Relying on Reruns, Left-Leaning Late Night Show Viewership Drops Off

Moviegoers sit, waiting for their movie to start at the AMC Burbank theatre on reopening day in Burbank, Calif., on March 15, 2021. Valerie Macon/AFP via Getty Images

While entertainment viewers make do with watching TV and cable series and films that were in the can before Hollywood went on strike, the late night talk shows that depend on daily monologues have dropped off the viewing spectrum.

That’s according to ratings from the community-driven entertainment database The TVDB, and recent comments made by political satirist Tim Young to the media outlet Fox News Digital.

One exception is Fox News’ “Gutfeld!” The television host/commentator’s hour-long political satire featuring panel discussions, parodies, and Greg Gutfeld’s signature monologues, is still pumping out fresh episodes and attracting over 1.6 million viewers.

“Their tired attempts at making funny news-based monologues that were always about Trump had become exhausting and unquotable, so they’d rarely even be covered by entertainment news anymore,” Young told Fox News Digital. “Late night shows are so forgettable that I think people have just moved on. they just aren’t missed.”

Gutfeld Rises in Late Night Viewership

When it comes to numbers, the global entertainment metadata provider TheTVDB has shown Fox’s Gutfeld! as the late-night leader had 1,643,000 viewers. That’s compared to CBS’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert with 1,228,000 viewers, ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! with 1,148,000 viewers, and NBC’s The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon with 986,000 viewers and Late Night with Seth Meyers with 563,000 viewers. Rankings include regularly-scheduled television programs in the United States that participate in the national Nielsen audience measurement system.

Numbers from global media measurement and analytics company Comscore differ, but data demonstrates late night shows have had a slight decrease in average household live ratings since these series stopped new episodes in the beginning of May 2023 with writers on strike.

Comparing data from time periods Jan. 1 to May 1, and May 2 to July 31 shows that Jimmy Kimmel Live has shown the smallest decrease in average live household ratings.

A Newsweek piece from late 2022 noted that for the first time over a full week (Aug. 16-22, 2021) Gutfeld! scored a larger audience than Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, and Stephen Colbert, and deemed him the new king of late night.

Demise of Late Night Talk Shows Has Long Been Brewing

The bigger picture shows late night television has been faltering for a while.

In 2018, Mr. Colbert averaged 3 million viewers. According to Fox, it has since fallen to 2.1 million, though Comscore and TheTVDB numbers differ.

Mr. Fallon has lost almost half of his audience, going from on average 2.3 million viewers in 2018 to 1.3 million in 2023.

During that same timeframe, Mr. Kimmel has shrunk from 2 million in viewership to 1.5 million while Seth Meyers attracts only 778,000. Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with its rotating guests has much smaller numbers, having lost half of its viewers since 2018.

Meanwhile, Gutfeld!, the only late-night talk show still airing on TV during the writers strike and one that features the host’s own monologues, continues to show strong numbers. With its host and more conservative guests like Kat Timpf, Tyrus, Emily Compagno, and Tom Shillue regularly poking fun at the latest headlines, the show’s ratings have surged since its April 2021 debut. According to Fox, it averages 2 million viewers.

That’s while its more liberal competitors, sidelined by the writers strike for three months now, have missed out on more recent political news cycles like former President Donald Trump’s second and third rounds of indictments, the evolving 2024 presidential race, and Biden family controversies, to use as fodder.

But according to a 2022 piece in the Washington Examiner, prior to today’s late night landscape, the more liberal talk show hosts had the last laugh.

Nightly Talk Show Circuit Dominated by Left-Wing Voices

Conservative analysis and media watchdog group Media Research Center cites a NewsBusters study showing the late-night comedy scene has long been liberal-oriented, not just because of its hosts, but also because the majority of their guests also swing left. The number of liberal guests reached a peak during the 2022 midterm elections.

“The late-night comedy scene has been reliably liberal for a long time, but the 2022 midterm election was a regular messaging machine for the Democrats,” the MRC NewsBusters piece by Alex Christy noted. The study looked at the daily six late night comedy shows: Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Late Night with Seth Meyers, The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, The Late Late Show with James Corden, and Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.

“MRC analysts found that during the fall campaign, from Labor Day through the Monday night before Election Day, liberal guests outnumbered conservative guests 47 to 0. It was 100 percent liberal and/or Democrat,” it continued.

When it came to the number of politicians appearing, the count was 21 Democrats to 0 Republicans. Mr. Colbert led with seven, Mr. Noah was second with five, Mr. Meyers was third at four, Mr. Fallon came in fourth with three, and Mr. Corden and Mr. Kimmel tied for fifth with one.

Hillary and Chelsea Clinton, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and Texas Democratic gubernatorial nominee Beto O’Rourke were the guests who appeared multiple times during the length of the study.

In terms of journalists and celebrities, the results were 26 liberals to 0 conservatives with Mr. Colbert the most partisan host with 11 and Noah having seven. Of the guests, CBS’s Gayle King, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, HBO’s John Oliver, and New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman each made multiple appearances.

By outlet, CNN/CNN International led the way with six (five current, plus former host Soledad O'Brien) guests, while CBS and the New York Times tied for second with three. HBO, MSNBC, ABC, and PBS each had two, while NPR and Comedy Central each had one.

Shows Can’t Survive on Reruns Alone

Now, with the writers on strike and fresh content on hold from the traditionally mainstream late night talk shows, the tide has turned.

Media analyst Bill Carter said, reporting for CNN, “If late-night television had a true golden age we probably passed it … After a period of what looked like unchecked expansion, with new late-night shows popping up like wildflowers (or sometimes weeds), the reaper seems to have arrived. Late night’s future is now looking more limited, if not completely grim.”

When Mr. Gutfeld was asked why his show is doing so well, he racked it up to not droning on to viewers about what they should think and feel.

“We’re funny and unpredictable and we’re not interested in lecturing or indoctrinating, just entertaining,” Mr. Gutfeld told Newsweek, noting his opinion that he thinks his show is actually the least political of the late night lineup. “All they’re doing is repeating the same assumptions that you can get anywhere else, so you don’t get anything new. So why bother?”