Late night hosts like Colbert and Kimmel were always liberals, but after the election of Trump in 2016, they really ripped their masks off and went full leftist.

Shows like the Tonight Show and the Late Show used to be entertainment shows for the enjoyment of the whole country, but now are purely political and always far left.

And now they’re paying for it.

Ratings for these shows are down and so is ad revenue.

From Variety (emphasis added):

In 2018, seven late night programs — NBC’s “Tonight” and “Late Night,” CBS’ “Late Show” and “Late Late Show,” ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” Comedy Central’s “Daily Show” and NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” — drew more than $698 million in advertising in 2018, according to Vivvix, a tracker of ad spending. By 2022, that total came to $412.7 million — a drop of approximately 41% over five years. Fallon, Kimmel, Colbert and the others have all in recent years had to grapple not only with viewers moving to streaming, but with a coronavirus pandemic that forced their shows to embrace performances without a band and live audiences and absences due to infection…

As the election of President Donald Trump polarized the nation, some of late-night’s voices chose to lean into politics. The fragmentation of viewing and the trickier conversational terrain have hurt the programs, says Harrison. “There has been so much political news over the last six to eight years, and that has filtered into late night. When that becomes a large part of your program, in this environment, you are — by math — probably not appealing to half your potential audience,” he cautions. Meanwhile, as more viewers bypass linear TV, he says. “It’s difficult to discover these shows or promote them.”

Way down in the article, Variety notes the one late night show that is not having a ratings problem:

Enter Fox News Channel. In 2021, the Fox Corp.-backed cable outlet added “Gutfeld!” to its lineup at 11 p.m. The program features commentator Greg Gutfeld and a panel of contributors who talk politics and culture. Fox has positioned the program as a competitor to Colbert, Fallon, Kimmel and “The Daily Show.” “We are not having celebrities to promote some movie,” says Tom O’Connor, the program’s executive producer. “We are just having interesting people that we think are funny.” In the first quarter of 2023, “Gutfeld!” captured more viewers on average than either NBC’s “Tonight” or ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel.”

The Vareity article tries to make excuses for the drop in ratings with streaming services and the internet.

That’s not what it is at all.

Average Americans are not tuning in because they don’t want to hear left wing lectures from people who aren’t even funny.

Colbert and the rest are not making shows for the whole country. They are catering only to people who share their far left political views. It’s tiresome and far from entertaining.

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Night Jitters: TV’s Late Crowd Grapples With Weakness in the Wee Hours

People from all over the world on most weekdays eagerly line up across New York City — ready to do something they’d likely never do at home.

Dozens of tourists, fun-seekers and fans snake across the floor in the middle of the afternoon in the luxurious lobby at NBC’s 30 Rockefeller Plaza, all anxious to see Seth Meyers do a live-to-tape run-through of his “Late Night,” a program that has been on in one form or another on the network since David Letterman launched it in 1982. Attending one of the shows means agreeing to take part in an hours-long process that requires everything from security checks to a light verbal grilling by a warm-up comic who aims to get attendees ready to laugh. Many blocks away, a similar crowd queues up under a marquee on the west side of Manhattan, ready to take part in a taping of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” a TV institution that debuted in 1996 and, at present, has no regular host.

Visitors to these programs come from as far away as Italy or Holland to see how they get made. Some live closer and just see the shows as a fun place to take a date or spend a few hours off from work. But there’s no getting around their task: Fans must sit through a whole hour, from opening monologue to last-minute “good night.” Some people may watch Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel or Stephen Colbert at home in the same way, but their number is diminishing.

Those late night hosts like to make people laugh. But the wee hours often serve as home to something else: horror stories. Maddie Luke, a 26-year-old who works at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, is very interested in hosts like Meyers, Fallon and Colbert. Like a growing number of TV consumers, however, she doesn’t have a cable or satellite-TV subscription. Instead, she says, “I just follow the socials, and I’ll find the interview if I’m interested in the guest.” She’s not sure she’s missing out on anything. “When I’m home, I will watch an hour-long drama or I’ll watch a couple of comedy episodes,” but for interviews with celebrities, “I kind of like where I don’t have to watch one guest after another. I don’t mind watching a guest that I’m interested in, but sometimes, I’m not interested in what’s next.” Megha Kakaraparti , a 26-year-old product manager from Leesburg, Va., prefers to use late-night hours to watch her favorite crime procedurals. When she does take notice of a late-night show, she says, “it’s just clips on TikTok or YouTube, or just something I see on Instagram that’s trending.”

It’s no secret among TV executives that the younger people who once stayed up past midnight to watch David Letterman drop objects off a five-story building are not tuning to this generation’s cadre of late-night hosts in the same way. Changing habits like those described above make decades-old late night shows such as “Tonight, “Late Show” or “Late Night” less easy to monetize — and, if executives aren’t careful, less alluring to keep putting on the air one evening after another.

In 2018, seven late night programs — NBC’s “Tonight” and “Late Night,” CBS’ “Late Show” and “Late Late Show,” ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” Comedy Central’s “Daily Show” and NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” — drew more than $698 million in advertising in 2018, according to Vivvix, a tracker of ad spending. By 2022, that total came to $412.7 million — a drop of approximately 41% over five years. Fallon, Kimmel, Colbert and the others have all in recent years had to grapple not only with viewers moving to streaming, but with a coronavirus pandemic that forced their shows to embrace performances without a band and live audiences and absences due to infection.

All of this gives Madison Avenue a good reason to try something else. Late-night shows have made themselves more alluring to advertisers by offering product placements, even segments during which the host offers a shout out to a sponsor. But “viewers are seeking out and finding their cut down ‘highlights,’ or moments, rather than making the live episode appointment viewing,” says Dave Sederbaum, executive vice president and head of video investment at Dentsu Media US, a large ad buyer that works for General Motors and Heineken, among others. “My job is to balance our investments in full episodic content as well as highlights in short-form video.”

And so, everyone seems to have night jitters. Over the course of the past few years, NBC has gotten out of the practice of programming a show for 1:30 a.m. after doing so since 1988, and Comedy Central’s portfolio of wee-hours programming has been cut from three to one — and that one, “Daily Show,” has yet to replace Trevor Noah, who abruptly told a studio audience while taping an episode in September that he planned to leave to escape the late-night grind after seven seasons. After James Corden ends his run on CBS’ “The Late Late Show” in the next few days, CBS will cancel the program, even though it has been a fixture on its schedule since Tom Snyder launched it in 1995. In its place, the network is expected to air a revival of the Comedy Central game show “@midnight,” which will cost significantly less than a bells-and-whistles Corden production that includes signature bits like “Carpool Karaoke.”

Others have also been wary. When Conan O’Brien arrived at TBS in 2010, it was seen as a bid to compete more directly with the cable network’s broadcast rivals. But Warner Bros. Discovery, TBS new corporate parent, has made no move to find a replacement since O’Brien departed in 2021, and also cancelled a weekly program from Samantha Bee that emulated late-night antics. Efforts by streamers to harness some of the format’s power have not been successful. Netflix stopped production on a nightly program led by Chelsea Handler, while Hulu canceled a weekly show from Sarah Silverman. Apple currently runs a program featuring the legendary Jon Stewart, but any buzz around it has been minimal — the result, perhaps, of trying to run a series of this sort without the ability to promote it to a big audience turning in regularly to a primetime or daytime schedule. NBCU has tested a show led by Amber Ruffin for Peacock, but is producing fewer episodes as she works on a comedy pilot.

..

Late-night TV is one of the industry’s signature products. Some veterans of the late-night wars aren’t optimistic the programs can continue in the same fashion. “You’re dealing with some heavy legacy costs and infrastructure: staff, studio crew, hosts. In a time of diminishing audiences, it’s tough to make that math add up,” says Jim Bell, a former showrunner at NBC’s “Tonight” and executive producer of “Today” who is now head of strategy for NewsBreak, a local news and information platform. “You can hope that things like social media — Instagram, YouTube — might be complimentary, but it just now feels like it’s cannibalizing.”

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Attorney General Merrick Garland is the ‘senior political appointee’ at center of IRS whistleblower’s bombshell claim the Biden administration thwarted and interfered with Hunter Biden criminal probe

• A man serving as a supervising agent on a ‘high-profile’ criminal tax probe has come forward seeking whistleblower protections
• The protected disclosures by the IRS whistleblower ‘contradict sworn testimony to Congress by a senior political appointee’
• DailyMail.com has confirmed that the unnamed appointee is Attorney General Merrick Garland

Attorney General Merrick Garland is the ‘senior’ unnamed Biden administration official in the center of a new bombshell IRS whistleblower claim, a source familiar tells DailMail.com.

According to a letter Wednesday from attorney Mark Lytle, a man serving as a supervising agent on a ‘high-profile’ criminal tax probe has come forward seeking whistleblower protections while claiming politics are ‘improperly infecting decisions’ in an investigation. 

The investigation referred to is reportedly examining matters related to President Biden’s son Hunter Biden.

The protected disclosures by the IRS whistleblower ‘contradict sworn testimony to Congress by a senior political appointee,’ the letter stated.

DailyMail.com has confirmed that the ‘senior political appointee’ is Attorney General Merrick Garland. 

The New York Post first reported Garland’s connection to the whistleblower’s claim Thursday. 

The disclosures also ‘involve failure to mitigate clear conflicts of interest in the ultimate disposition of the case,’ the letter by Lytle continued. 

In addition, the whistleblower’s admissions apparently ‘detail preferential treatment and politics improperly infecting decisions and protocols that would normally be followed by career law enforcement professionals in similar circumstances if the subject were not politically connected.’

Lytle wrote that his client is a career IRS Criminal Supervisor Special Agent who has been overseeing the ‘sensitive investigation of a high-profile, controversial subject’ since 2020. 

The letter obtained by DailyMail.com was sent to senior members of the House and Senate. 

The whistleblower has already shared information with the Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration, and the Department of Justice’s inspector general.

The revelation shook Capitol Hill and members of both political parties.

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BREAKING: Fmr CIA chief Mike Morell testifies under oath that Biden campaign and Tony Blinken asked him to orchestrate letter from 50 intel officials falsely claiming Hunter Biden emails were ‘Russian disinformation’

The House Judiciary Committee Thursday night released a shocking letter addressed to Secretary of State Antony Blinken revealing that the basis upon which the claim that stories concerning Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell” were “Russian disinformation” were prompted by the Biden campaign and Blinken himself.

The false claim that the laptop was “Russian disinformation” was repeated ad nauseam by Biden allies, like Jen Psaki who became the first press secretary under the Biden administration. The claim was based on a letter signed by 50 former members of the intelligence community, and that letter was organized by former CIA director Mike Morell, who did so at the prompting of the Biden administration.

The Judiciary Committee stated in the letter Morell told the committee that Blinken, then a senior campaign official, reached out to him after the New York Post published articles detailing information found on the laptop concerning influence peddling and shady overseas business dealings.

Morell said that he organized the letter and the signatories to “help Vice President Biden” for the reason that he “wanted him to win the election.” Morell used his influence to encourage his colleagues to sign a letter asserting false claims in order to further the Biden’s campaign.

Morell was clear that it wasn’t until he was contacted by Blinken that he determined to take the action to organize the letter or to exonerate Biden from the allegations stemming from his son’s laptop. Morell said that his conversation with Blinken “triggered… that intent.”

Apparenly, Blinken had sent Morell an article from USA Today that stated that the FBI was investigating the likelihood that the laptop, which was abandoned by Hunter Biden at a Delaware computer repair shop before the shopowner turned it over to the FBI (who sat on it) and to Rudy Giuliani, was part of a “disinformation campaign.”

Morell then did his own research, and contacted retired CIA officials to help him get to the bottom of the allegations, with the intent of discrediting the reporting from the New York Post. Morell gathered the signatures, including those of John Brennan and Leon Panetta. Morell further testified that the Biden campaign indicated that a specific reporter at the Washington Post should get the letter, along with the campaign.

The letter landed at Politico, which ran the story that spawned so many others, claiming that the Hunter Biden story was “Russian disinfo” according to “dozens of former officials.” The letter stated that the Post’s reporting had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

That letter was used by the Biden campaign to discredit and censor the Post’s factual reporting in order to help Biden win the 2020 presidential election.

Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe stated in October 2020 that the laptop was decidedly “not part of a Russian disinformation campaign.” Also in October 2020, a Department of Justice source said that the FBI had dropped an investigation into the laptop, after its contents had been delivered to them by the laptop repair shop owner.

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