2015: The Year in Late-Night TV
The landscape of late-night TV changed forever in May, when David Letterman said a few pungent final words: “In light of all this praise, merited or not, do me a favor. Save a little for my funeral.” Then the host uttered his last “thank you and goodnight,” introduced the Foo Fighters, and left the building, making no effort to hide how relieved he was to bail out of there. It’s a totally different place without him. Like Steely Dan used to sing, daddy don’t live in that New York City no more. Dave was the last grizzled elder, the last link to the Johnny Carson era, the revered inspiration for all the current pretenders. His historic exit made 2015 a chaotic year, as all these bros in suits jockey for position in the new late-night turf.
The death of the old-school after-hours chat show has been predicted many times, but the fact remains that it’s one of the most efficient machines ever built for pimping product — and so as long as celebrities have product to pimp, these couches will remain hotly contested real estate. Just under two years ago, Jay Leno stepped down from The Tonight Show (again), and aprés Jay, le déluge — Letterman left The Late Show, Craig Ferguson quit The Late Late Show and Jon Stewart fled The Daily Show. The guys of late night — and they’re all guys — are a mix of old and new faces: Jimmy Kimmel (now the elder statesman, though too fresh to seem that way), Jimmy Fallon (the crowd pleaser), Seth Meyers (the voice of reason), Stephen Colbert (now playing himself), John Oliver (weekly is the new daily), Larry Wilmore (nightly is the new daily), James Corden (so likeable), Bill Maher (so abrasive), Trevor Noah (trying so hard), and what’s the name of that redhead over on TBS — ah yes, Conan O’Brien.
Oliver is the one who’s changed the game most, because of that magical word “weekly.” The idea of remaking The Daily Show as a once-a-week half-hour news round-up on HBO seemed so laughably old-fashioned at first, Oliver mocked the premise in his title: Last Week Tonight. Yet that slow-news concept turned out to be a brilliant move, giving him room to step outside the content-dump hustle and do extended long-form rants that stayed relevant and viral and shareable all week long, which Daily Show clips now often conspicuously don’t.
Oliver’s creative breakthrough took a toll on his old boss Jon Stewart, who seemed to get a hundred years wearier as soon as Last Week Tonight hit the airwaves. When he made the abrupt announcement he was quitting, he talked a good game about how Fox News drove him away, but he didn’t fool anyone — ’twas weekly killed the Daily. Once Stewart was done, he was done; there were some famous guests on his final few nights (Amy Schumer, Louis C.K., Bruce Springsteen), but he didn’t make it an event the way Letterman did. Stewart clearly couldn’t wait to get out of the office — and jump over to the network where his former protegee was killing it. He was funnier in his Emmys acceptance speech than he’d been his final months at The Daily Show. “To everybody on television, I just want to tell you … cling to it,” Stewart said. “I have been off television for six weeks, seven weeks, whatever it is. This is the first applause I’ve heard. It is a barren wasteland out there.” But then, at that point, he already knew he had an HBO deal in the works.
Trevor Noah took over Stewart’s desk, determined to prove himself as the third-best Daily Show host ever (fourth if you count Oliver, though he just kept Jon’s seat toasty for a few months). When Stewart made his big return to the old stomping grounds recently, it just looked sad, like Rob Lowe showing up back at the old frat house in St. Elmo’s Fire. Larry Wilmore started in January as the host of the Daily spin-off The Nightly Show, with a welcome touch of moral pique, though Maher’s Real Time remained the place to go for cerebral vitriol.
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