The New York Times — for those of you who can pass beyond its paywall — has an interview with David Letterman about the end of The Late Show and this essay by critic Jason Zinoman about what it all means to us.
Personally, I don't think it means as much to me as it would have some years ago. I used to love late night shows a lot more than I have in recent years. I used to TiVo 'em all and watch them more-or-less in full. Now, the only one I do that with — and this is not a late night show in the same sense as Colbert's or Seth Meyer's or any of those — is John Oliver's. With the others, I watch excerpts from those two gents' programs on YouTube a lot, Kimmel's occasionally and Fallon's almost never.
I do not share others' disdain for what Jimmy Fallon does. I think there's room, or there should be room, for a late night show that is mostly apolitical and just kinda about unwinding with something frivolous just before bedtime. What I don't like about Fallon isn't the lack of Trumpbashing. It's something that to me is wrong with most of those shows: How everything is rigidly controlled, often edited within an inch of its life and how every guest and everything they do or have done is deserving of a standing ovation. Too much polish. Too much razzle-dazzle. Not enough spontaneity.
I think I made this point somewhere before. Colbert is a brilliant, talented man and I love it when he and a guest have a conversation that feels unedited and unscripted…but too many don't. When he administers his Colbert Questionnaire, they tape fifteen questions that the guests know in advance and then they edit out what someone thinks are the less-entertaining responses. Carson never cut out Carnak questions because they didn't get big enough laughs.
Bill Maher, to his credit, gives America a show that is live, unedited and "real time." His guests don't know for sure what he's going to ask them. I have other reasons for not watching him much anymore but I'm not sure I can explain them without watching the show enough to cite specific examples.
Talk shows have always been a little bit phony. When Johnny said to a guest, "Someone told me you had a weird experience on a boat recently," that was Carsonspeak for "Here's where you tell that anecdote that you and one of my Talent Coordinators planned to have you tell." The talk of the guest's new series, movie, book or album was always a gentle infomercial. I just feel the late shows — most of 'em — have carried that a bit too far, Fallon's more than most.
Letterman is probably right that the claim that the axing of The Late Show was strictly a "financial decision" is a lie but those programs are not the cash cows they once were. If that was the only reason for the cancelation, they would have tried slashing the budget before they decided to slash the show. I wish they'd tried that and started by letting the rough edges show more.