Ratings for Left Wing Late Night Shows Are Collapsing, Ad Rates Are Down by Millions

 

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.