I haven't written much here about late night TV lately because…well, nothing much has happened and I'm not watching much of it. I used to TiVo and watch most of Jay, Dave, Conan and Craig. Nowadays, I TiVo Jay and Craig and even those go largely unviewed for weeks…and when I do watch, I do a lot of skipping-ahead.
Wha' happened? Some of it's me but a lot of it's them. With the possible exception of Craig Ferguson, I don't think any of those gents are doing the best shows of their careers. I think they're doing the same shows every night — same as each always does and pretty much the same shows as each other. I also think they're booking too few guests who are interesting in and of themselves and too many who are interesting only because they have a movie opening this weekend.
In a way, I think the Internet has undone them. It used to be that when something happened in the news, Jay or Dave (or once upon a time, that Carson guy — no, no…not Carson Daly. The one Leno replaced.) would have the first topical joke about it and you turned in to hear that. Now, the first topical joke is on Twitter or Facebook ten minutes after it happens. You also tuned in the late night shows for fear you'd miss something unexpected and wonderful. Now, you can miss those shows and be confident that if something you want to see did transpire, the clip will be on fifty websites tomorrow.
So…what's with the ratings? Leno is pretty consistently in the lead, though not by as wide a margin as he was before he lost The Tonight Show and returned to it. Dave's a close second. Jimmy Fallon's doing well. He usually beats Ferguson, which is something Conan O'Brien couldn't usually do his last six months in that slot. I suspect NBC is pretty happy now that they have Leno on at 11:35 and not O'Brien.
Conan is over on TBS with a show that is watched by about a fourth as many viewers as are watching Jay and less than watch Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. The show is probably profitable for that network, though not as wide a swath as they were presumably hoping. I know they had this idea that it could be an anchor for future expansion of original programming but that ain't happening. They just cancelled Lopez Tonight, which follows it and no "new" show has been announced to take its place.
I tried watching George Lopez a few times and couldn't quite understand what I was watching. You had this high-energy opening with a loud band and a flashing set and a raucous audience…and then out came this quiet, low-energy host whose main goal seemed to be to make sure no one could take any umbrage at anything he said. He was way too deferential to his guests, treating a lot of minor celebs like Show Biz Gods and forever dropping in little token reminders of his Hispanic heritage. I'm told he has a stand-up act that is quite wonderful and edgy…but as a talk show host, he just seemed out of sync with his own program. It was like the real guy hadn't shown up for work so they'd taken a funny stagehand, put him in a suit and shoved him out there to read the TelePrompter.
Rumor has it that TBS wanted to cancel Lopez the minute they got Conan but that O'Brien insisted Lopez be kept on. Conan was out there complaining someone else had stolen his time slot so he couldn't very well commit that same crime to another. I guess enough time has passed where no one's worried about that.
Pretty much everyone in late night is down, though not enough that we're hearing talk of any personality waiting in the wings to displace any of them. Years ago, NBC experimented with various hosts of the Later show that they aired at 1:35 AM. They tried host after host waiting for one to click and eventually came to the conclusion that it didn't really matter; that anyone they put in that time slot would get pretty much the same numbers. That's why Carson Daly has been there forever. One suspects they're starting to view Jay, Dave, Craig, Conan, Jimmy F. and Jimmy K. the same way. Those guys (and their ratings) may just stay right where they are until someone quits or dies.