack Parr. You know. He was a
huge fan of Steve Autain, who really started Leanean. Steve
Alan left the Tonight after only two years because he
(04:03):
was so popular. They said, what are we doing? Move
them to primetime, and so they moved into primetime and
then Jack part took over. So I could hear the
laughter and I knew there was something going on there,
you know. And then just he was not a massive
Carson fan. He wasn't watched Carson that much, but what
he did if I was up, I would watch a
little of that, you know, but I wasn't really into
it until Letterman started. I guess Letterman was crazy inventive film,
(04:29):
and I think he just absolutely changed the genre and
that got me into it. But I mean, I wasn't
into it like I'm going to write a book about it.
And I started writing my television and when the whole
business with Who's going to Replace Carson came along and
I was writing at the New York Times that was
just a story, you know, what was going to happen?
And I got into the story. I found it really
(04:52):
fascinating what was really going on behind the scenes. And
I also knew already from experience that even if you're
really good reporter and you're working at a really good place,
you don't get the whole story. You get the surface.
Unless you decide to write a book and interview everybody,
you know what I mean, Then you're like, wow, that
one really And that's sort of what happened. I decided
(05:15):
to write the book, and people at both the Letterman
and Leno camps started talking to me, and I started
hearing all this and I was like, there's a book
here for sure, you know. So then I became because
the book was very successful and they made an HBO
movie and I got to write the movie. I became
an expert in late night.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
So is it fair to say, like, were you aside
from Letterman? It sounds like you weren't a huge fan
in the sense that that's what drove you to write
about it.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Well, it was really yeah. I mean, I like, I
really enjoy I mean I actually saw a Letterman's daytime show.
He had a daytime show before he got moved to
a late night and I just thought, who is this talent?
So his career a bit after that, but I mean,
once I started to get interested in I love the
idea of it, the daily production of it, which I
(06:08):
think is extraordinary. You start out in the morning, there's nothing,
you don't have anything. By you know, five in the afternoon,
you're doing this polished show. It's like, it's a fantastic
thing to do and it's an amazing feat I think
they do it. So then I just paid attention. I
watched the other guys. I mean, when people would come along,
I'd say, is this person good? I mean, in the
middle of writing that book, Chevy Chase started a show,
(06:30):
right and I was going in today, I thought, well,
this guy's unnatural for this, you know, but he wasn't.
It's a different skill, you know, it really is a
different skill. He has to be very likable, you know,
you have to have be flexible, you have to be
kind of human and connect with people. So anyway, I
just enjoyed it. I thought it was a uniquely American genre.
(06:51):
It's really our thing. We invented that thing.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
I love the the what late night means to us culturally,
which I'm going to ask you about a little bit later.
But for people who have not read the book. In
the books, and I highly recommend them for anybody listening,
how would you describe the early days of late night?
Speaker 2 (07:10):
So, you know, television was still kind of experimental in
the fifties, and it really went off the air by
midnight in most cities and then there'd be like a
test pattern on. So you know, the guy who invented
the Today Show was a guy named Pat Weaver at NBC,
who was, by the way, Sigourney Weaverner's father. Oh, he
(07:30):
had invented the Today Show, which became a phenomenon. Oh,
the Morning Show, like you know, not some prepackaged reruns
of you know, Burns and Allen or something but a
show and that was a phenomenal. So he was just
noodling and said, well, maybe we can do that at night.
And he started with a little experimentation in New York
(07:51):
with this local talent Steve Allen, and then he launched
the show and Steve Allen invented it. Steve Allen was
not a formal anything. I mean he was he played
piano and wrote songs, but he didn't read music. Actually,
he just was a piano player and he was very funny,
(08:11):
but he was never a stand up and he just
had this magical combination of talents and he just pull
it all together. Mean, if he watched the first Tonight show,
it's very interesting. He has a pad, like like a
legal pad, and it was ninety minutes or two hours long,
and you know a lot of it he's just kind
of winging it, you know, like he's doing, let's do this,
(08:34):
let's do that. He's the first guy who did like
physical experimentation. He jumped into a huge vat of jello
for example, right as a bit. So later you saw
Letterman put on a velcrow suit and jump against a
velcro That was Steve Allen. That He got that straight
from Steve Allen and he did Man on the Street interviews, right,
(08:54):
he went outside and saw to New Yorkers and stuff
like that, all kinds of stuff that became late He
invented them that And it was a wide open thing,
like I've got two hours to fill and whatever it was,
I mean, and it was live as a middle it's live,
so yeah, I had these guests coming in, you know
after they would have been in a Broadway show and
come out of the show. I mean, so it was
(09:15):
very spontaneous and all that. And he was just so
talented it it became a thing, and and I think
it just used the television, the idea of television in
the way that has later expanded. But you could see
all of its possibilities. So really that is That's why
I said it's an American genre. Nobody has tried that before.
(09:38):
And because television was new, you know, it became a
wide open field. It's like when the Beatles started, you know,
rock and roll was do wop, right, and they started
sort of like that bubble gum like way. It was
very raw, and then they just saw the possibilities. That's
what happened with late night. You saw the possibilities.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
I can't get over the the fact that it was
all live, And the first thing I'm thinking of is
today and for at least for as long as I've
been doing late night shows as a guest, which is
what almost twenty years now. Ever since I've been doing it,
I think the first one I did was probably Leno
is you know, everything is discussed beforehand, so you have
your pre interviews, you go in for the day, and
(10:19):
especially in the Leno case, if I remember correctly, it's
not just every question but every answer that you're giving.
You've gone over with the producer before at least twice,
and there were others who were much looser than that.
But just that evolution from leg literally just a legal
pad to something heavily produced in a relatively short amount
of time.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Yes, because they became a gigantic money maker. That's the
other thing. I mean. It's production costs or modest if
you consider what they're spending to develop a show and
write a show and shoot a show, and they're doing
it five nights a week. In those days, five nights
a week for at least ninety minutes. Tonight Show quickly
moved to ninety minutes. When Carson took it over as
(11:02):
ninety minutes, ninety minutes, he's a whole low of commercials.
You can see fty minutes. There was revenue, revenue, revenue,
and then it became well, let's hire more producers. Let's
not take a chance because if you watch the early
even Carson shows, there's a lot of really dull guests on,
you know, and they haven't really prepared that much, and
(11:23):
so they're just He's just trying to get something out
of them, and sometimes they're just dull. And it got
to the point we can't adult. Let's let's do a segment.
Let's have a segment producer to talk to them. Get
it here with anecdote they have, you know, when they started,
I think Steve Allen had five writers, maybe four, right,
and they want help with like twenty five writers. There's
(11:44):
some crazy thing like that, which did improve the comedy
because you know, they had more time to write comedy
bits and jokes. But it was it was very raw
at the beginning, and there was something very appealing to
the average viewer watching because there was nothing else like that.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
What So from that point to where we are now,
was there a period that you would define as the
peak of late night when was it the hottest.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
So NBC was the late night network, right, they had
the Tonight Show, then they hired Letterman. Now they had
two really huge shows, and the other networks would try
to compete with them, but when Carson was on, he
just crushed everybody. He just crushed the competition. So it
(12:32):
was when Letterman and Leto both had this realistic claim
to be Carson's successor that the door started to open
because one of them was not going to get the job,
and therefore one of them could go to another member.
They were both in their early forties at the time,
and of course CBS took Letterman because of his rejection
(12:54):
by NBC, which was what was great about writing the
story because there was real conflict and emotion in it.
But anyway, so he goes to CBS and finally there's
another there's a real another, genuine competitor, right, So but
NBC has to replace him, and they wind up finding
this guy Conan, who you might have taken a kid
from the basement and put him on. Conan it never
(13:16):
performed Attle, it was like writer. But and he turns
out to be this other crazy, wildly inventive guy. So
now you have these three guys on the air at
the same time, and then Cable starts say, well, why
can't we get in the game, and they start with, well,
the early iteration of the Daily Show with Craig Kilbourne
(13:36):
was not what it became with John Stewart, but it
was an idea. It's a mock newscast, right, It's an
idea that's different, and when Stewart goes there, that explodes that.
And then Stuart has this incredible correspondent, Colbert, and he
puts Colbert in. So I can remember this period of
time I'm watching. I'm now writing so much about it.
(13:58):
That you could watch Stuart because he was on an
eleven huh, right, And then at eleven thirty you could
see the first part of Colbert because the other shows
didn't start to eleven thirty five, right, And then you
could watch a little bit of Leno's monologue, cause Leno's
strength was his monologue, and then switched over to Letterman, right,
and you could see all these shows in one night.
(14:20):
And then Conan was on it and you're like, I
don't want to go to sleep. This is really good,
So that I would say, is really the golden period
for me?
Speaker 1 (14:29):
What was the impact and influence of those shows? Because
I would imagine you're, I mean, yes, because of what
you do for a living, you're watching all of them,
but you you were not the only one who was like,
you know, watching all of them and then going to bed.
So I'm just thinking, like, you know, everything is newsy.
A lot of the monologues obviously are reflective of what's
happening in the world. What was that impact and influence
(14:51):
like for for audiences?
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Well, you know, Carson's monologue became like the daily commentary,
and he had such an enormous audience he had, He
had double digit millions people watching him, and he commented
on the events of the day. And Parr had done
it somewhat alan not that much. But Parr was a
quirky sort of guy and he was funny, but he
(15:16):
didn't do this brilliant monolog which is what Carson did.
He was just brilliant at that. And Carson pulled in,
you know, the the threads of the daily events, and
you knew if he commented on you that was kind
of we could elevate you or drag you down. But
he was not. He didn't have a point of view.
(15:37):
That's what Stewart did. Stuart made point of view comedy,
which was entirely new, but essentially you got a sense
of what was going on in the country just from
watching the jokes. You got a sense if you hadn't
watched the news that day, he'd find out something. This
was particularly true when Stewart came along because the generation
that started to watch the Daily Show, they weren't paying
(15:57):
attention to. Young people don't pay that much attention to
the news, right, you know, then I watch him CNN
all day. They would say, oh, I get my news
from John Stewart, and he had real impact. I remember
doing a event with John on stage in in New
Jersey and I said to John, you know, John, a
lot of people think you're a tremendous community but you're
(16:18):
also kind of a journalist, right, And he was like,
I am not a journalist. I am not absolutely I'm
a comic. I'm a comic. I'm a journalist. And I
was like, I think what you're doing is journalism. I mean,
if you think about political cartoons, they've been around forever
and there that's journalism. And I think you're doing that,
and he would he's sort of disavowed. He wouldn't disavow
(16:39):
it now. I mean, but but it was interesting because
he to me as a journalist, I would listen to
him and think he is a commentator. He's like an
opinion columnist. That's what he That's what he is. But
he happens to be very funny. So I mean, yes,
it had tremendous cultural impact and and you know, not
just in terms of politics, but you know, the whole
(17:01):
business with oj was I played out hugely in late
night and whatever was current. They would tell jokes like
LetterOne say. We would tell the joke until it was
beaten to death, and then we beat it some more.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Yeah, I hadn't thought about people getting their news from
the Daily Show in a long time. I mean, I
am the generation that grew up on the Daily Show.
But I also read a lot, and you know, my
parents subscribed to the New York Times and so we
would read. To me, that's what made the Daily Show
so much funnier is that you understood the satire. And
it wasn't until I got to college that I started
(17:34):
meeting kids who you know, they were not watching the news.
To your point, nobody's watching CNN and they're not reading
the news, and they're legitimately getting all of their news
from John Stewart. And I just remember being horrified at
this because I was like, wait, what do you mean.
It's very funny and it's a mirror. But if you're
only getting it distilled through opinion and joke, like, that's
(17:57):
I feel like that's a fair criticism. How are you
a appreciating the levels of John Stewart's genius if you
don't know the story beforehand?
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Yes, well, remember he did. He was particularly big on
the Iraq war, right, that was huge. Messopotamia was his
every right. And you know, if you hadn't really even
paying attention, yes, he would make jo He would tell
you something you didn't know, you know, like they haven't
found the weapons of mass destruction right in the back
(18:28):
of your mind, we're like, well, isn't that why they
went to war? They didn't find him? Like you did
learn stuff, you know, but it was extremely funny. But
I have to say, cal Then you go into Colbert, right,
and Colbert is doing this is for nine years he
did a sketch. He was a character for nine years
(18:49):
he did it, and he did it so well that
when he was funny, he was over the top funny.
He was so good at that, and that really added
to it, because you know, he made you see the
folly of some of the commentary on this news and
he was doing Bill O'Reilly kind of as a blowhardy guy.
(19:11):
But I mean, I thought that was also brilliant, so
that if you watched that hour, you're like, wow, this
is sophisticated stuff.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
What were the network's responses to this? Like I assume
Comedy Central they knew that they were signing up for
a political show, But were there were networks or shore
runners from your writer friends who you spoke to as
you were researching things.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Was there were.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
There ever red lines they couldn't cross. Was there weekly
pressure that hey, don't talk about this issue or this
is too dicey?
Speaker 2 (19:44):
I don't think so, because they didn't. Especially the Letter
of the Big Guys, Lenno never showed point of view, right.
He really made a point of trying to follow Carson's theory,
which was a good theory because he was trying to
appeal to everybody, which is, if you show your all,
your opinions, your half your audience wants to quit on you,
(20:06):
so you don't want to do that. And you played
in the middle of the country. So Jade ever did much,
although he did occasionally do a joke that went over
the line, but not politically, you know. He and the
same with Dave. I mean, Dave could screw around people
in a way that pissed them off. He really did. He,
you know, mainly with guests, you know. I mean, you
(20:28):
know the famous episode where Share is on the show, right,
and he says to her, Share, you know, it's been
you know, a year and a half. I've been trying
to book you for you you haven't come back in
a year and a half and and she says, yeah,
well I didn't want to come back, and she did.
He says, well, why do you want to come back?
And she said, because you're an asshole? And and funnily
(20:49):
fun I was doing I did this documentary series about
the history of Late Night, and I was talking to
Robert Morton, who was the producer at the time, and
he said, and I said, in those days, you couldn't
say that on TV, right, you could and say that
on TV. So what happened he said, well, it was
so funny. He got a screeching laugh. Of course, right,
and he said, so we went to the sensors and
(21:10):
they're like, you can't use it. Answer, well, my guy,
well they're not gonna know what she said. They're gonna
think it was even worse. They're gonna and the guys
whoever the I think was a woman. She said, okay,
but you can use ass or whole over clip in
the other part.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
So good. Can you walk us through what the Bill
Clinton saxophone moment meant? I remember that when I was
a kid, and I just remember that the only thing
people talked about for weeks after that.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Well, that was very interesting because you bring up that
is Arsenio Hall, and when you bring up our sene
of Hall, you have to say that was a breakthrough
because as big as Carson was and then Learterman was,
their audiences were mostly white. Yeah, and here's this guy
who comes on and now he's doing what they had
started to label an urban show. They let's say it's
(21:58):
an urban show. No, it was its appealing to more
black viewers. And so here's Clinton running and he's trying
to reach people that maybe aren't watching those other late
night shows. So he decides to do this on our
Sineo and instead of just being the get they I
think they asked him, is there something else? And he said, well,
(22:18):
I you know, I played saxophone in high school or whatever.
By the way, I think you did too.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
I did okay, not very well. I couldn't do it
on our sinew Well.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
I was surprised Clinton could, to be honest, because if
you played in high school, it's been a long time
since you played right. So they made this thing for
him to play saxophone and he and one section of
America was like he was pandering, right because here he
is trying to be hip or whatever with the black viewers.
But in a lot of America they're like, this is
(22:49):
kind of cool. You know. He could have really looked
like an amateur. But he got through it. He played
all right. He played all right. So I think it
was a benefit to him to have done that, and
particularly to have done it on Ursinio.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
Particularly, I in looking back, I also think like this
could this could have gone terribly right. It could have
been his Michael Ducaucus in an oversized helmet.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
That's a good comparison.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
I want to fast forward to present day relatively like
twenty nineteen and onwards, and even last year twenty twenty five,
especially tumultuous year for late night, And so for context,
there had been full time slots that were eliminated. And
I'm thinking, you know, before COVID of a Little Late
with Lily, which was Lily Singh's show that took over
(23:37):
for Last Call with Carson Daily and the network it
was interesting network didn't cancel Lily's show and replace it
with anything else. They just fully canceled the programming in
that time slot, right, so the time slot went away.
That was before COVID. And last year, of course, CBS
announced it's canceling the Late Show franchise and Colbert's last
(23:57):
show would be May of this year, and Kimmel was
temporarily taken off the air. As you've watched the last
I guess now you know six seven years of the
devolution of late night. What goes through your head? Is
your seeing all this play out?
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Well, I mean it's a product of a totally upended
the system of a broadcasting it because people, especially younger people,
don't really watch television very much. They watch video, they
watch TikTok and especially YouTube is huge numbers, and they
(24:33):
watch streaming, but they don't sit down and watch television
very much.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
So, and partly that is the network's fault in my opinion,
because they when streaming started to come in, they panicked,
in my opinion, and said, oh, this is it, we
got to do this, we got to do this, and
sort of abandoned what they did well in my opinion anyway,
But late night particularly seems like a foolish thing for
them to start punting on because it's a fresh thing
(25:03):
every day, like it's a new thing every day. And
I do think some of the late night shows were
not creative enough. But essentially there was too many late
night shows. That's absolutely the case. You know, when there
were three or four, there was what He's rolled, there
was like twelve, you know, like it was a little
tremendous number of shows. Yeah, but they really started to,
(25:26):
like everything on network television as shrunk to a tremendous amount.
I mean, you were on House, Okay. At one point,
House was the most watched show in the world.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
In the world, Yeah, in.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
The entire world. They had a show on a network,
a broadcast network that was watched by the entire world.
How do you give that up? How do you back
off from that? You should be trying to replicate that.
So they allowed themselves to shrink, and the primetime numbers
and primetime numbers for I don't know how many watched
House twenty million people. I don't know, tremendous number people.
(26:00):
They get like three four million people. Now they think
it's good.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
It's wild.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Yeah, the ratings they think it's actually good. So they've
it's it's that's that's a big function of it. That
a's chunk. What I think is really momentous was the
cancelation of Colbert, because Colbert actually has the largest audience
in late night. He continues to and yes, the shows
(26:27):
are losing money if you look at it like ad
revenue versus costs. But what they also there's a huge
other stream of money that comes from the station. The
station's pay the networks for programming. And you can't break
it down and say this show is worth that, but
it's on four times a week for an hour. That's
(26:47):
that The value there is is very significant. Plus, since Carson,
your late night star, is the signature star of your network.
He's seen by more people, he's on more often. He
does other things for you. He appears at their upfront,
he goes and talks to affiliates, he does all that stuff.
So they had a signature store in Colbert and they
(27:10):
decided to walk away. So that's why people believed there
was politics involved. I will say another aspect of this,
which is fascinating is that they had started a show
after Colbert called After Midnight Right with this really great
young stand of Taylor Tomlinson as the host, and it
had a pretty good younger audience going for it. And
(27:32):
she did it for two years, and she decided that
she'd rather do stand up because she has a huge
stand up career and plays like big arena type place
and makes a lot of money. Even though they had
made it really easy on her. They take like four
shows in two days, so she could do all the
stand if she wanted ye, but she walked away from it.
In my opinion, if she hadn't walked away from it,
(27:53):
they would have said, we got an investment in her,
we had to keep her, and she's not maybe ready
for eleven thirty yet, and they would have maybe kept
Colbert for another contract. Sec. So I think that was
a fact interesting in the economics certainly was a factor
of them deciding to kill the whole genre. I mean
the idea that Letterman started. That friend, as I said,
he moved to CBS, he started this alternate franchise thirty
(28:17):
years ago. Whatever it was, gave them. You know, it's
like it's like taking territory in the world. We now
have this beachhead. Don't give it. How do you give
it up? They gave it up if they think Colbert
is not doing it. If you hire the next great
young talent, that's what's happened over and over again. So
they wiped out the time period, and you know, they
(28:41):
claimed it was all economics. But we have to acknowledge
Colbert is an enemy of the president. The president hates
the guy. CBS's owner, Paramount Viacom, was selling it and
they want They wanted that sale to go to They
wanted to collect the money, and Trump could hold it up.
He could, he could block it. So the people who
bought it are very friendly with Trump. He was willing
(29:01):
to give them the thing. But you know they decided
to cancel Colbert first. You can put the things together
if you have the right suspicion. Certainly Stephen has that suspicion.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
I'll say that, I mean I share that suspicion, and
part of it is everything you just described, But then
the other part of it is actually you would obviously
know way more about this than me because you've spoken
to so many people, But just as a you know,
at the face value, it seems like there are multiple
examples of networks that either green light shows or keep
shows on the air because they understand the cultural importance
(29:34):
of it. It's creative accounting, the kind which what was
it showed people that Titanic made no money of not
made a billion dollars like that, creative accounting is always
going to be there. You can always say that something
didn't make money and so it needs to be pulled
off the air. But I don't know that I necessarily
buy it, especially knowing the cultural significance of what Colbert's
(29:55):
show means for a network.
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Yeah, and I have to say, okay, we've never seen
what we see today, which is that the hosts are
righteous spokespeople for a point of view. They are speaking
comedy to power. But of course every president has been
criticized by late made fun of everyone, every single one,
(30:18):
and no one's ever tried to go to the FCC
and bully a guy off the air that is completely
out of bounds. And you know, only because I think
Disney is more conscious, especially Eiger, I think is very
conscious of his reputation. And there was really no financial
(30:38):
excuse really to get rid of Kimmel like there was
for Colbert. Did they back off from that? And I
give them some credit. People have kicked them around for
pulling Jimmy off, but I give them some credit because
they did say no, we're putting him back on, and
they incurred the wrath of Trump for that. And the
FCC guy is not backing down. He's pulling all kinds
(31:00):
of other things now to try to go after them
because they hate the guy. They just hate the guy.
And Jimmy's not a back down guy. He's just not.
And so that was very interesting to see and I
admired him for his gods to stand up with this.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
You're right, obviously, if you look at the nineties, it's
very different than the point of view that hosts have today,
and we live in a different world. But the sensitivity
around oh, you're saying something that thisses off. This audience
of one in a regulatory environment where we need something
is to me just very shocking and overly sensitive. Like
it doesn't it make Doesn't it make the person stronger
(31:44):
to have jokes about them out there to begin with? Like,
isn't that kind of what you know, what are you
hiding from?
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Sort of thing? Yeah, but you're not to expose my
own point of view or analysis. You're dealing with a
different person. I think you have a disturbed person here.
This is a person who can't accept criticism. He can't
lose He his narcissism. And I know Trump and I've
written about him and I spent time with them. He
(32:10):
his narcissism was always there, but now it's really kind
of aut of controlling. He w what's his name on everything?
He's you know, he's just it's just build up to
the point so if somebody's making fun of him, he
can't just back off and laugh alone. That He used
to go on Letterman, and Letterman would pick on him.
He would say, come on, you know, he said that
in the back of his mind, this is a blowhard.
(32:30):
I'm going to make fun of him, right, And Trump
rolled with it. He rolled with it because he did
like the attention for Letterman. He liked that, he wanted that.
But it's out of scale. Now, it's completely out of scale.
Now he has all the attention. The world's paying attention
to him. So now he's got these guys you know,
you know, nightly going after him. They have to be
(32:50):
destroyed to force him off the area and to take
away there writes the free speech. That's really out of control.
That's the difference their presidents who are very uncomfortable. Nixon
was very, very uncomfortable. We make fellow, but he couldn't
do what. He wasn't going to order the FCC to
pull somebody off to I should say, I gotta go
back one step cow. This did happen before. It was
(33:13):
the Smothers Brothers. Okay, okay, the Smothers Brothers had a
show very anti Vietnam War late sixties, right in the sixties, right, yeah,
Johnson was president, right, and they pressured CBS and they
canceled that show when it was a hit. Wow, it
was really tough because it was Johnson. And then it
switched to Nixon, and Nixon had the Smothers Brothers on
(33:36):
his enemy's list and all this stuff, and Bill Paley,
who was running CB at the time, it's just it
was a headache. He didn't want to do it. That
was a time when I did give into it, and
then of course everyone said that'll never happen again. But
we live in a very troubled time. The dark times,
Cow they're dark.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
You know, when when CBS obviously made the Colbert announcement,
or when ABC temporarily pulled Kimmel off, there was such
an uptick in interest in these shows obviously, so I
you know, do you think that that will lead to
kind of saving the format or are things moving in
the video, podcast and digital space too fast?
Speaker 2 (34:16):
You know, those are the oasis that still watch the show,
which are not bad. Actually, by the standards of prime time,
they're not bad. If you counted them up all the
entire week, they probably reach ten million people. They're still
reaching people, and that only counts the live broadcast. They're
on YouTube and they're getting hits, hits and hits all
the time. They just can't monetize it. But you know,
all of television faces this, you know, I mean, I
(34:38):
don't understand why a streamer couldn't do it. You know,
their initial efforts have been bad because the essence of
streaming is that it's always there, you can watch it anytime,
and the essence of late night is it's every day.
It's commenting every day. But they're they're getting into football,
they're starting Amazon. You know, they're playing football games on live.
(35:01):
If it really folds out, Brooka, I think someone will
try this format because if you have the talent, as
Johnny Carson said, it's all about the guy behind the desk. Yeah,
I want to see that guy. He's funny. I want
to see him.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
Yeah. So after the after John came back to The
Daily Show, I had a number of very well meaning
producer friends and agents say, look, just distill a version
of what you would have done on the Daily Show
as a video podcast and just try to sell that.
(35:35):
And I didn't necessarily have I mean, I clearly see
there are tons of shows like this that do quite well,
but I was sort of holding out for what you
just described, which is a streamer. At some point, will
we'll try their version of what a late night format
show should be for on Netflix or a or an Amazon.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
And that the people doing the podcast, they don't have
a staff of great writers, right, No.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
I mean they have They usually have decent teams, but yes,
there aren't twenty writers around a room every day.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
They can't generate the energy that a show like this
is in a theater. And you know what I mean,
I mean, do they have do they have audiences? Interestingly,
during COVID they did shows with no audience, right, Yeah,
and they're talented and so they could do them. But
there's a difference between you're telling a great joke and
nobody laughs because there's nobody there to a huge, gigantic laugh. Yeah,
(36:29):
you know, so that is a thing. You need all
of that to do this kind of show. You can't
really do it in your basement very effectively. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
Are there things that you are hopeful about for the
next iteration of these types of shows?
Speaker 2 (36:45):
Well, what I'd be hopeful about is that we're seeing
enough people saying these guys are necessary. Now. I mean,
the blowback for Kimmel was amazing. I mean, more people
than probably watched him. So this is outrageous. We need
this guy. We can say what we want in this country,
we can make fun of you, and you can arrest us.
(37:08):
I think one thing is possibly we're seeing especially with
Stuart coming back and doing one day a week. Maybe
you can't do it at night off to night. I mean,
you know, Bill Maher's been on forever doing it once
a week. John Oliver wins Emmys every year doing it
once a week. So I mean, I just feel like
it has to exist. It's culturally imperative for America to
(37:29):
have this format because no one's had it, no one's
done it like we've done it, somebody is going to
continue to do it.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
What would we need to have to do? This is
a bit of a fantastical question. What do you think
we would need to have to do to get back
to peak late night?
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Well, we need enormous talent. We need talents that are
so special that they can arise above what the expectations
of a regular show is. Because during peak light you
had like a mount rushmore of incredible comic talent. And
what I think it has to do is make being
a late night host the goal of a comic talent,
(38:09):
because that was the goal of a comic talent. Get
a sitcom or get a late night show. Now, because
stand up is very lucrative for a lot of these
young comics. They think I'll just do that. I'll just
go around the country and make money. The other thing
I would do is I would do at least somebody
should try to do the show live Saturn than Live
is a late night show, and nobody's talking about that
(38:31):
going away, right. It's been on forever. It costs a fortune,
it's way more expensive than it used to be. But
you know what, they're making it an international version of
it now, make you one in England now, so it's
still reverally viable.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
Very well said. That was my guest Bill Carter. He's
an editor at late night er Here We Go Again,
as a production of iHeart Podcasts and Snaffoo Me in
association with New Metric Media. Our executive producers are me
Calpen Ed Helms, Mike Falbo, Alissa Martino, Andy Kim, Pat Kelly,
(39:09):
Chris Kelly, and Dylan Fagan. Meghan tan is our producer
and writer. Dave Shumka is our producer and editor. Our
consulting producer is Romin Borsolino. Tory Smith is our associate producer.
Theme music by Chris Kelly, logo by Matt Gosson, legal
review from Daniel Welsh, Caroline Johnson and Meghan Halson. Special
thanks to Glenn Bassner, Isaac Dunham, Adam Horn, Lane Klein,
(39:32):
and everyone at iHeart Podcasts, but especially Will Pearson, Carrie
Lieberman and Nikki Etour. Thanks for listening. Everybody, tell your
friends write a review. All of this helps. I appreciate
you listening, and until we go again, I'm Calpen
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