LOL: Late Night "Comedy" Shows Are Slashing Staff and Reducing Their Output to Four "Shows" Per Week Because No One Is Watching Their Unfunny Bullshit Any Longer

Afternoon, everyone. How about a happy story for once?

Seth Meyers has been forced to fire his (lame) band to save money.

The 8G Band will be playing its last tunes on Late Night With Seth Meyers this summer.

NBC-imposed budget cuts to the show mean that the house band -- keyboard player Eli Janney, guitarist Seth Jabour and bassist Syd Butler -- will be going away when Late Night begins its new season in the fall. The trio have been part of the show since its debut in 2014; Fred Armisen was the bandleader for much of that time but has been more of a guest performer in the past few years.

"Seth Meyers and Mike Shoemaker, the showrunner, brought us in in person to talk about it. They expressed their regret and frustration about it," Janney said in an interview with Vulture. "They had been trying to work it out for months, but in the end NBC was adamant about where they wanted the budget to go. It's not just the band; there's a whole crew that works with the band, so there's a lot of people employed."

LOL. Not so many people now.

Jimmy Fallon's "Tonight Show" will no longer produce "shows" on Friday, instead running repeats, as they shift to a four-day-a-week schedule so that they can slash salaries.

How Late Night TV Is Downsizing

As 'The Tonight Show' cuts to a four-day weekly schedule, the genre -- perhaps more than any other entertainment format -- is struggling to adapt to a streaming world.

So it's just the challenge from streaming that is causing millions of people to simultaneously reject all of these leftwing propagandist unfunny clowns?

How's the downsizing going on Greg Gutfeld's show? Weird, I haven't heard of them downsizing or having trouble with competition from streaming.

This article will not even mention Greg Gutfeld, because, 1, the Hollywood Reporter will not admit it exists, and 2, the success of Gutfeld would destroy their central (dishonest) thesis that "streaming" is causing problems for all late-night hosts.

Do late night talk shows have a future?

No. The format is as dated as the variety show, and the staffs of all of these "comedy" shows are filled with nasty unfunny communists with drug addictions and rampant sexual dysfunction. Next question.

A couple of decades ago the question would have been crazy, given their young audience and pop cultural relevancy. But with the world of entertainment shifting to an on-demand streaming world, late night -- perhaps more than any other entertainment TV format -- has struggled to adapt.

Late night, it appears, is now firmly in belt-tightening mode. Or as one veteran late night producer says, "there's definitely a new reality when it comes to budgets."

On Sept. 6, NBC's long-running Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon announced plans to trim back its production schedule, airing four nights per week instead of five, swapping its Friday edition for a rerun.

The network noted that The Tonight Show was the last of the major late night shows to produce five days per week.

Earlier this year, NBC's Late Night With Seth Meyers had to drop its house band as part of budget cuts. And last year CBS opted to end its Late Late Show after James Corden left, opting to replace it with the less expensive After Midnight comedy game show.

"It's kind of surprising, because, you know, these late night variety shows were cash cows for years," notes media analyst Brad Adgate. "They brought in a younger audience, it was relatively inexpensive to produce, and they had a bigger ad load than, say, primetime TV."

That, in turn, meant that the margins on late night were higher than primetime. But the world has changed.

Now of course, the cultural cache is built on YouTube and TikTok, and while the shows are present there (and even quite successful on those platforms) the revenue just doesn't line up to what they invest in the product. And the older audiences still watching linear TV just aren't as valuable to marketers.

...

The audience for Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel has -- like much of traditional TV -- been on the decline for years as viewers have shifted their habits toward streaming and, specific to the late-night shows, viewing clips on YouTube and social media.

Five years ago, The Late Show finished first in total viewers among late-night talk shows with 3.81 million, to 2.44 million for The Tonight Show and 2.04 million for Jimmy Kimmel Live. In 2023-24, The Late Show remained No. 1, but with only about 2.6 million viewers -- a decline of about 32 percent from 2018-19. Kimmel moved into second with 1.82 million viewers, down about 11 percent from five years earlier (having Monday Night Football as a lead-in once a week last fall helped some; the show averaged 1.77 million viewers from January to May). The Tonight Show slipped to third in viewers with 1.43 million, losing 41 percent of its 2018-19 total.

Things were no better at 12:35 a.m., where Late Night With Seth Meyers (983,000 viewers) was down by about 470,000 viewers (32 percent) from 2018-19.

...

Last year, Brian Stelter reported in Los Angeles magazine that CBS' Late Late Show was losing $15 million-$20 million per year, and while Corden's departure was a long time coming, the losses were all-but-certainly a factor in why CBS pulled the plug after he left.

There's an unexpected Tater sighting for you. You're welcome.

No mention of Gutfeld. How did I predict that. I must have a time machine or something.

In a sign that HBO leftwing propagandist John Oliver's ratings also suck, HBO is now blocking the release of clips of the "comedy" show to YouTube, in order to force people to watch the show on HBO if they want to see the "comedy."

"It's massively frustrating to me. I was not happy with it at all," Oliver said of the decision.

He further explained, "What I love about having the show on YouTube is that we can reach beyond HBO subscribers. That feels really important to me."

In other words: Propaganda, not profit, is the driving consideration.

"I really, really appreciate the fact that they do that. I would rather they did it straight after the show the way we've always done it, but I'm very grateful that they are willing to still do it at all."

When announcing the decision earlier this year, HBO said they were holding back segments on YouTube is an effort to get more people to stream the show on its sibling streaming platform, Max.

"When Last Week Tonight With John Oliver premiered on HBO, the convenience of watching on Max did not exist, so YouTube allowed flexible viewing for the main story as well as promotional exposure," an HBO spokesperson told The Hollywood Reporter at the time. "We are now delaying that availability and hope those fans choose to watch the entire show on Max."

When first announced, back in February, Oliver said in a post on X that he had hopes the plan would change: "I know I usually share a link to our main story here on Mondays, but HBO has decided they're going to wait until Thursday to post them to YouTube from now on. I hope they change their mind, but until then, you can see our piece about the Supreme Court on HBO, on Max, and on YouTube in a few days."

Despite the fact that Oliver's ratings are so bad that HBO is forced to take action, they renewed him for three additional seasons in 2023.

Because propaganda, not profit, is the goal of all modern corporations, and this is particularly true of media corporations.

Update, just remembered:

Ace of Spades @AceofSpadesHQ

Jay Leno famously voluntarily took, IIRC, a $10 mil per year pay cut to keep his staff at full strength. Weird that the Heroes of the Workin' Man -- Seth Meyers, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, Jimmy Kimmel -- aren't voluntarily cutting their salaries to save their staff.

posted by Ace at 02:44 PM

| Access Comments