Conan O'Brien Says Late Night TV 'is Going to Disappear'

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Regardless of whether you think The Late Show With Stephen Colbert isn't being renewed as a ritual sacrifice to satisfy an angry and all-powerful god:

… or out of basic Adam Smith-level economics:

… it's worth listening to someone who spent 28 years working in late night television over three shows and two networks. And who held the most revered and iconic of all those jobs, host of NBC's The Tonight Show. Albeit only for seven months, give or take. But still. 

When Conan O'Brien speaks on this subject, he's someone worth listening to:

Source - The Television Academy inducted six new members into its Hall of Fame on Saturday night, as Conan O’Brien …  presented his honor by longtime friend Lisa Kudrow — joked, “You know, people say that television is dying, but I want to ask you — if our industry really was in trouble, would we be gathered right now for our greatest night in a downtown Los Angeles Marriott? On a weekend? In August? No!”    

The longtime TV host used some of his speech to muse about the current state of late night, acknowledging, “Things are changing fast. …

“We’re having this event now in a time when there’s a lot of fear about the future of television, and rightfully so. The life we’ve all known for almost 80 years is undergoing seismic change. …

“Yes, late night television as we have known it since around 1950 is going to disappear, but those voices are not going anywhere. People like Stephen Colbert are too talented and too essential to go away. It’s not going to happen, he’s not going anywhere. Stephen is going to evolve and shine brighter than ever in a new format that he controls completely.”   

When Colbert first announced he was being let go, I mentioned the thing that O'Brien alluded to. That Late Night as a format has basically not changed since the early days of television. When networks realized they could still sell cigarettes and cars to audiences who didn't want to go to bed at 10pm, and were looking for something easy to produce, and therefore cheap. So they threw a desk in front of the fake skyline of a city, put a loquacious host behind it, carted out a string of celebrities to sit on a couch and banter, and a template was formed that hasn't been altered since. 

At least not until about 10 years ago. Which is when Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Myers, and to a lesser extent Jimmy Fallon, started wading into politics. Not broad social satire or jokes about current events like every other host had been sticking with since the medium was invented. But taking aim at one half of the country on a nightly basis. And in doing so, killed the bit that had kept Late Night going strong for the first 70 years of its existence. 

O'Brien didn't directly take that shot. But I've heard him address this very issue on his own podcasts and some others that he guested on. He's friends with all these guys, obviously. And he's going to pump the tires on Colbert's future like a good colleague who's been canceled a time or two would. 

But I've heard Conan express his frustrations at how the industry had changed. How alienating half the potential audience became the norm. Specifically, he cited how his own brand of humor is summed up in this goofy scene from one of the Pink Panther sequels:

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Pompous, self-important buffoon hurls himself down a flight of stairs in front of a bunch of people and tries to act like there's nothing amiss here. As humor goes, it doesn't get any more basic than that. And it's how O'Brien ran his show for almost 30 years. Even though he was a relative unknown writer for The Simpsons and SNL when NBC gave him the gig back in 1993. 

Conan made it almost three decades. The current crop killed the format in less than one. 

Yes, there are other factors, like he said. Streaming is to Late Night what digital was to print and AI will be to all forms of creativity. And it's been widely speculated that for the past few years, these shows have been trying to generate viral moments that will land in people's algorithm in the morning rather than try to make their audience stay up late to watch some actress talk about what a thrill it was to work on her latest film and show a clip. 

But regardless of the ultimate cause of death, Late Night is definitely about to have the plugged pulled. Conan O'Brien, one of the best to ever do it, is simply giving the industry its Last Rites.