MATT MARGOLIS #pratt pjmedia.com
These shows, once crafted to appeal to a broad spectrum of Americans, have devolved into echo chambers for leftist propaganda. The origins of the decline trace back years, but the final collapse was swift and, frankly, predictable.
Meanwhile, executives watched as ratings collapsed and the advertising dollars dried up. Young viewers — once the lifeblood of late night — abandoned scheduled TV for digital options that aren’t tethered to political sermons. Networks tried slashing production, dropping Friday shows, and trimming costs, but none of it masked the fact that the product itself was profoundly unfunny and deliberately alienating half of the country.
It didn’t have to be this way. The late-night legends — Carson, Leno, even Letterman — were not afraid to poke fun at anyone in power. They understood that comedy is funniest when it lands punches in all directions. Today’s crop only punches in one, and the result is a landscape devoid of risk, creativity, or mass appeal.
In the end, CBS pulled the plug not because the numbers stopped adding up overnight, but because a narrow, leftist agenda willfully destroyed the cultural relevance of late-night comedy. The political left, intoxicated by its own orthodoxy, choked the life out of a uniquely American art form.
The blame is not on audiences, nor on the shifting tides of media consumption. The death warrant for late night was signed the moment its architects stopped being comedians and became political operatives. This isn’t evolution; it’s self-destruction. And as the lights go out on late-night TV, the lesson is clear: it wasn’t declining economics that killed comedy. It was the left.