Am I the only one bored with late night talk shows?

They suck anymore. Only watch if one of my favorite artists are on.

Stopped watching after Carson, Letterman and Leno

Jimmy is too over the top and a major a** kisser to every guest

I do enjoy some of Corbin's Karaoke Car Pools

Colbert only talks about Trump

Kimmel is the most tolerable

Never could tolerate Conan

Seth is just awful

 

I’m of the generation wherein Late Night with David Letterman (the NBC era) was genuinely laugh-out-loud funny. Original, Whimsical, Non-Sequiturs that made you watch closer... You’d never know where the jokes came from... left field!
(Big credit to Chris Elliott!)

I’d have to record each show on VCR tape, just because there were typically several “Wait! What was THAT weird joke there...???!??” that I’d have to rewind and play again.
And laugh harder each time.

Then Conan O’Brian took over the late night comedy throne, as Letterman eased over to CBS. Conan always credited Letterman as a big influence. (Just as Letterman credited Steve Allen and Johnny Carson, before him.)

It showed - Conan’s style was very funny, awkward, surprisingly hilarious at times.
But always with a touch of affection towards his fans, genuine in nature -
Just like Letterman before him.

Then the whole Tonight Show Snafu at NBC seemed to screw up the natural flow of the TV TalkShow Royalty. Even now, it’s amazing how that was bungled and botched. Big time.

Since then, nothing related to the genre seemed to “fit” “just right”. Like an episode of the DC comic book Superman, that Bizarro “injustice” seemingly caused a weird time-warp, that requires a “re-do”, to set the comedic universe back on it’s proper axis again, that will sadly never, ever happen.

(Sure, there have been other hosts that have come along, that have carved their own niches -
Craig Kilborn, Seth Meyers come to mind.)

Others seems a tad bit too predictable, too pat with their laff-lines, too star-struck (Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel).
Other hosts seem slightly more tolerable.
Sitcom reruns sometimes offer alternate laughs, to wind up the evening.

That’s the current state of the talk-show at night.

 

No, late night is terrible, tv is terrible. I was watching Youtube (my preferred video entertainment, the television has become basically a monitor to stream stuff to) Anyways, i was watching the show Hot Ones and Gary Vaynerchuck was on and he said something very obvious once he said it, but i just never put it together so casually. He held up his phone and said "This is the television, and that (television) is the radio" Any half decent podcast pulls in WAY more ears and eyes than anything on the networks. And i don't have to sit there and listen to these pathetic scripted planned interchanges going on for 5 minutes til commercial break. I can just hit ______ interviews and see what comes up if i want to get to know that person. It's a shake the key-chain at the baby medium, just to try and keep you interested thru the next ad for whatever... Of any of them i like Conan by miles and miles, not even close.

 

And the general discourse.

The previous pages saterical ad i read was from the onion?

Maybe i read it wrong

 

I haven't really watched Late night TV since Letterman left. I watch clips on youtube and there are still some good segments and interviews coming out of them but I'm not really interested in them anymore. I might have to sit down and watch the Late Show sometime this week.

 

No e

The post that was deleted was a joke from "The Banylon Bee".
I called it the "religious Onion".
From Wiki;
"The Babylon Bee is a satirical evangelical Christian website. The site publishes satirical stories focusing on well- known pastors, celebrities, and politicians."

 

I'm a YouTube monologue watcher as well, and Colbert's is my favourite. He seems to have the best writers in the bunch.

 

Just watched an old Carson rerun with Tim Conway and Richard Pryor as guests. The conversation was interesting, no one was plugging anything, and Carson got right into the interracial audiences discussion with Pryor in a manner that oh, say, Fallon would pee his pants in terror over. It was great TV.

 

I can't watch first 25 minutes of any of 'em. And, then it depends on who the guests are.
Saddened by what's happened to Conan...a slow death to his show, taking 1/2 hour away, his house-band away & cutting out musical guests.

 

Can't believe how much hatred has come towards James Corden's 'carpool karaoke' segment this week....

 

I find myself watching Christiane Amanpour instead of Colbert/Fallon/Kimmel now.

 

All the American shows i've seen all have pretty much the same layout, never understood why? You know, the desk, etc.

 

It's a good thing. Everything must be going pretty well if this is what people have to be outraged by.

I don't watch any of those shows, but I'm familiar with that segment. I wish he'd use the trailer 100% of the time. There are enough distracted drivers on the road as it is.

 

I haven't watched any "late night" talk shows in years. In no particular order, here are the hosts that seemed the most entertaining to me.

1. Johnny Carson - The king of late night television was a master at making his show a late night "event". We all knew the format and the familiar characters. When he had dynamic guests, he knew how to milk it for everything it was worth. When a guest or skit was a loser, he could still usually manage to turn it around and make it entertaining by his reactions while the bit or interview was bombing.
2. Craig Ferguson - I really didn't expect much of him when he first started doing his show. I was blown away by his wit and humor. Instead of just inserting lame jokes into all of the interviews, he genuinely interacted with guests and joked with them during the interviews. He seemed to have a knack for bringing out the best in those that were guests on his show while never taking the whole thing too seriously.
3. Steve Allen - Way before my time but from the clips that I've watched, he seemed very good. I'm blown away at his grasp of diverse fields. Back in the 1950's he could talk to doctors, entertainers, politicians, musicians, computer geeks, rocket scientists, and the "guy on the street" with equal ease. He was described as a renaissance man and I can certainly agree there.
4. Tom Snyder - My dad was a fan of the "Tomorrow" show in the late 1970s and early 1980s. I liked to watch him when returned to "The Late Late Show" on CBS in the 1990's. He was an excellent interviewer and had no trouble sparring intellectually with a combative guest. One such battle that comes to my memory was when Howard Stern was a guest. Howard was up for a fight and then found himself way out of his league while verbally sparring with Snyder. Like Craig Ferguson and Steve Allen, his wit was amazing.

 

I’m American and I never understood the need for a desk either. -Must give the host a sense of authority or something.

 

I stopped watching late night talk shows once they became preachy and started telling people how they need to think about things happening in the world. -Comedy or not.

 

Seth Myers, why does he have that ridiculous black microphone?
He has a clip on for one thing, it's not really prominent for visual sake,
it's almost out of the screen shot these days....
Maybe it's the tradition thing, but unless they showcase it as a nice looking prop, it seems useless.

 

It's seems to be a prop mostly. I guess it helps visually designate guest and host. Arsenio Hall didn't have a desk. His set was more like a den for guests to talk. It worked great for him. Tom Snyder didn't have a desk either.

 

yes since about 1992 I used to sometimes watch Arsenio in the late 80s/early 90s but that's almost it.

 

Michael Parkinson is the ultimate talk-show giant. He was so successful because he didn't turn it into a 'show'. His amiable-chat conversational style was a pleasure to watch. No in-joke, no whooping audience, no glitz nor glitter. Just a bloke enjoying the company of his guests and vice-versa.

There where exceptions; yes Rod Hull, we're talking about you....

 

Oh but he got soooo safe towards the end it was embarrassing. His radio show on a Sunday was such a snoozefest. He went 10 years past his prime at least.

 

When-Carson-Arsenio Hall left,that was it.

 

Don't we all.

 

Because that's the template The Tonight Show established over 60 years ago, and I suppose everyone who came after didn't see the need to f with the formula.

 

Very little talk, mostly show.