Colbert, Kimmel and Fallon will need to adapt to life after Trump
Late-night TV has always featured politics. Johnny Carson spent decades lampooning leaders of both parties on “The Tonight Show,” and impersonating a president on “Saturday Night Live” is considered a badge of honor. Jon Stewart became one of the biggest names in TV comedy by speaking truth to those in power on “The Daily Show.”
But President Donald Trump was unlike anything that late-night hosts had ever really seen before, and his presidency caused a tectonic shift in the DNA of late-night TV — from the structure of the shows to their tenor and tone.
Hosts such as Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers and Jimmy Kimmel acted less like MCs of a nightclub full of celebrity guests and more like nightly news anchors offering viewers muchneeded, if not always comical, insights into the administration’s antics.
With Trump out of office, where does late-night go from here?
“Trump was like a hurricane you had to cover,” said Bill Carter, a CNN contributor who has written multiple books about late-night TV. “But now I think there’s a desire to move on, as the country is desiring to move on.”
Carter said that even though Colbert, Meyers and Kimmel celebrated Trump’s White House departure on Wednesday, the former president will not disappear from the news, which means he also won’t vanish from the late-night airwaves, either.
“There’s a bit of an addiction metaphor here because you can’t quit Trump cold turkey,” Carter said. “They’re going to find it’s tough to move on because the stories will continue to play out. I mean, he’ll criticize every single thing that Biden does, and there’s the story of the insurrection.”
Away from finding new fodder for monologues, Trump’s departure could also alter the power dynamics of late-night itself.
Take CBS’ “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” for example. Colbert struggled to find his footing in the show’s early, pre-President Trump years but found its voice — and an audience — thanks to becoming a sincere yet satirical backstop to the president.