🎧 Late-Night’s Existential Crisis

Culture critic Nick Quah tells me how ‘The Late Show’ end was inevitable

LAST RITES From left: Late-night hosts Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart. (The Ankler illustration: Kimmel: Robin L Marshall/Getty Images; Colbert: Scott Kowalchyk/CBS; Stewart: Taylor Hill/WireImage)

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When Stephen Colbert sat at his desk in the Ed Sullivan Theater last week and announced the cancellation of The Late Show, it was a bombshell to be sure — and one set in motion weeks earlier, as my colleague Lesley Goldberg reported today — but also a demise that most media watchers had seen coming. You don’t have to be an avid consumer of The Joe Rogan Experience or SmartLess to know that podcasts and YouTube are supplanting the role late-night TV once played in popular culture. But Nick Quah, a critic who covers TV and podcasts for New York Magazine, is deeply enmeshed enough in both worlds to have known for a while that the end of Colbert’s reign was coming eventually.

“To say that I saw it coming is saying that you saw climate change coming,” Nick acknowledges on this week’s episode of the Prestige Junkie podcast, adding that even if CBS had opted to cut costs on Colbert’s show to make it profitable, it would likely have only been delaying the inevitable. “To some extent, you’re transitioning your way into the end. Because the real question is, can we preserve this institution for the next 30 years?” The answer to Nick’s rhetorical question, even before last week’s news, seemed pretty straightforward.

That doesn’t make Paramount’s decision to end the show (and the cloudy potential political motivations behind that choice) any less of a big deal — just ask Richard Rushfield, whose strong opinions on the subject are today’s must-read. The cancellation of The Late Show also serves as a dire warning for Colbert’s corporate sibling Jon Stewart, as well as anyone else who professionally makes fun of the president on TV. As Nick and I discuss on today’s episode of the Prestige Junkie podcast — recorded last Friday, when the news was very fresh — despite Colbert’s relatively high ratings and recent Emmy nominations, in this current landscape, late-night TV may no longer even be the best place for the ousted host to use his talents.

Responding to the cancellation of Colbert’s show on Monday, Stewart described it as “corporate capitulation to the whims of a pussy-grabbing enigma” while also acknowledging that the model of late-night TV that both he and Colbert embody is “basically operating a Blockbuster kiosk inside a Tower Records.” All of Colbert’s late-night brethren have forcefully ridden to his defense, but all seem aware that there are forces greater than all of them at play. As Stewart, whose contract is up at the end of the year, said near the end of his monologue, “I’m not going anywhere… I think.”

Colbert himself addressed the news on his show on Monday night, promising that between now and the end of The Late Show franchise in May, “the gloves will be off.” He also included a pretty direct response to Donald Trump, who crowed about Colbert’s cancellation: “Go f— yourself.”

Nick and I also get into the Emmy nominations in our conversation, including some insight from his reporting on the making of Adolescence and a bit more mourning for the underappreciated Andor. Take a listen, and if you like what you hear, don’t forget to sign up for Prestige Junkie After Party, launching on Aug. 1. While the main podcast will remain free — along with my weekly newsletter for The Ankler subscribers — those savvy enough to sign up for to my standalone paid tier ($5 a month or $50 a year) will enjoy more insider chatter and unfiltered opinions from behind the velvet rope of the awards space. Details on what a subscription gets you can be found here. I’ll see you at the after party!