Why Stephen Colbert's Late Show Failed ｜ Guest： Wade Stotts ｜ 7⧸23⧸25
Episode Stats
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Summary
Stephen Colbert has been fired from the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Will this be the end of the road for a major comedy late show on major networks? And what will happen to the show now that Wade Stotts has taken over?
Transcript
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So Stephen Colbert has now been, well, fired and the late show has been entirely shut down. A lot of people are acting surprised about this. The left is acting like this is some huge scandal. How could this occur? It's got to be political. Donald Trump must have ordered the end of the late show.
00:01:04.840
But I have this weird theory that Stephen Colbert just hasn't been funny for a very long time and that the pressures of the internet age are just slowly eroding the interest in any kind of late show for any kind of comedy late show on major networks. Joining me today to talk about that is one of the funniest men on the internet. Wade Stotts, thank you so much for coming on.
00:01:31.720
Of course. Now, everyone is asking, and I think it's fair for them to say, when is Wade Stotts taking over the slot? When is it the late show with Wade Stotts? How are we going to resurrect this? Because I think this absolutely has to happen.
00:01:45.180
Well, I assume that by the time May rolls around that the Ed Sullivan Theater is just going to either be a museum to television, like we have to explain to people what television used to be. So before that, I might be able to take over and at least put on a show there a little bit.
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But while everybody's still moving stuff out, who knows?
00:02:02.680
So I guess we should start at the beginning with where Stephen Colbert came from, maybe give a little background for his career. I know I'm older than you, but The Daily Show really hit right when I was becoming more politically aware, right?
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It had started with Craig Kilbourne, but Jon Stewart really picked up the momentum.
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And I distinctly remember when the Bush and Gore election came around, they had quite the hot streak.
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I remember laughing. They had one scene where I think it was Al Gore had to bring his case before the Justice League, and then George Bush referred it to the Legion of Doom.
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And they did a whole thing where these two forces from the—and this was before the comic book boom.
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So this was like they were using the 70s cartoons as the B-roll as they were doing these jokes.
00:03:00.440
And Colbert is obviously coming out of this, right?
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He's one of the breakout stars of The Daily Show, one of their reporters that does the different segments.
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Jon Oliver, I think, would have been the other big talent at that time that was very noticeable.
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And this was a little shift away from what late night had been.
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We had had late night television doing comedy, and there had been politics.
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But the idea that there was a program constantly dedicated to the news of the day,
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and this is where a lot of people my age at that time were getting all of their news.
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So nothing much has changed at this point, really.
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But it was the first, I think, big shift into this edutainment comedy paradigm that we now see as very common in the last few generations.
00:03:53.560
What do you think it was about the shift during that time that led to this being a dominant form of comedy?
00:04:00.080
Yeah, one name you didn't mention in there about the people who broke out of that era was Steve Carell.
00:04:06.620
So it's not inevitable that everybody there becomes this sort of shrill, you know, weirdo.
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Yeah, but it was – so anyway, but the people who were there at the time, yeah, there was definitely a shift there.
00:04:20.600
And it was – at some level, they felt that the work they were doing was important.
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Somewhere along the line, they felt that what they were doing was impacting people.
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Somebody probably told them, like, hey, so-and-so watches your show.
00:04:38.380
I mean, it's the nature of a late-night show that because you have to do fresh comedy every night,
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that it's going to be dependent on what's happening that day because you can't just come up with new sort of observations about doing laundry every night.
00:04:50.580
So it becomes – topical is kind of necessary, but there was a – as, like, politics generally has shifted up in terms of, like, in hostility between the two tribes,
00:05:03.280
that, you know, definitely showed itself in late-night.
00:05:07.520
So late-night used to be able to kind of appeal to the general sort of liberal American consensus,
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and I think that John Stewart still sees himself that way.
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I'm just talking to what normal people think, but it certainly isn't that.
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And the fact that they've turned – enough Americans have turned off to where it's losing as much money as it is shows that they're still operating with a very old paradigm for what their audience is.
00:05:35.760
So what do you think about – it was good that you pointed out, yeah, that Steve Carell was someone who didn't necessarily fall into this,
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but it was very clear that the effort was to spawn, you know, different versions of The Daily Show.
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Obviously, Oliver went over to HBO and had his own.
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And Colbert became this, like, constant riff on Bill O'Reilly.
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He had done this character on the show, and he just turned it into an extended bit that gave it, you know,
00:06:05.440
basically an entire career for a good amount of time.
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And so Samantha Bee, all these others, eventually Stewart gets replaced.
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But it was very clear that, you know, a lot of people thought that this was kind of the future of comedy to some extent.
00:06:21.760
And you watch someone like Colbert get picked for The Late Show, which obviously is one of the, you know, all-time long-running comedy shows.
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David Letterman, you know, you've got the war that was always going on between Letterman and Leno.
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And then, you know, Jimmy Kimmel gets added to this mix, and Jimmy Fallon follows.
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What do you think about Colbert moving into Late Night at all?
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Was that ever something he had the skill set to do?
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He just got in because he had been popular as this character?
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Or was that something he had the natural talent for, but just got overly political or cringy about it?
00:07:06.340
Yeah, I automatically put myself in the place of CBS at the time.
00:07:11.720
So when CBS is searching around, what they did was, The Late Show itself was basically a benefits package that they set up for David Letterman in 1993.
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So in 1993, they're trying to get Letterman from NBC to come over to CBS.
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And so they go, hey, what's the most attractive offer we can make him?
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He's going to be in the Ed Sullivan Theater, and we're going to rebuild it for him.
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We're going to give him more money than anybody else has in Late Night.
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It's just this, like, incredible sweetheart deal.
00:07:42.980
But then, 30 years, 24 years, I think he was at that show, 24 years goes on, and they have to hand that benefits package.
00:07:51.980
Like, imagine it's like the company car is a Bugatti, right?
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So they got a Bugatti to give the company car to David Letterman, and then they have to, that guy retires, and so you have to hand that Bugatti off to somebody else.
00:08:03.200
So this huge Ed Sullivan Theater, the benefits, like, the pay more money than anybody, CBS has to hand that off to somebody.
00:08:10.820
And that's a really strange position for them to be in.
00:08:17.620
I think a lot of people were saying, like, this guy has been playing a character.
00:08:20.980
Everything he does is through one comedy filter with all the jokes being added on top of that.
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Can sincere Colbert stand up to a nightly show an hour?
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Because he used to do it a half hour over on Comedy Central.
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So twice as long every single night, and he can't hide behind the character.
00:08:43.520
It was an open question at the time, and I think that it didn't take 10 years for the world to realize it.
00:08:48.760
I think it just took 10 years for the money to run out and for everybody to be able to say out loud, oh, this experiment didn't quite work out.
00:08:56.980
Now, I'm much more of a casual consumer of comedy.
00:09:01.720
You're somebody who has thought about how to write jokes, obviously do your own comedy program.
00:09:07.880
And so this is something that you've broken down a little more than the average person.
00:09:12.140
When I think back to late night comedy, I think of it as a little bit of a rite of passage for late high school, early college kids.
00:09:26.260
There's like this moment where you want to start exploring comedy, stand-up comedy, these things.
00:09:33.320
And you want things that are a little more topical, as you say, that kind of thing.
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Being able to stay up later as a young person is a big shift for you at that time.
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So you can start catching some of these programs and for the first time, that kind of thing.
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And I didn't watch a ton of Letterman and Leno, but when I did, I was never knocked down by how funny they were.
00:10:09.080
And it's a lot of, hey, how do we get another ridiculous interview on the street on Thursday to fill 10 minutes?
00:10:19.320
It was funnier than a lot of what's being put out by Kimmel and Colbert.
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I don't know if you saw that Kimmel, or sorry, what was it?
00:10:30.520
And the whole joke is just that they cut pants at the knees in the 90s.
00:10:47.420
Or is it really, has the quality actually gone down?
00:10:51.380
What you mentioned about staying up late, another piece of that is that on television, you can't do really edgy stuff until late at night.
00:10:59.200
So once the local news, the late local news goes off, then people were able to push a little more edgy.
00:11:05.680
So in the Johnny Carson era, there was a lot of innuendo.
00:11:08.360
But now people don't have to stay up late to see the most disgusting, perverse stuff in the world.
00:11:14.960
And you can just watch that anytime that you want.
00:11:17.700
So if people have an appetite for that, it gets sated elsewhere.
00:11:23.260
Ooh, you have to stay up past the late local news to watch that on network television.
00:11:30.320
And our relationship with edgy content is way different than it used to be.
00:11:35.280
And, you know, they could get away with more on cable with, with Stuart and Colbert and stuff like that.
00:11:40.520
But yeah, we don't have to wait for stuff like that as much if it's not on, if the jokes aren't already on Twitter.
00:11:45.820
But there's also our changing relationship with celebrity.
00:11:48.440
The mention, you, you mentioned the, uh, Jorts sketch.
00:11:51.680
And from what I can tell the, yes, the, yes, the joke was about like, aren't Jorts a funny thing that exists, I guess.
00:11:58.820
But the, the actual thing that was supposed to elicit the laughs was how many celebrities they fit in one video.
00:12:09.740
And, and we're all supposed to feel just, uh, thrilled that these three celebrities are on our screen at the same time.
00:12:15.280
Um, and that's just not, we, we don't care about the celebrities anymore.
00:12:18.860
And if they're not making us laugh, then they're no good to us.
00:12:21.700
Um, so it's, it's the, the joke again, it gets lost on people who don't really care who Nick Jonas is.
00:12:29.140
It's, and so the last people that it does appeal to is sort of millennials and the millennial, uh, yeah, but the, the millennial ness of the whole comedy thing was, I think, especially illustrated.
00:12:40.180
We can talk about this later by the responses of, uh, Stuart and Colbert, uh, in their sort
00:12:48.100
Uh, but yeah, like I said, we'll talk about that later.
00:12:52.120
So the, uh, so the response has been, uh, well, the funniest thing that any of these guys
00:13:00.180
So, you know, the outrage has come in the idea that this is a political move.
00:13:06.280
Like the reason that Stephen Colbert is being canceled is because he was just such an effective
00:13:12.780
critic of Donald Trump and he has to be cleared from the deck so that Donald Trump can continue
00:13:17.320
to be the autocrat that doesn't bother to put people in jail, even if they rig elections.
00:13:22.280
And so, uh, like, like this is the idea and I got to say it, like, I guess I understand
00:13:30.880
Cause what other explanation would be acceptable to them?
00:13:34.100
Like, there's no way that they're going to look themselves in the eye and been like,
00:13:37.020
I have been a relentless Hectoring schoolmarm for 10 years in a comedy show and no one cares
00:13:45.620
anymore because like, I am so wildly out of touch with the average person that I can't even
00:13:54.340
I I'm sure you remember this, but for 10 seconds, people thought that Jimmy Fallon might not
00:14:04.840
It's not that he said, I'm voting for Donald Trump.
00:14:09.680
He just didn't come out and scream at Donald Trump for being like the, you know, orange Hitler.
00:14:19.000
Like there was one late night comedian that wasn't completely like a distraught shit lib
00:14:26.180
And that meant that he had to be like destroyed.
00:14:31.020
Obviously we, you know, we, for the thumbnail, we've got that insanely cringy facts skit that
00:14:37.460
And so the response has been that, oh no, the reason he's been knocked out of there is
00:14:42.980
his opposition to Trump, his tireless, deeply unfunny, you know, obsession with Donald Trump.
00:14:49.300
And so we had guys like Jon Stewart do sketch on whatever show he's doing somewhere where
00:14:57.680
And, and he, like, I literally don't even know where to watch Jon Stewart.
00:15:01.840
I saw the clip on Twitter with like, what outside of Twitter, where would I even see this?
00:15:07.860
But he's like sitting there, like guiding a gospel choir through FUs because Stephen Colbert
00:15:19.240
Like, ah, I, I'm extremely edgy because I heard the F word somewhere.
00:15:23.380
And this is a serious response to some guy getting fired.
00:15:29.480
Um, yeah, the, um, the, nobody in that situation stops to think like, maybe I suck.
00:15:36.060
Maybe I'm the worst, uh, uh, but they should, maybe they should take a second.
00:15:41.720
Um, but if they're watching, maybe they should just, yeah.
00:15:43.580
If, if Stephen Colbert has decided to click on this thumbnail, maybe take a second, maybe
00:15:50.100
Um, but yeah, the, the response they, they had, I think, uh, Colbert himself did a whole.
00:15:55.920
Um, like minute long set up to a joke that the punchline was just go F yourself, right?
00:16:01.560
Which is the exact same thing that he had that John Stewart had this gospel choir saying.
00:16:06.740
Um, and it was just, yeah, again, this juvenile thing.
00:16:09.300
Another thing that didn't get so widely publicized was that Colbert had on, uh, a, they did a
00:16:15.840
cold play reference, like the cold play affair reference thing.
00:16:19.060
And who else to come out and do the musical rep number for this failing show that appeals
00:16:28.520
So Lin-Manuel Miranda comes out and he, uh, leads this bit where the whole joke is, Hey,
00:16:34.200
look at all of the late night hosts who are sitting out in the, in the crowd.
00:16:40.500
Uh, and then, Oh, Trump, it's all Trump's fault.
00:16:43.220
Cause he got, yeah, the punchline is basically that they found Trump on a date with Paramount,
00:16:48.160
I guess anyway, it was, it was a convoluted mess, but the, the, uh, they didn't have to
00:16:54.280
They just had to, uh, make a terrible, terrible sketch with Lin-Manuel Miranda.
00:16:57.940
But yeah, like you've got all these guys, um, you know, John Stewart, Stephen Colbert,
00:17:05.240
Um, and so they are making comedy that really defined the millennial relationship to comedy.
00:17:11.620
Um, and the millennials who are still like amazed that somebody said the F word on television,
00:17:18.160
whoa, and are amazed that Lin-Manuel Miranda is on my screen right now.
00:17:24.280
Um, those are the only people who care right now.
00:17:26.940
And I, I doubt that, and the sort of 18 people who, uh, protested outside of his studio, which
00:17:34.340
The signs outside had like, uh, Trump hovering, like a semi-transparent Trump hovering behind
00:17:40.720
Um, these sort of like the, the kind of people who you see it, like running your local library,
00:17:45.540
we're all protesting, uh, Colbert's cancellation because Trump did it.
00:17:49.620
Um, yeah, I don't, I don't know who it's, who it appeals to other than themselves.
00:17:52.940
And everybody gets to sort of, uh, pat each other on the back.
00:17:55.940
Uh, it's, it's a bizarre thing, but the, and the number that we haven't brought up yet
00:17:59.860
was that, that's reported that Colbert has been losing the network 40 to $50 million per
00:18:05.920
year, uh, which is around the same amount that the entire WNBA has been losing every
00:18:12.880
Uh, and we got, and of course the parallels of the, uh, WNBA people wearing their pay us
00:18:18.200
what you owe us shirts happened to the same week that Colbert comes out and just says,
00:18:22.160
Oh, I, I deserve to be propped up by, I don't, I don't know what, what's make, what is making
00:18:28.180
I mean, is it like the FBI series that they put out?
00:18:31.900
Uh, uh, CSI Miami, nine, 9,000, 20, you know, whatever, you know, CSI Honolulu, you know,
00:18:40.680
So like big, big brother and the price is right are going to like support Stephen Colbert until
00:18:46.440
he, you know, draws his dying breath on stage at the Ed Sullivan theater.
00:18:49.960
It's just not like he, he doesn't, he thinks that that's owed to him.
00:18:55.060
And, and people treating him as some kind of crazy victim is hilarious to me, but the,
00:18:59.840
but the fact that he is so self-serious about it totally undermines everything that he's
00:19:05.660
So like he played this blowhard character on comedy central who thought he was the most
00:19:10.320
important thing in the world and everything he said was deserved to be listened to.
00:19:14.400
Um, and now he's become that guy, but from the liberal angle, you see that also in the
00:19:19.020
way, so the, the, the news media and the way people are reflecting on it, they're not
00:19:24.520
Like when Don Rickles died, like the, the great comedy or like Bob Newhart died, these
00:19:29.380
great comedy heroes, they play clips from their sitcoms or from their great roasts.
00:19:34.060
When CNN is paying tribute to the body of work of Stephen Colbert, they just play a, like
00:19:40.560
a montage of him saying like Trump is a fascist and saying that nobody wants to admit
00:19:45.380
that Russia stole the election and it's like all the same stuff that they've been saying.
00:19:49.100
So like, Oh, Stephen Colbert must be losing his television show for saying the same thing
00:19:57.620
And again, they don't treat him like an entertainer.
00:19:59.800
Uh, they treat him like one of them, one of the, one of the serious news people.
00:20:04.120
Um, but yeah, and another, another angle on this also is that Colbert, because he's doing
00:20:09.320
a quote unquote comedy show, he can say all the things that they're secretly thinking.
00:20:13.360
A lot of people have pointed this out, but the fact that they didn't have any real evidence
00:20:17.640
about the Trump P tape or whatever, the, the Russia P tape, Colbert could just do a thousand
00:20:22.740
jokes about it and people absorbed it as if it was reported as if there was evidence for
00:20:28.560
Um, and so Colbert got to be their sort of id every night at 1130 and they, they lost an
00:20:38.800
And I think that's something worth celebrating.
00:20:40.320
Uh, of course, any journalist who's sad is a win for us, obviously journal, uh, journalistic
00:20:48.660
Um, but, uh, remember guys, uh, you know, Twitter's for harassing journalists and credentialed
00:20:54.940
That's if you're on there, that's what it's for.
00:20:57.080
Um, but, uh, uh, it is interesting and I, I do like your comparison.
00:21:01.380
Basically Colbert is a MSNBC host with a studio audience who's contractually required to laugh
00:21:12.080
That's it's, it's, uh, he's not even saying the things they can't say cause they're all
00:21:17.740
So it's really, but yeah, I guess he gets to take it slightly another step further.
00:21:21.860
I guess we should also say for those who aren't familiar, one of the reasons that this like
00:21:26.240
conspiracy theory to, to, to, uh, uh, cancel, uh, Colbert because of Trump, one of the reasons
00:21:32.660
this has come up is that, uh, paramount is merging with skydance media, uh, in this big,
00:21:44.800
And so the, the, the, the theory is, and I guess CBS has also settled a case with Trump
00:21:52.000
Uh, and so the idea is they're like paving the way, you know, they're getting rid of Stephen
00:21:56.120
Colbert and they're, you know, they're settling this lawsuit so that they can get their merger
00:22:00.380
approved because otherwise Donald Trump will, uh, put the thumb on the scale because, you
00:22:05.040
know, corporate corporations are well known for trying to appease Donald Trump.
00:22:09.280
That's really been their, you know, their focus for the last eight to 10 years.
00:22:13.540
Uh, but, um, do you, do you think there's any, uh, possibility that that's the case?
00:22:19.100
Do you, I mean, as you point out losing $40 million a year, being the WNBA of comedy,
00:22:27.880
Um, I think the fiscal, you know, uh, and, and we can get into also just the comedy landscape
00:22:35.620
But do you think there's any truth to the fact that the merger, uh, is a serious one
00:22:39.360
and that they're worried about the Trump administration?
00:22:41.840
Well, I would think so if people actually hinged more on the argument for it.
00:22:47.860
So when, when Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert talks about this, when any of the people talk
00:22:52.700
about why, oh, that's the real reason why they'll spend like three sentences on it, like
00:22:58.080
And then the rest of the segment, they'll just assume that.
00:23:00.700
Um, so they're, they're not trying to really dig into this and make it, there's, it's all
00:23:06.260
If there is something to it, then I think it's the fact that they had to pay $16 million
00:23:10.720
to Trump because he did sue CBS over this, uh, 60 minutes thing.
00:23:16.440
Um, so they paid Trump $60 million, 16, excuse me, $16 million, uh, over, over the 60 minutes,
00:23:25.240
I don't remember exactly, but if they had to do that and then realized, oh, well, we
00:23:30.140
aren't in a good financial position to be able to do that, uh, because we're losing 40
00:23:34.880
to $50 million a year, then yeah, maybe, maybe there is something to it, but it's not because
00:23:40.680
It's because again, they can't make the balance sheet work.
00:23:43.480
Uh, again, I don't feel sorry for the, uh, the people at the paramount company, but at
00:23:48.740
some level, the, the, the math, they have to make the math work somehow.
00:23:52.080
And if they have to cancel Colbert in order to pay Trump, the 16 million that they legally
00:23:58.120
owe him now, uh, maybe, maybe that's, if it is a piece, then that's the piece.
00:24:04.080
So I guess we should probably look at the changing nature of the media landscape and, you know,
00:24:13.520
He's, he's an embarrassment, but it, in, you know, I will say this though, if, if he went
00:24:18.800
on every night and just threw up, it would probably be more funny.
00:24:21.520
I would probably enjoy that just every single night he had a bucket and he just, yeah, just,
00:24:25.520
yeah, I would watch that a solid hour of comedy, or at least an improvement over what we're
00:24:29.900
getting, uh, as, as a comedy product instead of Lin-Manuel Miranda.
00:24:34.540
I mean, it will make you vomit like, um, I, I was doing this.
00:24:40.380
But, uh, ultimately, uh, you know, the, the big thing that has changed and it's hitting
00:24:45.360
everybody is just the way that media works, right?
00:24:48.020
It used to be, and you already pointed this out to some extent, the, the, one of the reasons
00:24:52.340
that Hollywood really held sway over the, uh, American imagination, the, the reason that
00:24:58.560
the media and the TV networks and these things really captivated people was that we were a
00:25:04.440
country that for the first time, I think after world war II were really actually galvanized
00:25:10.620
as a, uh, as a culture across the entire nation by mass media, right?
00:25:16.120
You, you couldn't have gone from California to Vermont, to Texas, to Florida, to Georgia,
00:25:22.840
but all of you were watching the same three television shows, listening to the same radio,
00:25:29.560
And so celebrity really became the American version of like the elite court, right?
00:25:35.560
Like the, like the Kingly court, like you said, the, the, simply the fact that, uh,
00:25:40.620
people had other celebrities on their show was just spellbinding to people.
00:25:45.740
You know, the fact that you could just, uh, watch a couple of these crooners, you know,
00:25:50.340
walk onto the set with each other and start to, you know, uh, do, you know, uh, I don't
00:25:54.500
know why I can't remember suddenly any of their names, but like being, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:25:58.780
Dean Martin was the one I was trying to, I was trying to get ahold of, but the fact that it's
00:26:02.000
a Dean Martin show, what do you do on the Dean Martin show?
00:26:03.860
I kind of get a little drunk and talk to other celebrities and then we break into song randomly,
00:26:08.580
Like that was a whole format and like people were captivated.
00:26:13.000
Uh, you know, you, you, my grandparents would talk about it endlessly, right?
00:26:16.440
Like this was, this was what kind of bound culture together.
00:26:19.820
And so the simple appearance of these people was a huge deal.
00:26:23.720
And also, as you say, we had these rhythms of media consumption.
00:26:28.000
There were certain restrictions on what you could watch, when you could watch it, when
00:26:32.340
So the fact that there was a specific time for people to watch this type of content simultaneously
00:26:37.820
set the clock for a lot of people in a way, ordered their day in a certain way, none of
00:26:46.200
Like you said, you're, you know, you're far more likely to see, uh, the jokes on Twitter
00:26:50.660
or on YouTube or somewhere else than you are actually watching them on the show themselves.
00:26:55.680
And you can watch any kind of blue comedy you want at any time.
00:27:00.820
And so this just, this, uh, disintermediation of entertainment where like anyone can make
00:27:07.200
a comedy sketch, a guy in, I don't know, his bunker, uh, could make a whole comedy show
00:27:11.860
and be, and, and garner more views, honestly, uh, at certain times than these large networks.
00:27:20.120
And so this thing that was thought of as like a, uh, rock solid institution by our parents
00:27:25.580
and grandparents, it, it just has no, no ability to continue in the modern day.
00:27:32.900
The, there's this sort of unassumed status of if something lasted throughout the 20th
00:27:41.040
So if, if it got to 2000, then CBS will always exist and television will always exist.
00:27:46.760
Uh, but we, we are finding out that that's not the case.
00:27:49.160
And you're, we're in a time again, where like people who've had institutional backing, um,
00:27:55.380
several of them have already had to step out or have decided to step into that more of the
00:28:01.920
So like, I mean, I, I guess I could think of entertainment folks, but like, uh, Seth Meyers
00:28:10.060
He's been doing that show for 11 years at this point.
00:28:13.220
And he has a podcast with his brother and they get like fewer views than your channel.
00:28:18.560
So, or like, honestly, I just, until you mentioned him, I completely forgot he existed.
00:28:26.340
It's, it's Kimmel and it's Colbert and it's good.
00:28:31.820
So Seth Meyers and Seth Meyers is another interesting case.
00:28:34.020
Cause he had to fire his band because they couldn't afford to keep paying the band.
00:28:42.060
Cause they were probably working for like one small bag of cocaine, right?
00:28:48.600
But, and, and then, uh, over, over on, uh, Fallon show, which is in the same building,
00:28:53.140
they just recently went from five days a week to four days a week.
00:29:00.600
And so to, for, for like them to say that, Oh, Colbert, there's no, there's nothing financial
00:29:05.560
about this when NBC is like bleeding money, apparently to where they can't even pay the
00:29:12.720
Um, yeah, it's the, the, the media consumption thing you have.
00:29:17.060
And another, another example is, uh, I I'm forgetting his name, which is bad, but one of
00:29:22.340
the guys who hosts the daily show when, uh, not surprising that I forgot his name, Michael
00:29:28.740
He hosts the daily show on like Tuesdays or something.
00:29:31.340
And he has a podcast and he is like lucky to break a thousand views on his podcast.
00:29:36.980
Um, and so this institutional power, we're now seeing how much of somebody's platform
00:29:41.600
comes from just being in with the institution and others with like people, people actually
00:29:49.360
Um, but that, that's the entertainment side, but because Colbert is this sort of mainly
00:29:54.100
political figure, um, I don't think that he's going to have a Tucker moment, you know,
00:29:58.700
like I w I went on your show the day Tucker got fired and we talked about like, Hey, you
00:30:05.700
And it was, we were all speculating, but we were, we were assuming he's going to be
00:30:09.120
And he's not, he's definitely not diminished as a cultural figure, um, in, in since being
00:30:15.240
Um, but, um, you also have people like Joy Reed and you have people like, uh, Don Lemon.
00:30:21.380
So like, I, my, my assumption is that Colbert, if, as he figures out what to do next, he's
00:30:28.140
going to have much more of a Don Lemon style arc, uh, which would be fascinating to me.
00:30:32.240
I would, I would love to watch the, the Don Lemonization of Stephen Colbert.
00:30:36.500
Well, and it's very interesting because, uh, obviously before you were doing what you're
00:30:43.420
doing now, you worked, uh, in political comedy, uh, you know, in, in, in a very real way.
00:30:49.320
Um, Stephen Crowder, you know, a lot of these guys broke out, uh, obviously we're talking
00:30:54.680
on the blaze right now, which is its own, uh, you know, completely, uh, removed from the
00:31:00.300
mainstream, uh, TV system, you know, network system, uh, form of political commentary.
00:31:05.960
Everybody and their mother has a podcast at this point, YouTube, all these channels, you
00:31:10.520
know, the, the, the political space has been so thoroughly shaken up because the media
00:31:17.420
You know, these, you know, it's not just Fox news versus CNNs, uh, versus, you know, all
00:31:23.680
these 24 hour news networks, you, you can do your own thing.
00:31:27.780
You can get way better, uh, numbers often going out and striking on your own.
00:31:32.220
So is, there is this weird dichotomy that exists because at one point, uh, you know, both
00:31:37.380
in television and in music and in comedy, all these things, the studio system was the
00:31:43.820
As you say, you know, it started out where some people could get famous on their own,
00:31:47.980
but then it became, well, you need to plug into the system and they will develop you.
00:31:51.560
And they're the ones who are going to get you connections and all these things.
00:31:56.140
You're nothing without, uh, you know, the recording, uh, contract, you're nothing without
00:32:01.140
Now, all of the stuff is back in the hands of creators in a way it's just never been before
00:32:06.360
and developing your own voice, developing your own audience to go with you is the key.
00:32:12.060
Wherever you go, whether you're, you're, whether you're Tucker on Fox or you're Tucker on your
00:32:16.520
own network, you know, you're, you develop enough of a following so that you are not completely
00:32:20.940
dependent on this delivery mechanism as where, you know, some of these lesser talents, as
00:32:25.200
you point out the minute they're, you know, they're, they don't have this vehicle to prop
00:32:29.980
They're completely irrelevant because it's very clear that they're only there because
00:32:33.340
they were groomed into this particular form of success.
00:32:36.860
And so it's not just comedy that's experiencing this.
00:32:40.480
It's every form of media, the, the, the, the star making power, the cohesive narratives,
00:32:45.620
the centralized, uh, cultural understanding that used to just come down this tree trunk of
00:32:51.660
American media no longer exists across the board.
00:32:55.020
And so these guys who grew up idolizing, uh, you know, a letterman or a Leno or, you know,
00:33:02.560
someone like that and seeing themselves in that role, as you say, you know, I should, I
00:33:07.380
should die with a pension and a gold watch after working 40 years in a factory, right?
00:33:11.880
Like it's kind of the same mentality and not recognizing that all of this has changed.
00:33:18.620
Uh, and like, no matter how much you scream about your political persecution, uh, people
00:33:23.780
are just going to notice that you are just not performing the way someone else is.
00:33:28.420
It is hard for people to, uh, adjust to the fact that they wrote a system all the way to
00:33:34.060
So Colbert, Colbert has written this system all the way to the top.
00:33:37.840
And now because he's quote, number one in late night, he thinks that he's indestructible,
00:33:43.980
but being number one in late night is totally compatible with losing the network, $50 million.
00:33:48.960
So saying you're like, it's saying that, Hey, I'm, I'm, Hey, maybe I'm poor, but I'm richer
00:33:58.260
So, and that's, that's actually been his argument.
00:34:08.220
Um, and yeah, no people who have written that system can, can maybe hold on and assume
00:34:16.140
Uh, but I don't know if, uh, imagine talking to somebody who is working at the New York
00:34:21.040
times and just like, I watched an Ezra Klein interview.
00:34:26.180
And he talked about like, you know, Hey, if I write a piece, then like the New York times
00:34:33.140
And it's like, well, uh, if, if he writes a bad piece that doesn't get read, who cares?
00:34:36.760
The New York times, he assumes we'll just go on forever.
00:34:39.540
It's just this inevitable, uh, piece of, it's like the structure of the universe now
00:34:47.140
And there actually is something to getting to people and that people have an appetite
00:34:53.220
for, uh, other human beings and not just, they don't just love institutions in the same
00:34:58.540
way, uh, that they may have been, I don't, I don't know anybody who's like loyal to CBS,
00:35:02.160
but there there's there, if people, if CBS is a delivery mechanism for people, or if, uh,
00:35:08.500
any network or any group of people is a delivery network from one person to another person,
00:35:14.440
The value is people to people, uh, and the institutions come and go.
00:35:19.260
Do you think that this will lead to a domino effect?
00:35:22.020
Are the other networks going to reevaluate their current investments in late night?
00:35:26.680
Because part of this really is the network wars, right?
00:35:30.240
It was the idea that, well, if one network has this programming block, we need something
00:35:34.900
that can stand up to it, compete with it, uh, in some way.
00:35:38.460
And so there, it does seem to be an effect where if you no longer have to fight for that
00:35:44.080
space, when, you know, one, uh, studio or one, uh, uh, network says, you know what, maybe
00:35:50.480
we, this is just not something worth investing anymore.
00:35:53.700
Uh, then the other studios are going to look at and say, well, actually we're not getting
00:35:59.520
Uh, maybe we don't need to prop this up just because it's a legacy institution.
00:36:03.000
Do you think that, uh, guys like Kimmel and Fallon could be on the chopping block?
00:36:07.380
I know you said they're already scaling back, but do you see a further, uh, reevaluation
00:36:12.120
of these different networks about why, why even keep these programs on at this point?
00:36:17.220
I assume that like NBC and ABC are both are, have been in this sort of keeping up with
00:36:24.600
So they've seen the Jones, like Colbert as the Joneses.
00:36:27.720
We've got to make sure that we have everything that they have.
00:36:29.440
Uh, it's a shame we had to fire the band or, uh, it's a shame we had to go to four nights
00:36:32.360
a week, but I mean, we got to keep up because apparently they're doing fine.
00:36:35.800
Uh, but it's like when, when Mr. Jones goes to jail for, uh, you know, being in billions
00:36:41.120
of dollars of debt or then, then suddenly the game, the keeping up with the Joneses
00:36:46.620
So it very well could be that Kimmel is next or very well could be that Fallon is next.
00:36:53.240
It could be that also the shows get scaled down.
00:36:57.980
I mean, the, the, the strange thing is that late night, the reason the late night talk
00:37:01.600
show format exists in the first place is that it was a cheap way to take up an hour
00:37:08.020
Um, it's way cheaper to do a late night show than it is to do a network TV drama.
00:37:13.240
And it's like, especially if you're filming it and trying to make it look like a movie,
00:37:17.780
Uh, everybody wants to be a Netflix show on, on network, but the it's, it's way cheaper
00:37:23.000
just to have one studio with one team, one staff that's just shows up every day.
00:37:27.400
They do live to tape minimal edits every, and then it goes out that night.
00:37:31.800
I don't know what would take its place, but nobody's really wondering what happens to these
00:37:37.780
Like the, the reason that Saturday night live exists is because Johnny Carson existed and
00:37:43.120
NBC decided that they were going to run Johnny Carson reruns on Saturday nights at 1130.
00:37:50.020
Johnny Carson said, I'm not getting paid extra for this.
00:37:53.360
So they could either pay Johnny Carson way more, or they could start a new show and they
00:37:58.960
created Saturday night live because Johnny Carson didn't want to, you know, get like have
00:38:03.200
his reruns go with him, not getting more money.
00:38:05.500
So there was an open time slot and that created a vacuum where people could be creative with
00:38:11.340
It's not the case anymore that everybody's going, what in the world?
00:38:14.220
Like the whole world is wondering what, what are we going to do with that valuable time
00:38:18.120
Um, time slots are not things people are wrestling over.
00:38:20.200
Maybe network executives are, but if everybody's watching it later, if everybody's, if it's
00:38:24.960
just something to fill time or something that's going to get posted on paramount plus the next
00:38:29.880
day, my, my guess is like when, when, when James Corden left, they didn't replace James
00:38:36.140
They just did like a cheap game show, which is what they're still doing every, every night
00:38:40.200
at 1230 on, uh, actually I think it's 1230 or one, something like that.
00:38:46.640
It's, it could be that everybody else sort of slowly folds or scales the show back to
00:38:50.680
where nobody wants to be embarrassed that they're the ones that folded as well.
00:38:54.040
Uh, but yeah, at a certain point, it has to be a financial decision.
00:38:59.200
I assume it's probably going to be late night, uh, because that's where they've been losing
00:39:03.540
a bunch of money and they'll go with something even cheaper or rerun prices, right?
00:39:10.020
Well, and that's another big thing too, as we were talking about previously with the,
00:39:14.440
the studio ecosystem and the celebrity, uh, kind of Camelot feel, uh, you know, a big
00:39:20.460
portion of these late night shows was also, uh, basically just advertising content on the
00:39:27.200
You'd bring on stars from shows people hadn't heard of yet, or, you know, it was very easy.
00:39:32.260
Hey, go grab some guy off of a lot of the big bang theory and have them walk on here.
00:39:38.440
It's very easy to, uh, book your own people and, and hype them up and these kinds of things.
00:39:43.740
But now the advertising for that, it does nothing like who's sitting there watching,
00:39:48.820
you know, there, I still see more people talking about like old interviews where Craig Ferguson
00:39:56.360
You know, when's the last time you saw a celebrity interview from a late night show ever,
00:40:04.580
You know, you, you never even see the clips of these things anymore.
00:40:07.620
Uh, and so like that big function of getting out there and putting these stars in front
00:40:14.860
And it's interesting because, uh, as you say, everybody's trying to do something cheaper.
00:40:18.760
Uh, you know, the, the, the podcasts are obviously now the huge thing.
00:40:22.920
Democrats are like, Oh my God, people listen to podcasts, right?
00:40:25.780
Like, and so that was, you know, now they all need a Joe Rogan.
00:40:29.340
Uh, but you know, the podcast just don't cost that much, you know, to produce compared to
00:40:35.160
And the fact is that if a celebrity wants to go on, uh, and promote something, they're
00:40:40.140
just going to reach way more people, especially young people in a podcast format.
00:40:44.400
Now the downside, I think for a lot of these people is, uh, much like politicians, uh, much,
00:40:50.320
many of them are like awful or really uninteresting.
00:40:52.780
And so the, you know, the late night format was much easier for them because the interviews
00:41:04.420
There are all these things you could do with like a super boring or awful person to, to
00:41:08.900
kind of distract from the fact that they can't really survive, but you put them on an hour
00:41:15.260
Like, and so you end up in this scenario where a lot of these people end up saying the stupidest
00:41:19.380
things in the world and destroying their own movie on their press tour because
00:41:22.680
they just can't keep their mouths shut in, you know, when, in these extended, uh, interview formats.
00:41:29.940
These interviews, if, if they get a whole segment, so, or if they do two segments, Hey,
00:41:35.860
And all of it has been gone, they've gone through a pre-interview.
00:41:39.580
So usually what happens is they, these celebrities that get booked on the show, they go in for a
00:41:44.160
pre-interview and they say, here are the stories I want to tell.
00:41:47.560
Um, they send them ahead of time and then they get the okay from the hosts people that,
00:41:54.780
How would you like for him to set that up for you?
00:41:56.460
And then how would you like to make the transition into the next story?
00:42:01.100
Even that five minute conversation heavily scripted.
00:42:05.320
This is not just like, um, when Kamala Harris comes on or whatever, this is for every actor.
00:42:11.460
When George Clooney wanted to tell a story about pulling pranks on the set of oceans 11,
00:42:15.580
uh, they would have to run that story by the pre-interviewer.
00:42:19.100
Um, and yeah, just very different when you just unleash whoever sitting across from, uh,
00:42:24.560
Joe Rogan or sitting across from Theo Vaughn or whatever.
00:42:27.100
Um, and yeah, I mean, I saw more clips of, uh, Ben Affleck on Theo Vaughn than I would have
00:42:33.260
seen if he would have just done the normal late night press tour.
00:42:36.500
Uh, not to say that I didn't go see Ben Affleck's movie, but, um, but I mean, I, I, I, I saw his
00:42:43.860
I recognized, Oh, he probably has a new project out.
00:42:46.580
Um, and yeah, that's, I assume that most people are in that same kind of boat.
00:42:50.500
Um, and you know, like, because there's so much content already, nobody's wondering, Oh,
00:42:56.840
I I'm running out of entertaining things to see.
00:42:59.440
I hope somebody on the television tells me what their new project is.
00:43:04.460
And also we have access to everything that anybody's ever made.
00:43:08.280
So like, okay, well, I didn't know that Ben Affleck was going to have a new movie out,
00:43:11.680
but I, I just watched the, uh, you know, Preston Sturgis collection from the forties.
00:43:16.960
Hey, and that's like actually way more entertaining and more fun.
00:43:20.740
Um, and so, yeah, things are balkanizing media is balkanizing, but we're actually okay.
00:43:26.200
I think we're going to be better off and not waiting around for, I don't know, Julia Roberts
00:43:30.280
to tell us in five minutes why we should go see her new project.
00:43:34.660
Do you think that ultimately this is a cable problem as well, a television problem?
00:43:40.440
Because, you know, I I'm 41, uh, and I am trying to think of anyone I know who has a cable
00:43:50.340
subscription and I can't like, you know, I, I know boomers with one and maybe some older
00:43:57.020
gen Xers, but you know, young gen Xers, no millennials, you know, no, no one young, you
00:44:03.220
know, and certainly below that, they just don't have any of this before, uh, or anymore.
00:44:08.180
Uh, and so, uh, is there, is there a reason to produce content in this format after the
00:44:18.560
I mean, I imagine we'll probably have on demand television, Netflix's Amazon primes, uh, or
00:44:24.720
whatever we call the network, but you know, uh, there will be these streaming services that
00:44:29.760
will still deliver something like television content in the way that we used to remember
00:44:34.700
it, but the idea of scheduled time-based, uh, you know, uh, uh, sequential television,
00:44:41.660
uh, being something that you regularly subscribe to and just turn on to see whatever's on.
00:44:48.900
Cause I think 10 years ago, the idea was, well, yeah, people love to end up, uh, you know,
00:44:55.680
uh, turning on the TV and they just want to watch something that was an appealing argument,
00:44:59.440
I think about 10 years ago, but now I don't think if you tried to explain to like zoomers
00:45:04.500
or gin alpha, how that even worked, I don't think they'd care at all.
00:45:08.640
The late night format is a definitely a relic of that because, well, first you have the
00:45:14.160
monologue and like Letterman's monologues were never the best thing in the world, but
00:45:18.320
you watch through the, you know, four minutes of him doing stuff and then, oh, I wonder what
00:45:22.660
they're, you know, the top 10 list is going to be.
00:45:24.440
And then after that, like you turn on Letterman because, oh, I heard so-and-so is going to be
00:45:29.120
You don't sit through something in order to watch something else.
00:45:33.960
Uh, but now, yeah, people just don't, that's not the way people consume content.
00:45:38.780
Uh, and so when those, when that format hits the internet, why Jimmy Fallon did really well
00:45:45.860
on YouTube for a few years is that he broke up his show into pieces.
00:45:49.660
So, okay, this, he was already doing a clip show.
00:45:53.840
And so his, his whole show was just, okay, we got this five minute thing that goes out.
00:45:57.820
The monologue is this thing, and that's basically what every late night show did after that.
00:46:03.280
But is there a reason now for somebody to do an hour long thing where the, the opening
00:46:11.920
And then there's an interview, which is its own standalone thing.
00:46:14.660
Um, there's just, I don't see a reason for that.
00:46:16.800
I don't see a reason for, um, like the only person, the only kind of example of five to
00:46:21.760
six minute interview is like a between two ferns thing.
00:46:24.740
Or like, uh, I know one of the barstool guys does, uh, Sunday or something like that.
00:46:30.520
I forget, I forget what it was, but, um, Caleb Presley does these like short interviews where
00:46:34.340
so-and-so is coming on to promote a project and he asks funny questions and the guest laughs
00:46:40.840
But if, if, if hot ones had like a monologue where Sean Davis likes, or not Sean Davis, Sean
00:46:47.000
Davis from the Federalist comes on, uh, whatever that guy's name is, where he comes out and
00:46:50.980
does like a few jokes and then, well, tonight we have Conan O'Brien and he's from whatever
00:46:55.020
and he's going to do like, and then like, nobody's doing that.
00:46:59.580
Um, the, yeah, it's content that gets created for the internet is going to have to be either
00:47:05.440
split those up into separate pieces of content.
00:47:07.080
Like I do my monologues and then I do my podcast over on Canon plus and that's, those are two
00:47:12.560
separate pieces of content and that's the way people watch it.
00:47:15.300
That's the natural way of doing things, uh, which is, you know, not the way I would do it
00:47:19.580
if it was on television, but, uh, yeah, late night is particularly susceptible to that crash
00:47:28.780
You can put that on Netflix and it watches the same.
00:47:31.820
Uh, but yeah, late night just doesn't, yeah, the, the direct transition just won't work.
00:47:38.220
Ultimately, I think that, that, that format is dead and guys like you are, I think, you
00:47:42.680
know, pioneering a lot of what's going to work going forward.
00:47:45.520
So, uh, not, not sad to see, uh, this particular institution, uh, die, uh, uh, uh, death, especially
00:47:52.400
with guys like Colbert at the helm and watching the wailing and gnashing of teeth, uh, over
00:47:57.660
the fact that they just sucked at it, um, and the cope that they're trying to do otherwise
00:48:05.960
So we should, we get to the questions of people before we do so, Wade, where can people
00:48:12.280
So I am at Wade Stotts on X and, uh, Canon plus, uh, Canon plus.com.
00:48:17.940
I do a weekly podcast there, um, interview show.
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And we have a lot of, we play games and have fun stuff like that.
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Um, uh, it's, it's not Jimmy Fallon type games where I just get Shaq to wear, you know, Shaq
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But like, yeah, we have a good time, uh, good time over on the Wade cast.
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Canon plus.com and then YouTube also wait, show with Wade.
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You should, you should recreate the Jimmy Fallon sketch where they get the classroom
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instruments with the band, but just like get like Christian rock bands on there.
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All right, guys, let's, uh, let's go over to the questions of the people here real quick.
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Uh, Truddle says, can't wait for these lib hacks to fizzle out.
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Wade maniacally rubbing his hands together at the demise of these idiots.
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Uh, posmo says or an unrelated, but you giving the nothing burger treatment to the Tulsi details,
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uh, how, and when the conspiracy was formed was really demoralizing.
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Uh, so I, uh, did not give it a nothing burger, uh, to be clear, uh, for people who don't
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know, uh, we talked about this a little bit with the Prudentialist on the last episode,
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uh, but Tulsi Gabbard has come out and said that there is this, uh, you know, mountain of
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evidence that ultimately Barack Obama coordinated with, uh, different aspects of his administration
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to manufacture the Russiagate intelligence and create this entire, uh, scandal to derail
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Um, and my simple point was, I think one that's fairly obvious and one that I think was,
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you know, uh, uh, echoed by a number of people.
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And, and, and to be fair to again, update people, uh, right before we started this show,
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Tulsi Gabbard did another press conference where she laid out more of these details.
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And she specifically said when asked that they would be referring, uh, a number of Obama
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administration officials, including Barack Obama himself for criminal prosecution.
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That's a great thing to say, but I'm going to be honest at this point, I am very much in
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It's not that the revelation doesn't matter, but guys, there is a learned helplessness thing
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that occurs when revelation after revelation, after revelation comes out and nobody pays a
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cost like Anthony Fauci and, you know, the department of, uh, of, uh, health lied about
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a bunch of stuff of COVID, including the, you know, the origin and everybody who noticed
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that it probably came from a lab in Wuhan there, you know, they're crazy people, except now
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the New York times says it's okay to believe that.
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So you're why in it, you know, can believe this.
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Joe Biden is this like completely inept zombie.
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Uh, he's weakened and burning his whole, you know, presidency being run by a cabal of people
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who we still aren't exactly sure who's in charge and making decisions.
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Literally again, a coup inside of the United States.
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And the Trump administration has the spine to do this.
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And we watch Barry, uh, you know, spend the last few years, uh, you know, with the male
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inmates that he probably would love to spend time with.
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I want it to, but like, you don't come here and listen to me because I like, you know, shine
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And if we're all honest with each other, who's going to jail over this?
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Also, they should arrest Stephen Colbert for that vaccine, vaccine sketch for sure.
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Uh, he also says Hollywood's, uh, Hollywood starts suck.
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This model of the talk show where they go on, uh, for free just doesn't work.
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They aren't captivating, graceful, or even entertaining.
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Well, and that's its own thing that the, the quality of celebrity does seem to have declined.
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And again, it could just be old man shakes fist at sky.
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Uh, but you do feel like there was a certain, uh, aura, a certain coolness, uh, that you
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had to have, uh, on some level to operate in these circles.
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And now they're just all insufferable idiots who can barely, you know, utter lines complaining
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about whatever liberal political thing they've told will make them popular that day.
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It's, it's just hard for people to, you know, to build in a, an era of mystique when they're
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spending all of their time screaming about how fascist Donald Trump is.
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I, uh, I, I actually disagree because I would like to see as much Pedro Pascal as possible.
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I want, I wish, yeah, I have not run into that person enough.
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I would, I would like to see him 24, seven, uh,
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Yeah, there, there's exactly two men working in Hollywood, I guess.
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Uh, Robert Weinsfeld said, uh, Wade show with Wade is awesome.
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Many people are saying, uh, Buck, uh, Mulligan says James Lindsay was just referred to,
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referred to a Democrat Twitter account as woke right for demanding the FC files be released.
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Like he just calls literally anything woke, right?
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I haven't seen what you're talking about because James has me blocked, but I, I, I trust that he is doing that.
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At this point, uh, he literally called a ham sandwich woke, right?
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That's just a thing that really happened in real life.
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So shock, um, creeper weirdo, uh, skibbity Biden is still haunts me the cringe of it.
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Was that a, that I, that was like a skit, right?
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Uh, and it was a way of, it was like Biden is trying to appeal to Gen Z voters by doing skibbity Biden.
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And then they played, uh, skibbity toilet, but with, uh, Joe Biden's face on it.
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I mean, yeah, you're basically explaining events on Mars to me right now.
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Um, Alex says, uh, they use millennial writers and they are so cringe.
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I'm sure that the quality of writers is not helping, uh, that program at all.
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Uh, philosophical thirstworm says my cousins went to Colbert's Sunday school lesson, uh, at, uh, St. uh, Kasson.
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And it, uh, was that kind of, uh, Protestant rock band guitar crap.
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Uh, yeah, a lot of people have focused on Colbert's, uh, Catholicism.
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Uh, he, it's kind of like Joe Biden Catholicism where like technically you believe it, but it doesn't impact.
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Any of your life or political beliefs or anything you say or how you treat people.
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Uh, but yeah, I wouldn't be surprised to show up at call, uh, a Stephen Colbert, uh, Catholic service and find out it's slightly less Catholic than you'd expect.
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I mean, I remember when evangelicals were talking about how excited they were to have a Christian on television and public facing position.
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Um, but it usually said something about, uh, where that evangelical stood on just about everything.
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It's, it is sad how people will just eat up when somebody who they can claim is, uh, representing them.
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Uh, yeah, you learn a lot about people from, from who they, who they claimed you were represented by.
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Well, you said a Christian, but he's a Catholic.
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I know it's for those who don't know, Twitter has lost its mind recently over this.
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Uh, but it has been, uh, it has been a hilarious, uh, uh, sideshow to everything else that's going on right now.
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Uh, philosophical thirstworm also says I work at a mostly legitimate nonprofit and even the elderly, uh, Methuselah libs there.
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I mean, it was already kind of sad when he was alive, but now it's really sad.
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This guy has so many, many bugs that he killed himself.
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I don't even, even when I'm around older people, I don't hear anyone reference.
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Like if I'm sitting, I could be sitting down playing P-knuckle and not expect to hear, you know, at the, at the, at the monthly bridge, uh, meeting and, and not expect to hear anyone talk about this.
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So even the intended audience, even the people who should in theory, you know, be the legacy audience for this seem completely oblivious.
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In fact, I would, I would venture to guess that younger people probably see more late night comedy just because they're on the internet more and see more of the clips than people who actually watch it live at this point.
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Um, and another piece of this also that I forgot to mention was like Colbert framed himself always as like the comedy nerd or like the guy who had like off the real off the wall sensibilities.
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And like, if you watch the old show, there are some jokes that are like, uh, you know, not, not just standard, uh, punchlines and would do more madcap stuff.
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I think he's good at it, but he didn't carry that over.
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And so I think that some of the older crowd that he's trying to go to aren't going to take some of the, I don't know, it's, it's a, it's a sensibility that doesn't really lend itself to that kind of format.
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So he's leaned more on just the straight, like Trump is a fascist, uh, thing.
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Conan O'Brien tried to make the madcap thing work in at 1130 and we all saw that worked out for him.
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I want to say that, of course, if you are not watching the Wade show, for some reason, you should fix that immediately.
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It is certainly better than any late night comedy show.
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Not that I'm really waxing, uh, too high praise on the Wade with that one, but he, he is clearing that limbo bar.
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Uh, and, uh, but you should definitely be watching his show.
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And if it's your first time here, of course, you need to subscribe on YouTube, click the bell notifications, all that stuff.
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