No Tears For Colbert

For me late night TV ended on May 20, 2015. That was the last Late Show hosted by David Letterman.

I mostly gave up on late night because Letterman was the last host whose humor hit a sweet spot for me. But I also have to admit that I might have given it up anyway because even back then I fought to stay awake past 10 PM. And, yes I know, I could record the show and watch it the next day, but I don’t know, it’s just not the same somehow. There was something about getting in some good laughs before bed.

So, while I literally never saw a single episode hosted by Letterman’s successor, Stephen Colbert, that didn’t prevent me from developing a distaste for the man. I knew Colbert’s work from his previous performances on Jon Stewart’s show and then in his own right on the Colbert Report. And, of course, it was impossible to avoid quick takes on his monologues and his controversies in the general media.

What turned me off on Colbert was the same thing that bothers me about NPR and PBS — even though I still listen and watch those outlets. It’s the attitude. There’s this smug condescension about it. We’re the smart people. We went to college. We finish the New York Times Sunday crossword. We’ve learned enough about hip-hop to pretend to like it (even though we secretly can’t stand it).

In Colbert’s case all the jokes are inside jokes. If you laugh or appreciate the irony you’re one of us. If you don’t get it or you do get it, but find it offensive to your world view, well, what was that phrase? Basketful of contemptables? Something like that. What’s more likely is that, if you didn’t like Colbert’s snarky liberal politics, you just checked out long ago.

And, in fact, the Late Show’s audience was down to only 2.5 million viewers. Compare that to Johnny Carson’s 15 million strong audience at the height of his popularity.

To be fair, what happened to the audience share is not Colbert’s fault. In fact, the late night audience dwindled steadily regardless of the host. Carson started out at 15 million and ended at just under 8 million. Letterman (different network, I realize) started out at 7.8 million and ended at under 4 million. And Colbert’s audience shrunk from there.

Carson, in his heyday, was the only game in town. There were no other competing light night comedians. And the creation of lots more platforms since then means that the overall audience for Colbert is somewhat larger than the live TV ratings, but it’s also splintered by all kinds of competing entertainment options.

So, Colbert is more a symptom of what’s wrong than he is a cause for it. Our media landscape has become hopelessly fractured. Consumers find it easy to retreat into their own ideological and cultural echo chambers. For whatever reason, late night network TV found its way into the camp of smug liberalism but it might just as easily have become a hotbed of MAGA.

And now, for good business reasons and questionable political ones, Colbert gets the ax. CBS says the Late Show was losing $40 million a year and Colbert was pulling down an unsustainable $20 million in compensation. In addition, Colbert’s liberal politics were getting under the skin of the Trump administration, which isn’t shy about exacting retribution. The cancellation was announced while Paramount was seeking Skydance Media merger approval from the Trump administration’s Federal Communications Commission.

In all the years I enjoyed watching Carson and Letterman, I never had a clue what their own politics was. They skewered and mocked whoever happened to be in power in Washington or was otherwise riding high in that era. They rarely, if ever, punched down. But Colbert was part of the new breed, which is the breed that takes sides, and fiercely.

Late night television, the network news shows, programs like Ed Sullivan and Bonanza once expressed a common, mainstream culture. We could argue about the meaning of events, but we didn’t much dispute what those events actually were. There was an old saying that you’re entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts. Well…

And before you jump to the conclusion that (if you even remember that old world) it was bland, unchallenging and didn’t address the simmering problems of the day, keep in mind that Sullivan’s show flew under the radar in the way it introduced white Americans to Black art and culture. And the news shows were substantive. They showed the bloody reality of the Vietnam War and race violence across America. Network news coverage of the brutal treatment of peaceful marchers in Selma and the bombing and murder of four children at a Black church in Birmingham played a major role in shifting public opinion in support of civil rights.

By contrast, I think I can make a pretty good case that programs like Colbert’s move the needle not an inch because there’s nobody in his audience who doesn’t already agree with him. Each night he preaches before 2.5 million choir members.

I don’t know that there is any way to put the (I Dream of) genie back in the bottle. It seems like we want to retreat behind our tribal walls and stay there. There’s no reason to lament Colbert’s passing because there’s nothing special about him. There’s a lot more of him out there. Sadly.