"Keep Colbert" Protest Shows How Few Fans the Uncomfortably Uncharismatic Unfunnyman Actually Has, Even in a Left-Wing City of Nine Million

The Stephen Colbert Fan Club could fit inside Brian Stelter's pants.

Along with Brian Stelter, I mean.

What a joke.

A Big Apple rally in support of on-his-way-out "Late Show" host Stephen Colbert drew fewer than two dozen people Sunday -- with even the NYPD cops on scene quickly calling it a day since most of the demonstrators left after just a few minutes.

Organizers said the "We're With Colbert" gathering outside the CBS Broadcast Center on Manhattan's West Side said it was meant to be part of a nationwide call for "integrity."

LOL.

"Our country is not perfect, never has been," said the event's organizer, who would only identify himself as Matt and said his nickname is "Slim."

"But we've always had the First Amendment, and now Mango Mussolini is trying to take that from us," he said, referring to a derogatory nickname for President Trump.

...

"This is a First Amendment attack," a protester who refused to give her name said of the closing-down of the show. "We can't stand for that."

Why would lefties refuse to give their names? They face no Right Wing Cancellation Mobs.

I've got a thought: Maybe because they're paid "protesters."

The last real late night host Jay Leno criticized Colbert for alienating half the country and destroying late night talk shows.

Former late-night comedy giant Jay Leno thinks today's TV hosts are fools for falling back on one-sided political humor -- explaining they're isolating half their audience with the endless partisan jabs.

"Why shoot for just half an audience all the time? You know, why not try to get the whole?" Leno, 75, told Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation CEO David Trulio during a recent interview.

"I don't understand why you would alienate one particular group, you know, or just don't do it at all," the former "Tonight Show" host ​said. "I'm not saying you have to throw your support or whatever, but just do what's funny."

​Leno said such conflicts are exactly why ​he pointedly avoided partisan political humor during his 22 years as the ​king of late night -- with one analysis cited by Trulio showing he made fun of both sides of the aisle in equal measure throughout his career.

"Funny is funny," Leno said. "It's funny when someone who's not​ ... when you make fun of their side​, and they laugh at it, you know, that's kind of what I do."

...

"I like to think that people come to a comedy show to kind of get away from the things, you know, the pressures of life, whatever it might be," Leno said. "And I love political humor, don't get me wrong, but it's just what happens when people wind up cozying too much to one side or the other.

"You have to be content with half the audience because you have [to] give your opinion."

When NBC demanded cuts at the Tonight Show, due to its falling ratings, Jay Leno famously gave up $10 million of his own salary to keep the entire staff employed.

So far I haven't heard Stephen Colbert offering to take the Jay Leno Challenge.

We've talked about this already, but: the real story is that the entire model of broadcast television is collapsing.

[T]he strongest evidence that Paramount's sacking of Colbert was definitely but not solely a gift to Trump comes, ironically, from Colbert's sharpest supporter, his former boss at The Daily Show Jon Stewart. On his podcast--keep that gig, Jon--the once-a-week TV host mused about the network on which he toils, Comedy Central. "Without 'The Daily Show,' Comedy Central's kind of like Muzak at this point ... I think we're the only sort of life that exists on a current basis, other than 'South Park.'"

If "late night" were all that was at risk, there would be more than two original programs on an entire television network, one of which was delayed until streaming rights were granted.

That's a reference to the South Park geeks holding out on a deal until Paramount allowed them to sell the show to other streamers, which is where the real money is.

And it's where the relevance is. I don't watch any broadcast TV until/unless it goes on to streaming. South Park being stuck on Comedy Central and Paramount's little-watched streaming service will result in the show being entirely forgotten.

I've already forgotten it. I only remember it when they advertise some big special episode like the Kathleen Kennedy one.

The financial turbulence in Hollywood extends well beyond the narrow time slot between 11:30 p.m. and 1:30 a.m. on three broadcast networks. It's about the rest of the schedule as well. Television as we have known it for more than 75 years in America affirmatively is going extinct, and practically nobody has reckoned with the implications of that.

...

But cable isn't the only issue. Of the top 68 highest-rated single programs on all television in 2024, broadcast or cable, 65 were sporting events; number 39 was the Sunday Night Football studio show during a weather delay in October. Only two scripted shows, CBS's Tracker and Young Sheldon (which ended last year), made the top 100. Sports are the last thing keeping the broadcast/cable television apparatus alive, and the gradual movement of sports programming into streaming, most notably Amazon's grab of a share of the NBA contract for next season, signals that will meet its end, too.

...

[E]ven talking about winners and losers in [late-night tv] obscures the ratings reality. The CBS Late Movie, a rerun it aired against The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in the 1970s and '80s, had an audience in 1972 of nearly seven million adults per film, nearly three times as many viewers as Colbert's "top-rated" Late Show a half-century later. The movie cost nothing but library rights. The Late Show costs $100 million a year.

...

The Trump business gave Paramount an excuse internally to do something the conglomerates have resisted for a while but know they must eventually: begin the demolition of their linear television product. This may start in late night but it won't end there, as before long--maybe a decade--everything moves into the streaming networks....

The giant problem is that, while the old business model for televised entertainment is dead, the new business model doesn't yet exist.

posted by Ace at 02:52 PM

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