{ "id": "ep24dm3sfe", "slug": "late-night-talk-show", "title": "Late-night talk show", "updated": "2026-10-25", "topic_path": [ { "id": "culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture" }, { "id": "culture.performance", "label": "Screen and stage", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen", "label": "Film and television", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen" } ], "geo": [ { "id": "geo.us.t1946.culture.performance.screen", "label": "United States · 1946 to 2000: Film and television", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t1946.culture.performance.screen", "path": [ { "id": "geo.us", "label": "United States", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us" }, { "id": "geo.us.t1946", "label": "United States · 1946 to 2000", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t1946" }, { "id": "geo.us.t1946.culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t1946.culture" }, { "id": "geo.us.t1946.culture.performance", "label": "Screen and stage", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t1946.culture.performance" }, { "id": "geo.us.t1946.culture.performance.screen", "label": "Film and television", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t1946.culture.performance.screen" } ] } ], "excerpt": "Late-night talk show: a TV format airing after 11 p.m. with a comedic news monologue, desk interviews, and variety segments. Grew from The Tonight Show (Steve Allen, September 27, 1954); defined by Johnny Carson's 30-year run; politicized via The Daily Show and the Trump era; declining amid streaming-era economics.", "snippet": "Late-night talk show: a TV format airing after 11 p.m. with a comedic news monologue, desk interviews, and variety segments. Grew from The Tonight Show (Steve Allen, September 27, 1954); defined by Johnny Carson's 30-year run; politicized via The Daily Show and the Trump era; declining amid streaming-era economics.", "node": "culture.performance.screen", "markdown": "# Late-night talk show\n\nA late-night talk show is a television program, typically airing after 11 p.m., that combines a comedic opening monologue on current events, celebrity interviews at a desk, and comedy or musical segments. The Television Academy defines the late-night genre as series aired after 11 p.m. that focus on current topics.[1](https://interviews.televisionacademy.com/index.php/genres/late-night) The American version of the format grew out of NBC's *The Tonight Show*, hosted by early pioneers [Steve Allen](https://www.edgepedia.org/steve-allen) and [Jack Paar](https://www.edgepedia.org/jack-paar) and later institutionalized by longtime host [Johnny Carson](https://www.edgepedia.org/johnny-carson).[2](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/2040610X.2025.2509430)\n\n| Key fact | Detail |\n|---|---|\n| Genre definition | Series aired after 11 p.m. focusing on current topics[1](https://interviews.televisionacademy.com/index.php/genres/late-night) |\n| Founding program | *The Tonight Show* was conceived in 1954 by NBC president Sylvester \"Pat\" Weaver and began broadcasting on September 27, 1954, with Steve Allen as its first host[3](https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/0502/carson.html) |\n| Format origin | Steve Allen developed the late-night format as a cross between a talk show and a variety program, pioneering audience participation gags[4](https://www.pbs.org/wnet/pioneers-of-television/pioneering-programs/late-night-tv/) |\n| Defining host | Johnny Carson hosted for 30 years; his ratings remain the highest in the history of late-night television[4](https://www.pbs.org/wnet/pioneers-of-television/pioneering-programs/late-night-tv/) |\n| Politicization | *The Daily Show* and *The Colbert Report* developed in the early 2000s into a cutting late-night variant exemplifying \"new political television\"[2](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/2040610X.2025.2509430) |\n| Financial decline | Advertising revenue for late-night shows was $220 million in 2024, down from $439 million in 2018[5](https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/tv/2025/07/30/late-night-tv-decline-colbert-trump-paramount/) |\n| Recent exit | CBS announced in July 2025 that *The Late Show with Stephen Colbert* would end in May 2026, calling the cancellation \"purely a financial decision\"[6](https://www.axios.com/2025/07/17/cbs-late-show-stephen-colbert-canceled) |\n\n## Origins\n\nThe genre's roots predate television. The late-night television talk show traces its variety-act roots back to vaudeville and its broadcasting roots to radio personalities such as [Fred Allen](https://www.edgepedia.org/fred-allen) and [Arthur Godfrey](https://www.edgepedia.org/arthur-godfrey).[3](https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/0502/carson.html) A first precedent for the television format premiered in 1950 on a local New York television station, before the network version followed.[7](https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=9937389)\n\n**The Tonight Show.** NBC president Sylvester \"Pat\" Weaver conceived the program in 1954, and it began broadcasting on September 27, 1954, with Steve Allen as its first host at the desk.[3](https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/0502/carson.html) Allen is largely credited with developing the late-night TV format as a cross between a talk show and a variety program, breaking the plane between stage and viewer with audience participation gags that still dominate late-night comedy.[4](https://www.pbs.org/wnet/pioneers-of-television/pioneering-programs/late-night-tv/) Jack Paar followed Allen and set the course for television talk before leaving the show for good in 1962, prompting NBC to fill the void with guest hosts for an unusual summer.[8](https://www.pbs.org/video/late-night-1nyY68/)\n\n## The Carson era\n\nJohnny Carson took over *The Tonight Show* in 1962 and hosted for 30 years, earning the label \"King of Late Night.\"[2](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/2040610X.2025.2509430) • [4](https://www.pbs.org/wnet/pioneers-of-television/pioneering-programs/late-night-tv/) His ratings remain the highest in the history of late-night television.[4](https://www.pbs.org/wnet/pioneers-of-television/pioneering-programs/late-night-tv/) The show ran through a nightly ritual that varied little: the monologue, the skit, and a sequence of guests, with Carson balancing his words between diplomacy and insult.[3](https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/0502/carson.html) The air of improvisation was controlled artifice; the scripts, plans and comments for the show's last two decades (1971-1992), about 47,600 items, went to the Library of Congress from the Carson Production Group in 1996 and are available for study.[3](https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/0502/carson.html)\n\nExcept for a brief and unpopular switch to a magazine-type news program in 1957, *The Tonight Show*'s format has been remarkably consistent throughout its history.[9](https://archive.ph/2025.12.16-010113/https%3A/www.britannica.com/topic/talk-show) After Carson's retirement in 1992, his successor [Jay Leno](https://www.edgepedia.org/jay-leno), along with late-night hosts [David Letterman](https://www.edgepedia.org/david-letterman), Chevy Chase, Arsenio Hall, Dennis Miller, and others, fought fierce ratings battles that again put late-night wars on front pages.[10](https://www.tvencyclopedia.org/tv-encyclopedia-16/talk-shows-in-the-united-states) • [21](https://interviews.televisionacademy.com/shows/tonight-show-starring-johnny-carson-the) [Bill Carter](https://www.edgepedia.org/bill-carter)'s 1994 history of that contest, *The Late Shift: Letterman, Leno and the Battle for the Night*, observed that millions of Americans stayed up later than they intended watching a man behind a desk tell jokes, comment on the news, and banter with celebrities.[3](https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/0502/carson.html)\n\n## The format\n\nThe classic package divides into an opening monologue on the day's news, short interviews and comedic bits, and often a musical performance.[11](https://www.axios.com/2025/07/18/late-night-shows-streaming-colbert) The desk is part of the show's visual identity, and hosts have long worked within a familiar set of conventions that viewers recognize at a glance.[5](https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/tv/2025/07/30/late-night-tv-decline-colbert-trump-paramount/)\n\n**Letterman's influence.** David Letterman changed late-night talk, first with *Late Night with David Letterman* on NBC (1982-1992) and then on CBS, through postmodern irreverence and mocking play with the forms of television talk itself.[12](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/388356116_Fragmented_Late-Night_From_One_King_to_Numerous_Subjects) • [10](https://www.tvencyclopedia.org/tv-encyclopedia-16/talk-shows-in-the-united-states)\n\n## Politicization\n\nFor most of the genre's history, politics appeared mainly as jokes about politicians' personal foibles: Carson, Jay Leno, and David Letterman mocked [Gerald Ford](https://www.edgepedia.org/gerald-ford)'s clumsiness, [Ronald Reagan](https://www.edgepedia.org/ronald-reagan)'s age, and [Bill Clinton](https://www.edgepedia.org/bill-clinton)'s appetites without taking sustained political positions.[13](https://time.com/4494764/the-new-politics-of-late-night/) That changed in the early 2000s. *The Daily Show* under Jon Stewart and its spin-off *The Colbert Report* developed a cutting late-night talk variant that scholar Jeffrey Jones argues exemplified \"new political television,\" programming centered on questioning and critiquing established politics.[2](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/2040610X.2025.2509430) Scholars note that the idea of late-night as primarily entertainment has become harder to sustain as shows such as *The Daily Show* (1996- ), *Last Week Tonight with John Oliver* (2014- ), and *Full Frontal with Samantha Bee* (2016- ) took on overt political content.[14](https://theses.gla.ac.uk/30875/1/2018KroenerPhD.pdf)\n\n**The Trump era.** During Donald Trump's first presidency, late-night took on a distinctive political character, with shows staging moralized contests over culture-war themes such as race, gender, religion, and democracy.[15](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/2040610X.2025.2509430) The more outspoken and harsher the nightly attacks on Trump became, the less ambiguous the genre's political orientation was, settling into opposition to him.[16](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/2040610X.2025.2509430) Trump in turn targeted the hosts personally, calling [Jimmy Kimmel](https://www.edgepedia.org/jimmy-kimmel) \"one of the dumbest human beings ever\" and [Jimmy Fallon](https://www.edgepedia.org/jimmy-fallon) \"not very funny.\"[11](https://www.axios.com/2025/07/18/late-night-shows-streaming-colbert) A 2025 study of the period argues that Trump's simultaneous absurdity and threat removed some of the satirist's basic tools, pushing shows toward creative satire, sincere speech, and invective.[16](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/2040610X.2025.2509430)\n\n## Decline and the streaming era\n\nThe genre's economics have deteriorated sharply. Advertising revenue for all late-night shows was $220 million in 2024, down from $439 million in 2018, as viewers drifted to faster, more casual platforms.[5](https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/tv/2025/07/30/late-night-tv-decline-colbert-trump-paramount/) CBS had already canceled *The Late Late Show* in 2023 when [James Corden](https://www.edgepedia.org/james-corden) left the network, and his program's performance space was never revived.[5](https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/tv/2025/07/30/late-night-tv-decline-colbert-trump-paramount/) • [17](https://apnews.com/article/55763d0c6170c9b645290582efb4219f)\n\nThe cancellation of *The Late Show with Stephen Colbert*, announced in July 2025 and effective in May 2026 after a 33-year franchise run that began with Letterman's move to CBS in 1993, marked the format's largest institutional exit.[6](https://www.axios.com/2025/07/17/cbs-late-show-stephen-colbert-canceled) • [5](https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/tv/2025/07/30/late-night-tv-decline-colbert-trump-paramount/) CBS executives called the decision \"purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night,\" though the timing, three days after Colbert criticized the settlement between Trump and [Paramount Global](https://www.edgepedia.org/paramount-global), led two U.S. senators to question the motives publicly.[18](https://apnews.com/article/8bad9f16f076df62c0ffc50e9c8adbab)\n\nTwo structural pressures explain the trend. The format, split between a monologue, short interviews and comedic bits, is hard to preserve for an on-demand audience in streaming, because most clips appear nearly instantaneously on social media; live daily telecasts also carry high production costs against declining ad revenue.[11](https://www.axios.com/2025/07/18/late-night-shows-streaming-colbert) The format is labor-intensive, expensive, and slow compared with platforms like YouTube, and the viewers advertisers most value have decamped from broadcast television to streaming.[5](https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/tv/2025/07/30/late-night-tv-decline-colbert-trump-paramount/) Live music has contracted with the shrinkage: by 2026 only NBC's *The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon* consistently booked live performances, after *Late Night with Seth Meyers* cut back and *Jimmy Kimmel Live!* reduced performances to twice a week.[17](https://apnews.com/article/55763d0c6170c9b645290582efb4219f)\n\nIn a polarized media environment, political comedy carries commercial risk as well. Comedy targeting politics risks alienating sizable audiences or drawing the ire of people in power, and broadcasters under regulatory pressure have grown more cautious about the genre.[11](https://www.axios.com/2025/07/18/late-night-shows-streaming-colbert)\n\n## International versions\n\nThe format has traveled. British television produced *After Dark* (Channel 4, 1987-1997), a late-night open-ended discussion program with a distinctive structure that scholars treat as a significant innovation in television talk.[19](https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/id/eprint/106636/) Spanish scholarship on the format's arrival at La Sexta traces its lineage directly to the American genre, identifying the 1950 New York local program as the first precedent and *The Tonight Show* as the canonical model.[7](https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=9937389) Dutch late-night satire, exemplified by *Zondag met Lubach*, is described by scholars as the product of two distinct generic traditions converging on the American late-night model.[20](https://doi.org/10.18146/2213-0969.2018.jethc143)\n\n## References\n\n1. [Late Night, Television Academy Interviews](https://interviews.televisionacademy.com/index.php/genres/late-night)\n2. [Figuring out Trump: the re-politicization of US late night talk shows in a polarized public sphere (PDF), Comedy Studies](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/2040610X.2025.2509430)\n3. ['Tonight' at the Library: Remembering Johnny Carson, Library of Congress Information Bulletin (February 2005)](https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/0502/carson.html)\n4. [Late Night TV, Pioneers of Television, PBS](https://www.pbs.org/wnet/pioneers-of-television/pioneering-programs/late-night-tv/)\n5. [How late-night television lost its relevance, The Washington Post (July 30, 2025)](https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/tv/2025/07/30/late-night-tv-decline-colbert-trump-paramount/)\n6. [CBS to cancel \"The Late Show with Stephen Colbert\" after next season, Axios (July 17, 2025)](https://www.axios.com/2025/07/17/cbs-late-show-stephen-colbert-canceled)\n7. [El formato \"late night show\": primer programa en la televisión de Estados Unidos, España y su conexión con el primer \"late show\" emitido en La Sexta, Dialnet](https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=9937389)\n8. [Pioneers of Television: Late Night (video), PBS](https://www.pbs.org/video/late-night-1nyY68/)\n9. [Talk Show, Britannica (archived)](https://archive.ph/2025.12.16-010113/https%3A/www.britannica.com/topic/talk-show)\n10. [Talk Shows in the United States, Encyclopedia of TV & Radio](https://www.tvencyclopedia.org/tv-encyclopedia-16/talk-shows-in-the-united-states)\n11. [Late-night shows under pressure in a hyper-partisan streaming era, Axios (July 18, 2025)](https://www.axios.com/2025/07/18/late-night-shows-streaming-colbert)\n12. [Fragmented Late-Night: From One King to Numerous Subjects, ResearchGate](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/388356116_Fragmented_Late-Night_From_One_King_to_Numerous_Subjects)\n13. [The New Politics of Late Night, TIME (2016)](https://time.com/4494764/the-new-politics-of-late-night/)\n14. [Genre conventions of late-night chat shows, PhD thesis, University of Glasgow](https://theses.gla.ac.uk/30875/1/2018KroenerPhD.pdf)\n15. [Figuring out Trump: the re-politicization of US late night talk shows in a polarized public sphere (abstract), Comedy Studies](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/2040610X.2025.2509430)\n16. [Figuring out Trump (full text), Comedy Studies](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/2040610X.2025.2509430)\n17. [Space for music on late-night TV has dwindled. New media seeks to offer an alternative, AP News](https://apnews.com/article/55763d0c6170c9b645290582efb4219f)\n18. [Stephen Colbert's 'Late Show' is canceled by CBS and will end in May 2026, AP News (July 2025)](https://apnews.com/article/8bad9f16f076df62c0ffc50e9c8adbab)\n19. [After Dark: Channel 4's innovation in television talk, White Rose Research Online](https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/id/eprint/106636/)\n20. [Televisual Satire in the Age of Glocalization: The Case of Zondag met Lubach, VIEW Journal](https://doi.org/10.18146/2213-0969.2018.jethc143)\n21. [Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson the, interviews.televisionacademy.com](https://interviews.televisionacademy.com/shows/tonight-show-starring-johnny-carson-the)\n\n---\n*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television*\n\n*Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*\n\n*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*\n\nLicense: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license\n", "same_as": [], "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/late-night-talk-show", "markdown_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/late-night-talk-show.md", "license": { "name": "Edgepedia Community License 1.0", "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license", "summary": "Free with credit, commercial use included. AI training is open to everyone. For other uses, organizations over USD 100M in revenue or 100M monthly users license separately.", "spdx": "LicenseRef-Edgepedia-Community-1.0" }, "credit": "\"Late-night talk show\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/late-night-talk-show. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "credit_md": "\"[Late-night talk show](https://www.edgepedia.org/late-night-talk-show)\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), [https://www.edgepedia.org/late-night-talk-show](https://www.edgepedia.org/late-night-talk-show). [Edgepedia Community License 1.0](https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license).", "credit_html": "\"Late-night talk show\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/late-night-talk-show. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "speakable": "Late-night talk show: a TV format airing after 11 p.m. with a comedic news monologue, desk interviews, and variety segments." }