The Death of Late Night

Stephen Colbert and the Late Show are being cancelled. News, but not a surprise. Apparently the show was losing 40 million USD per year.

The problem is that they were no longer attracting enough of the key demographic, those aged 18 to 54. This is the only TV audience advertisers care about.

Why, exactly? Don’t older people have money to spend?

Yes, but they also tend to have already made their choices. They are loyal to their preferred brands. They are no longer in the open market.

The loss of this key younger demographic tells us network television itself is dying. Only old people still watch, loyal to their preferred medium, out of force of habit.

The decline is probably irreparable, thanks to improving technology. It is not just that there is greater competition; the new competition on the Internet can narrowcast, offering a more targeted market for an advertiser. For most brands and products, this makes more sense than paying for everyone’s eyeballs.

But here is a second puzzle. Why are the late night comics seemingly doing their best to jump off that cliff, to hasten their own downfall? For years, they have become increasingly political and partisan. And stopped telling jokes. This obviously alienates a large portion of their potential audience: obviously not what you want to do if you are broadcasting.

Colbert, for example, will be forever best remembered for one skit in which he simply danced with a troupe dressed up as hypodermic needles, with no setup or gag, just the shout “vaccine” at the end of each bar. A sad legacy.

Was this some desperate and incompetent attempt to narrowcast on a broadcast medium? To fight for  bigger piece of a shrinking pie?

I think it illustrates instead a saying often wrongly attributed to Mahatma Gandhi, about how you change the public consciousness. “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

This describes well the evolution of the political and social tendency often these days called “populism”; or, in the US, “MAGA.” It too is a product of the new technology.  With greater access to information, people are increasingly disinclined to trust the received consensus—that which is socially “broadcast” to them.

The late night comics, by the nature of their position on the networks, were committed to the old “broadcast” paradigm.  Being comics, they naturally saw their greatest influence and their main chance at the “then they laugh at you” phase. For some years, ridicule of this rebellious new turn of thought was the obvious and easy go-to for a gag. And it gave the comics great prestige and social influence. I remember not so many years ago the common comment that “I get all my news from the comedy shows.” Shows like the Daily Show.

But in going for the partisan gags, the late night hosts locked themselves into the “then they fight you” phase. As their habitual targets rose in power and influence, they were no longer funny. It was no longer a laughing matter. A few shrewd comics have managed to navigate this by flipping sides: Joe Rogan, Scott Adams, Russel Brand, Bill Maher. Many more seem to have dug themselves in too deep, becoming publicly identified primarily as a political figure.

I feel especially sorry for Jimmy Fallon, who early on seemed to see the risk, and tried to resist it. But when broadcasting is your livelihood, you are pretty locked in. You would have to kick against your employers as well as all your closest colleagues.

And now they are losing the argument.

 

 

  

On Sean Spicer Being Uncool

What all the cool kids are wearing.

A very odd piece appeared the other day in the National Post. It argues, almost without explanation or justification, that it was simply wrong, in some moral sense, for Stephen Colbert and the administration of the Emmys to allow Sean Spicer to appear onstage during the ceremony, even though he was doing so essentially to poke fun at himself as White House Press Secretary. Worse, Spicer was actually invited to some of the Emmy parties after the broadcast. This is unacceptable!

This is a classic example of bullying, of a familiar and pernicious high school variety. Some kid or kids are designated uncool, and to be part of the cool in-group it is necessary not to be seen hanging out with them. You must shun them. Why?

No good reason is offered. This is not a moral act. Because they have been designated by the “popular” crowd to be uncool. You show your supposed superiority by knowing, without it being explained, that they are uncool. If you challenge this, if someone has to explain it to you, you are just showing you are uncool. The matter could be completely capricious; but it is necessary to show membership in the herd of the cool.

It is all terribly nasty and immature. But kids are cruel. It is very like the choir in Lord of the Flies, with Spicer here in the role of Simon or Piggy. It is especially ugly to see this sort of thing in a national newspaper.

But it is the tactic now of the left as a whole. No arguments are presented for why Sean Spicer is somehow as a human being beyond the pale of polite company. Indeed, no arguments are given any more for most leftist positions, You must either passionately subscribe to them without question, or you are revealing yourself as uncool.

In this case, there are a few vague mentions of supposed sins: “being caught in multiple lies, exaggerations and, of course, the time he tried to make a worse than Hitler comparison to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.”

Only one example is given, then, of supposed lies and exaggerations. The reader is supposed to accept this all as so, or reveal themselves as uncool. This is a reference to Assad—being the only example given, we have a right to assume it is the worst thing Spicer has ever said.

What he actually said was “someone as despicable as Hitler didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons [in World War II].” On the face of it, this is perfectly true, and a common observation.

Some at the time protested that this was not true strictly speaking, because Hitler indeed used sarin gas in the concentration camps.

I think it would be fair to dispute whether an execution technique counts as a “weapon,” especially when the context was given as war. It is not assumed to be such in common speech.

If all press secretaries are all to be held to this standard, all of them would appear to be at least as lying and deceitful as Spicer.

As would any one of us.

In other words, the bill of indictment against Spicer is objectively nuts. He is just a designated scapegoat, an uncool kid. It does not matter what he ever actually said or did.

A Twitter twit is quoted as saying he “passionately advocated against human rights, health care, & American values.” Again, with no examples.

This is obviously untrue. You are just expected to accept it as true without evidence, or reveal yourself as uncool.

This attitude, standard on the left, is suicidal.

Spicer was the official spokesperson for the US President, elected by roughly 50% of the American people. It follows that what he advocated reflected the views of fifty percent of the American people. Half the population of the US and their opinions is here being branded beyond the pale of polite society, “against human rights, health care, & American values.” Americans’ values are against American values? Who gets to say so?

How long are the majority of the student body—continuing the high school example—going to continue to support a group that thinks of them this way? Or continue, for that matter, to read a newspaper that does? The proportion of Trump supporters might be lower in Canada. On the other hand, this newspaper, the National Post, has traditionally been seen as on the right.

This is why the mainstream media is dying; and it is why the left as we now know it will die. They think of themselves as the popular and admired in-group at school, and of the general public as humble supplicants who crave but do not merit their approval.

This works only so long as everyone buys into the illusion. It helps if you have all the hunky athletes and the pretty girls in your group. Sex appeal, at a certain age, works wonders. The modern left cannot claim this to be so. They are sitting high on a branch unconnected to any tree.

They should have noticed that the illusion is evaporating. Trump got elected. Rolling Stone Magazine was just sold for one dollar. Movie attendance is cratering.

Yet they are so self-absorbed and unaware they think they have the power to socially shun the elected head of the student body.

It is a quick drop from this position to one of general ridicule.

History will not mourn them, this modern left.