Conan O’Brien sounded a little wiser when he reflected on the slow decline of his late-night talk shows over the past seven years. A long stand-up late-night monologue followed by a carousel of guests on the promotional cycle “makes no sense,” he said at the time. Since then, the evidence has only increased, as audiences consume more and more jokes in short bursts on their phones.
In recent years, the network’s major late-night shows—Jimmy Kimmel Live!, The late Stephen Colbert show, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallonagain Late Night with Seti Meyers-Recipient of all heart rate monitoring. Nielsen data shows Colbert’s The Show At The Endwhich ends in May 2026, has lost a million viewers in the past eight years – a 26 percent decline. During the same period, the audience for Kimmel, Fallon and Meyers fell from 2.3 to 1.8 million; 2.8 million to 1.2 million; And 123,000 million to 923,000 million, respectively, and revenue that almost reversed as production costs increased, according to the strong guide of Media Analytics.
Most of the major network publications started uploading clips to YouTube in the early 2010s, as the networks saw how the platform was starting to drive viewership and the next day’s buzz. Jimmy Kimmel said he loves YouTube and the wide reach it gives his show, but it has hurt ratings and comes with an economic problem. “I know that the fact that ABC is paying for this show and YouTube is cheating for nothing, and YouTube is going to sell it, and keep a beefy portion of Bloomberg screentime earlier this month.
Late-night shows used to be “a way to get high-priced talent for almost nothing,” Kimmel said. But with annual costs topping $100 million, he sees the model as unsustainable. “Someone will find you,” she said pointing What’s hot-A YouTube series where visitors answer questions while eating spicy wings – as proof that similar concepts can thrive at a fraction of the cost. “You can still have the same format to get less – the host won’t do as much, the audience won’t be as big, but that’s okay,” he said.
Last month, ABC briefly canceled the Kimmel show after a monologue that included the moaning words of activist Charlie Kirk. The controversy, which provoked anger on the right, emphasized how much the network bands remain tied to advertisers and FCC oversight.
Traditional late-night jobs have scattered across the Internet today: News commentary thrives on X; Sketch Comeyy Guntetes Tiktok; And celebrity interviews have migrated to podcasts. The format, as Washington Post columnist Megan McCardle put it after Colbert’s cancellation, is something “It was built for a media world that no longer exists.”
Ideally, it’s not just late-night “In comedy, as in much of our culture, the age of institutions is to give the age of the people talking to people,” -Transport across the Atlantic Writer Derek Thompson said in his July episode Plain English podcast.
Nowhere is that clearer than in the success of Fox News’ Gutfeld!. Hosted by Greg Gutfeld, the show’s mix of partisan punchlines, martial arts and late-night takedowns of liberal targets are pulled 2.9 million viewers– Set to hit major network shows.
Recent episodes have seen gugfelds mocking figures like Vice President Kamala Harris and Illinois Gov Pritzker, as well as late-night peers. At the end of August, he put it with confidence: “It’s been ten years, on the left we became a tradition. They told us what was funny and what was going down …
Seen in that light, Netflix’s latest deal with Spotify to bring several popular podcasts – including Credit Simmons Podcast, Rewatches and The Dave Chang Show-In the video streaming platform it shows the same change. Where a single late-night look once replaced a national audience, today’s influence flows into niche fandoms, podcasts and entertainment entertainment.