This year has been a tough one for the left. The political comeback of President-elect Donald Trump is one for the ages and will be a topic in history books for generations to come. Trump’s election night victory has all but broken the Democrat party. They are leaderless, with no one to fill that void waiting in the wings, and we are still waiting for Hollywood leftists like Alec Baldwin and Cher to pack up and head for Canada as promised if Trump won. But another casualty of Trump’s victory imploding upon itself is late-night television, and it’s not pretty.
Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) has not been good to the late-night gang of Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, and Jimmy Fallon, as not only do their ratings and viewership continue to tank, but their shows are also losing any real cultural relevance they once had. The Media Research Center conducted a study at the height of the election season in 2024 from September 3 through October 25. During that time, late-night comedians told roughly 1,463 jokes about Trump and Kamala Harris. Not surprisingly, Donald Trump was the butt of a staggering 98 percent of those jokes. As an added bonus, 78 percent of jokes aimed at the vice presidential candidates went at JD Vance.
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Like the mainstream legacy media, late-night comedy has the self-awareness level of a gnat, and their collapsing ratings are proof. Colbert is usually the leader among himself, Fallon, and Kimmel. Just five years ago, Colbert was pulling in 3.81 million viewers. For the 2023-2024 season, that number has dropped to 2.6 million. The latest numbers for the current 2024-2025 season do not bode well either, with an average of 2.5 million viewers. For the third quarter of the 2024-2025 season, Jimmy Kimmel is averaging just 1.37 million viewers. Over at NBC, they are taking a different approach for “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.” In September, they announced they would air new shows Monday through Thursday and reruns on Fridays.
What did it accomplish in the end? The destruction of their creditability.
In addition to constant Trump-bashing by late-night “comedians,” Americans are done with celebrity opinions. Several recent polls, including a Rasmussen survey, showed that a solid 75 percent of American voters said they don’t care about celebrity endorsements of candidates. A recent AP-NORC poll showed that Democrats are far more star-struck when it comes to those celebrity endorsements, with 40 percent of Democrats saying they were okay with celebrity endorsements compared to just 11 percent of Republicans.
The current late-night comedy show landscape is nothing like it was in the days of Johnny Carson. Carson was the undisputed king of late night because, in the beginning, he was the only one, but also because no one was immune — he jabbed everyone. It was what kept up a healthy competition between an early David Letterman and Carson’s successor, Jay Leno. Everyone was fair game. Combine that with the fact that social media sites like YouTube and TikTok are attracting a younger audience.
So, who are Colbert, Fallon, and Kimmel losing to? That’s easy: Fox News Channel’s “Gutfeld!” with host Greg Gutfeld is destroying network late-night television. During the week of the Democrat Convention, Gutfeld, which is only available through pay TV, beat out the big three, especially in the all-important 25-54 advertising demographic.
Since election night, it has become clear that the legacy media has learned nothing from their loss and will not change how they do business, and it is safe to assume that the late-night gang won’t either.
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