This year has been a tough year for the left. President-elect Donald Trump’s political comeback is an event for the ages and will be a topic in the history books for generations to come. Trump’s victory on election night all but fractured the Democratic Party. They are leaderless and there is no one waiting in the wings to fill that void, and we are still waiting for Hollywood leftists like Alec Baldwin and Cher to pack up and head to Canada as promised if Trump wins. But another casualty of Trump’s imploding victory is late-night television, and it’s not pretty.
Late night television has been a petri dish for the cultivation of TDS and its demise is inevitable!
— Cbvheartland (@Cbvheartland2) November 12, 2024
Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) wasn’t good for the night gang by Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon as not only do their ratings and viewership continue to decline, but their shows lose any real cultural relevance they once had. The Media Research Center conducted a study at the height of the 2024 election season from September 3rd to October 25th. During that time, late-night comedians told approximately 1,463 jokes about Trump and Kamala Harris. Not surprisingly, Donald Trump was the butt of a whopping 98 percent of these jokes. As an added bonus, 78 percent of the jokes aimed at the vice presidential candidates went to JD Vance.
READ MORE: Unfunny, politicized late-night comedy shows could soon go the way of the dodo bird
Like mainstream legacy media, late-night comedy has the confidence of a gnat, and its dwindling ratings are proof of that. Colbert is usually the leader between him, Fallon and Kimmel. Just five years ago, “Colbert” attracted 3.81 million viewers. For the 2023-2024 season, that number has dropped to 2.6 million. The latest figures for the current 2024-2025 season don’t bode well either, with an average of 2.5 million viewers. In the third quarter of the 2024-2025 season, Jimmy Kimmel averaged just 1.37 million viewers. At NBC, they’re taking a different approach for “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.” In September they announced that they would air the modern shows in repeats Monday to Thursday and on Fridays.
98% of the jokes told by Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers and Saturday Night Live leading up to the election were all about President Donald Trump.
According to the Media Research Center, 1,428 of the 1,463 political jokes were aimed at Trump.
What did it do? pic.twitter.com/KcKEmJ2XrO
— Breanna Morello (@BreannaMorello) December 27, 2024
What did it achieve in the end? The destruction of their credibility.
In addition to the constant Trump-bashing by late-night “comedians,” Americans are also tired of the opinions of celebrities. Several current surveysincluding a Rasmussen poll, found that a whopping 75 percent of American voters said they don’t care about celebrity endorsements of candidates. A recent AP-NORC poll found that Democrats are far more starstruck when it comes to celebrity endorsements: 40 percent of Democrats said they were okay with celebrity endorsements, compared to just 11 percent of Republicans.
The current behind schedule night comedy show landscape is nothing like it was during the Johnny Carson era. Carson was the undisputed king of behind schedule night because he was the only one to begin with, but also because no one was immune – he stabbed everyone. This maintained hearty competition between an early David Letterman and Carson’s successor, Jay Leno. Everyone was fair game. Additionally, social media sites like YouTube and TikTok are attracting a younger audience.
Who do Colbert, Fallon and Kimmel lose to? This is elementary: Fox News Channel’s “Gutfeld!”, hosted by Greg Gutfeld, is destroying late-night television on the network. While the week of the Democratic Convention, Gutfeld, which can only be seen on pay TV, won ahead of the huge three, especially in the vital target group of 25 to 54 year olds.
It’s become clear since election night that the legacy media has learned nothing from its loss and won’t change the way it does business, and it’s sheltered to assume the behind schedule night gang won’t change either.
ALSO READ: Late night hosts suffer emotional breakdowns over Trump’s win, one even starts crying
The late-night comedy shows are so unpopular that they are cutting staff, cutting costs, and switching to 4-day-a-week programming (with the exception of Gutfeld, who remains intentionally unmentioned). https://t.co/UgzGq7XJSU
— Ace of Spades (@AceofSpadesHQ) October 1, 2024
