Conan O'Brien, along with Bill Maher, has been around longest on this list they both started their first late-night shows in And for better or worse, it shows. O'Brien works the most loosely with his material, which allows for ingenious asides and bits of explosive physical comedy that make "Conan" stand out. It is often laugh-out-loud funny.
But the show's writing is not always the sharpest, and O'Brien can occasionally seem bored with the task of interviewing his second-tier guests. O'Brien works the most loosely with his material, which allows for ingenious asides and bits of explosive physical comedy that make Conan stand out. Though Fallon replaced Jay Leno on the top-rated late-night show, and continues to deliver stellar ratings, he shares little with either his predecessor or Leno rival David Letterman.
Fallon eschews many of the old standard bits and sit-down interviews in favor of involving celebrities in random games. They can be twee, but when they work, they really work, showing off much more of the celebrities' natural personalities than rehearsed anecdotes ever would just watch Channing Tatum lie. Fallon is also an endlessly delighted host.
He fawns all over his guests, telling each of them how much he loves them and their work, which can grow tiresome. But he has the pull to get the biggest guests of any talk show, which makes for reason enough to watch. Jimmy Kimmel seems to be having the most fun of any of the current late-night hosts, which means we have fun watching it, too.
He's a prankster, who relishes in the stock in trade of classic late-night shows, the man-on-the-street interview, asking regular people absurd questions that get absurd answers, and starting a possibly staged feud with Kanye West. And he's been lucky with his guests, getting the cast and filmmakers of "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" and "The Hateful Eight" to join for the party, and offer a few scoops. And he's been lucky with his guests, getting the cast and filmmakers of Star Wars: The Force Awakens and The Hateful Eight to join for the party, and offer a few scoops.
Stephen Colbert's switch from his satirical conservative persona on "The Colbert Report" to a more traditional late-night format on CBS taking over from David Letterman raised all kinds of questions: What would actual Colbert be like, and would he be as funny?
It turns out "The Late Show" gives Colbert the freedom to perform all kinds of hosting styles. He frequently launches into characters for sketches at the top of the show, to lambast the latest fallen Republican candidate, for example.
But then he can also give sobering, thoughtful interviews, as he did with Joe Biden. Not quite everything on Colbert's new show works we're looking at you, "Big Questions" but most everything does, which on a nightly talk show is rare and wonderful.
Stephen Colbert's switch from his satirical conservative persona on The Colbert Report to a more traditional late-night format on CBS taking over from David Letterman raised all kinds of questions: What would actual Colbert be like, and would he be as funny?
It turns out The Late Show gives Colbert the freedom to perform all kinds of hosting styles. Not quite everything on Colbert's new show works we're looking at you, Big Questions but most everything does, which on a nightly talk show is rare and wonderful.
Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved. Some studies go as far as to identify innate, psychological differences that explain why liberals are more likely to laugh while conservatives are more prone to seethe.
This research, often inspired by the success of liberal satirists such as Colbert, Jon Stewart and Samantha Bee, certainly provides intriguing looks into the relationship between politics, psychology and sense of humor.
The political comedy of the early s, with its relatively big tent media companies and pre-Barack Obama politics, tended to joke primarily in the political direction of the largest audience segment interested in satire at that moment. Bush and inspired countless imitators , crowding the media marketplace for liberal laughs. Since then, further audience fragmentation , along with the proliferation of podcasts and social media platforms, has made it possible for right-wing comedians like YouTuber Steven Crowder to rise to prominence beyond conventional cable television.
On one level, Gutfeld succeeds today because he has virtually no competition from fellow conservatives in the late-night television comedy space. On another, he thrives because the current media industry moment is built not for a big tent of all viewers, but for audiences who share specific demographic, psychographic and political traits. If you find comedians such as Gutfeld unfunny or, more to the point, offensive, you may ask whether he should be granted the honorific of comedian.
Failing to do so, we argue, obscures the ways in which the right-wing political world uses comedy as a recruiting tool and unifying force.
Republican politics have long been built upon an uneasy fusion that aims to bind together libertarian and traditionalist values, despite their apparent contradictions. The crassness of Trumpism has only added to this conceptual tension. Right-wing comedy, we argue, serves to iron out, or at least paper over, such philosophical divides. They strategically cross-promote one another , while social media algorithms urge fans of one program to check out other flavors of right-wing comedy.
Gutfeld may be the biggest star, but a range of right-wing comedians are coming together in a constellation that allows young, right-wing-curious consumers to find a place in the universe of American conservative media and politics. The value, or danger, of right-wing comedy is a matter of political opinion.
Nick Marx is an associate professor of film and media studies at Colorado State University. Matt Sienkiewicz is an associate professor of communication and international studies at Boston College.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Cite this article Hide citations. Matt Sienkiewicz, Nick Marx and.
Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, 4 Oct. Matt Sienkiewicz, N. How a conservative comic became the most popular late-night host on TV. There was his big lie of election fraud and the insurrection of the Capitol on 6 January, fallout from which still peppers late-night comedy as a Republican party now tethered to the tenets of Trumpism — denial, fearmongering, minority rule — refuses to hold anyone officially accountable. The playbook haphazardly invoked by the Trump campaign to disenfranchise minority voters and discredit elections has been codified into law in several states.
How programs as disparate in pace, template and tone as The Tonight Show and Last Week with John Oliver have handled the past year of turbulence and transition, however, has varied. There have been earnest and haphazard attempts to move forward and refocus, but like the current administration, late-night comedy remains haunted by the last one.
Saturday Night Live, too, is no longer calling on Alec Baldwin for his much ballyhooed and overdone Trump impressions, but has continued its cold-open political parodies in the Biden era to middling interest. The 47th season premiere on 2 October, in which new cast member James Austin Johnson, known for his online Trump impressions, impersonated Biden , drew 3. Of the nightly programs, the most popular one, the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, evinces the median strategy — the host, who has led ratings for five years straight with an average of 2.
But the Late Show still takes as its guiding mission to talk about what everyone is talking about, which is often, in , stuff not really processable through the mechanisms of comedy — mass shootings, climate disaster events, the callousness of GOP politicians restricting abortions or voting rights.
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