The Key to Late-Night TV’s Future May Lie in Its Past

Like a creature on the near-extinct list, shows on linear television keep trying to find a different habitat, a new form that can sustain their existence.

Late-night television shows are hanging in better than most of the rest of traditional entertainment television. (How many prime time network shows do you watch now?) But increasingly that may be akin to being the biggest Lilliputian in Lilliput. And the shows obviously recognize their vulnerability.

Jimmy Kimmel is probably the most frank in assessing the long-term prospects for late-night shows. In a recent interview, he said he didn’t know if any late-night show would survive the next 10 years.

But there’s a reason even streaming services keep trying out late-night formats with new hosts, like Netflix’s experiment with John Mulaney this past spring, Everybody’s in LA. That effort obviously passed its test because yesterday Netflix announced that it is bringing Mulaney back for a new weekly version of his show in 2025.

It’s the same reason why late-night hosts on broadcast networks are still being offered long-term contract extensions. Streamers obviously see potential added value in jumping into yet another traditional television format, and the broadcast networks perceive continuing value to late-night shows as regular features that still draw both attention and audiences—even if they clock significantly lower ratings than they once did.

The network shows do boast robust followings on YouTube and other social media sites, not that that necessarily helps the bottom line. The revenue generated from online pre-roll ads and the like doesn’t remotely replace the lost ad revenue from diminished ratings. And having the best comedy pieces and interviews available online all day every day reduces the impetus to watch the shows when they actually air.

But the very existence of strong online followings for late-night programming underscores that they are brands that retain value. And beyond that, the hosts of the shows tend to be the signature stars of their respective networks.

It’s not like late-night shows are incapable of generating audiences that advertisers will still pay a premium to reach. Saturday Night Live does it on a regular basis.

Beyond that, you may have noticed in this election season that occasional efforts by late-night shows to draft off audiences for significant political events, like the conventions and especially the debates, have resulted in ratings bumps for these special-edition shows.

Not the least incidentally, these shows—and not at all coincidentally with Mulaney’s successful tryout on Netflix—have one glaring similarity to SNL. It’s that little word at the end: Live.

A recent example was the move by The Daily Show to jump on the air immediately after the Harris-Trump debate with a live show that broke down—comedically—what viewers had just seen taking place live in that dogs-and-cats competition. The ratings were the best The Daily Show has seen in seven years. A day later, when Seth Meyers hosted an hour-long live “A Closer Look” primetime special, it won its timeslot.

Similarly, when The Late Show With Stephen Colbert went live on CBS the final night of this summer’s Democratic National Convention, it drew more viewers than the two taped shows on ABC and CBS combined.

You would think that these are the kind of results that would make a network television executive lean back in his/her rich Corinthian leather chair, stroke their cheek, and mumble a single syllable: “Hmmm.”

Of course, viewer interest in thaose two political events is a large part of what drove those numbers. But keep stroking that chin.

SNL doesn’t follow events like those every week—or almost ever, for that matter. What it does do is produce a show that feels a little-to-a-lot more electric than any other late-night show, for the simple reason that it is performed and broadcast live.

Another “Hmmm.” Why would that make a difference? Arguably there’s no real reason. If someone tapes SNL or watches a replay on Peacock the next day the jokes still land (or don’t) the same way. But SNL still consistently hits ratings numbers better than almost any other regular entertainment program on television.

Maybe it’s just better. Maybe it just gets big stars to host. Maybe it’s a tradition that seems to capture a new generation every time it brings in newer and younger cast members.

And maybe it’s at least in part because it’s live.

Another consideration might waft through our executive’s musings: The only things that really rate on linear television anymore are presented live: News shows, awards shows, and the big remaining meal ticket—sports.

Live, live, live. Can you hear the drums calling?

Why not do a late-night show live? Truly live, not “live on tape.” The latter is a bit of a bogus claim anyway, because current late-night shows are routinely stopped, paused, and reconsidered a bit mid-show. Some offer segments, especially musical performances, taped at a previous show. That’s not live television.

As The Daily Show after the debate and Colbert after the convention proved, doing a show live produces the effect, if not the reality, of putting the viewer in a seat in the studio or theater where the show is taking place at that moment.

There is precedent, of course. When Steve Allen sat behind his Tonight desk in New York for the first time in 1954, he was really there at that very moment, winging it, as it were. He really did stay on the air until 1 a.m. talking and joking away.

Jack Paar did Tonight live; so did Johnny Carson for a time. But with advances in tape technology, and just logistically for the sake of making life easier for everybody, it made sense for The Tonight Show and its successors to tape in the late afternoon and go on the air starting at 11:30 at night.

When Jimmy Kimmel began his show in 2003, he took the opportunity that the three-hour West Coast time difference afforded by performing live in Los Angeles at 8:30. It was a challenge for a nascent show finding its footing, but it did add an element of unpredictability. Kimmel’s show is still the closest to “live” of any of the late-night shows.

The chin-stroking seems to have produced some results on streaming channels already. What was Everybody’s in LA on Netflix but a shambling late-night show that looked and felt uneven but undeniably fresh—because it was live. And it is no surprise that Netflix’s description of the upcoming weekly edition of Mulaney’s show included, prominently, that it will be presented live.

 More recently, Colin Jost and Michael Che, who know what live means from years of doing “Weekend Update” on SNL, presented their own night of favorite stand-ups live from a club in Brooklyn on Peacock.

Neither streaming show was perfect and certainly not polished, but they sure looked and felt different. And what was really different about them except that little LIVE word?

But the Mulaney show, conspicuously, is not going to be a week-nightly show; it’s going to be a one-a-week show, in the SNL tradition. Revamping the familiar network late-night shows as live presentations four times a week might meet with a bit of resistance from the stars who now lead them.

Why? Well, the lifestyle change that would come crashing down on hosts accustomed to a human schedule where they finish work by seven or eight at night might be daunting. And resistance would almost surely arise from guests, too.

But what does any sensible threatened species do when faced with that big E word?

It adapts. Or doesn’t.

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