Cable Is Up Late, Plotting TV Talk Shows’ Demise

For nearly half a century, late-night TV has been ruled by hosts whom viewers came to know on a first-name basis: Johnny, Jay, Dave, Conan. But now the after-hours dial is appealing to a younger audience with cable programs that bear little resemblance to the traditional talk show -- and the trend could shake up TV for years to come.

This fall, Comedy Central will aggressively chase late-night viewers with a full slate of new shows, including an 11:30 p.m. spinoff of its popular fake-news broadcast, “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.” Cartoon Network’s “Adult Swim” -- a late-night block of edgy animated series -- is drawing more viewers aged 18 to 34, a key category for advertisers, than CBS’ “Late Show With David Letterman.”

Meanwhile, ratings for NBC’s “Tonight Show With Jay Leno,” for years late-night’s No. 1 program, have slipped 5% this year, to an average of 5.7 million viewers, though that’s still more than four times the viewership for Stewart.

Although the networks still attract far more viewers between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m., their primacy is slowly being eroded -- with potentially worrisome results. Cable steadily nibbled away at broadcasters’ share of the lucrative prime-time audience over the last 10 years. Yet late night remains one of the few times of the day when big networks keep a commanding lead (another is 7 to 9 a.m.). If the trend continues and viewers keep fleeing to cable after 11 p.m., analysts say, advertiser dollars will follow.

It could represent a cultural change as well. Young viewers, TV veterans say, are increasingly migrating to cable because the programming isn’t subject to content restrictions from the Federal Communications Commission and is often spicier -- if not necessarily raunchier -- than that found on traditional networks.

During its late-night block, Comedy Central allows profanity it doesn’t permit during other times of day. The 11 p.m. “Daily Show,” for example, ran a clip of columnist Robert Novak’s recent on-air tirade on CNN -- and didn’t bother to bleep the expletive he uttered before storming off the set.

The message in all this seems clear: As in so many other arenas, the old media paradigms are crumbling.

Late-night TV “is starting to shift,” said Brad Adgate, senior vice president at Horizon Media, an advertising and media services firm in New York. “The cable networks have started to effectively counter-program the broadcast networks. And they can get away with more [daring content]. They’re starting to go after young adults.”

Cable executives, not surprisingly, say the late-night talk show -- or at least the host-behind-a-desk format pioneered by Steve Allen on the original “Tonight” show in 1953 -- has simply worn out its welcome.

“With all due respect to Jay and Dave and everybody out there, they’re doing very similar kinds of shows in formats that are nearly as old as television,” said Doug Herzog, president of Comedy Central and Spike TV, a sister network aimed at young men. “I do believe those traditional formats are growing tired, and younger viewers are growing tired of them.”

“The 40 minutes of talk time on these shows are basically the same on every program,” said Robert Morton, a former Letterman producer whose latest project is Comedy Central’s “Weekends at the DL,” a talk show with stand-up comic D.L. Hughley that premiered last month.

Morton pointed out that Comedy Central can afford to take risks partly because its programs cost less than network rivals’; thus, they face less immediate pressure to succeed.

None of this means that networks should start panicking. Leno’s “Tonight Show” and Letterman’s “Late Show” remain the gold standards, gushing tens of millions of dollars in annual profits and attracting every major celebrity with a project to hype. And both hosts still attract a far bigger total audience than anything the cable networks can muster.

Leno has had the top-rated program at 11:35 p.m. for 10 straight years among adults 18 to 49, though CBS, thanks in part to its strong prime-time lineup, narrowed the gap considerably this season. CBS also points to improved ratings this year, especially among women, for its 12:35 a.m. “The Late Late Show,” where host Craig Ferguson replaced Craig Kilborn.

Broadcast executives say their programs do well precisely because they are geared toward mainstream sensibilities.

“If [cable networks] really believe that men aged 18 to 34 watching cartoons at 1 in the morning are a primary audience, I think they’re wrong,” said David Poltrack, executive vice president for research and planning at CBS.

Rick Ludwin, NBC’s senior vice president in charge of late-night programming, said giving viewers more options would increase the total audience that shows up in the wee hours. “It doesn’t necessarily cannibalize what we’re doing,” he said.

Furthermore, the rise of popular cable shows is hardly all bad news for the networks’ corporate parents, all of which operate multiple channels. For example, Viacom, which owns CBS and UPN, also owns Comedy Central.

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Since the 1950s, late night has served as a kind of electronic forum -- and sometimes public pillory -- that mocked the pompous and ridiculed the ridiculous. To be sure, even since Allen’s day there’s been zany comedy in late night. Johnny Carson hosted an eclectic array of writers, politicians and plain folks who had made brief headlines; he also promoted the careers of countless comics, including Jerry Seinfeld and George Carlin. Until a few years ago, pundits often turned reflexively to Leno or Letterman as harbingers of public opinion.

But now that role increasingly falls to the more acerbic Stewart, who for many young viewers provides both a summary of, and running commentary on, the day’s events. “The Daily Show” is no typical talk show: At least half the program is devoted to Stewart’s riff on headlines and various in-studio and taped comedy bits; the guest interview in the last segments seems almost an afterthought.

At its peak, NBC’s “Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” averaged 10 million to 15 million viewers. These days, the combined ratings for Leno and Letterman barely reach those levels. Cable channels are beginning to attack the networks in late night the same way they did in prime time -- by finding one series that clicks and then growing other programs around it.

That’s what Comedy Central hopes to do by adding a program starring Stephen Colbert, a popular contributor to “The Daily Show,” at 11:30 p.m., making it directly competitive with Leno and Letterman. The program is scheduled to premiere Oct. 17.

Colbert said his show would be similar to Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor” -- except it will star the pompous alter ego that the performer has made famous on “The Daily Show.” “My character is an idiot who’s not aware he’s an idiot,” Colbert said. “He thinks very highly of himself.”

Some broadcasters say cable’s new late-night entries have a tough hill to climb.

“What’s extraordinarily valuable in TV right now [are] brands,” said Rob Burnett, executive producer of “The Late Show.” “It’s a lot harder for newcomers to gain the audience that someone like Dave has.”

Poltrack, the CBS researcher, said the broadcast talk shows had proved notably resilient over the years, fighting off challenges not just from cable outlets but syndicated sitcoms like “Cheers” and “Seinfeld.” But he acknowledged that young men -- whom TV executives have found difficult to reach at other times of the day -- are the “low-hanging fruit” for cable networks. “That’s what the competition will be going after,” he said.

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All of the network talk shows are facing upheavals that are likely to sow further doubt. Later this year, Ted Koppel will leave ABC’s “Nightline” after a quarter-century as anchor. The network recently hired a new executive producer for the program but has not settled on a new host. “Nightline’s” ratings this season dipped 8%, to 3.5 million viewers. Meanwhile, the program that follows it, a talk show hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, has not posed a serious threat to Leno or Letterman.

At NBC, Leno will hand the reins of “The Tonight Show” over to “Late Night” host Conan O’Brien in 2009. Ludwin said the switch would undoubtedly bring changes to the show, although it was far too early to discuss details. Much of O’Brien’s humor is off-kilter and even nonsensical. Some industry veterans say O’Brien will have to make his comedy more accessible to work in the earlier time slot, but not everyone agrees.

“They said that David Letterman couldn’t work at 11:30, either,” Morton said.

The long-term status of Letterman is unclear. After spurning an offer to jump to ABC, the host renewed his CBS contract in a deal that the network says will carry him through 2007. “How long he will continue is entirely up to Dave,” said Burnett, the show’s executive producer. “I don’t see any sign of him stepping down.”

At 58, Letterman probably best symbolizes the generational shifts underway. Twenty years ago, on NBC’s “Late Night,” Letterman reinvented the late-night talk show by ridiculing conventions like the scripted celebrity interview. Such irreverent humor proved especially popular on college campuses.

But now Letterman is part of the TV establishment. His program relies on a familiar repertoire of comedy bits and lately has revived relics from the Carson era, such as “Stump the Band,” in which audience members are picked to sing obscure tunes. Letterman makes little effort to hide his age and frequently jokes about the heart bypass surgery he underwent in 2000, a topic that probably has more relevance for aging boomers than for channel-surfing college students.

Poltrack says Letterman has hung on to a large number of young adults even as he’s grown older. But some analysts say Leno and Letterman spend too much time chatting with stars when younger viewers are more interested in seeing skits or monologues. Their guest lists too are largely limited to the same personalities who make the talk show rounds when hyping their latest projects; by contrast, legendary talk show hosts such as Allen, Carson and Jack Paar thrived on unscripted moments.

The network talk shows are “more celebrity interview now than they are comedy,” said Jack Myers, editor and publisher of mediavillage.com.

“The Late Show’s” Burnett disputed that assessment.

“Most nights, we’re not bringing up the first guest till midnight,” he said. “The first 20 minutes of the show are pure comedy.”

Still, Comedy Central executives believe that the time is ripe for growth, especially among the network’s core audience of young men.

“At the very least, we’re hoping to stretch the audience ‘The Daily Show’ attracts -- which is a very fair amount of people by cable standards -- later in the night,” Herzog said. “What we’ve got with ‘The Daily Show’ is an incredible beachhead.” Between January and July, it has averaged 1.4 million viewers, up 24% compared with the same period last year.

Whether Stewart’s success can extend to new series remains to be seen. Comedy Central’s late-night plans were jolted somewhat by the unexpected loss of “Chappelle’s Show” after comic Dave Chappelle stopped reporting for work in May, leaving the show in limbo. “Chappelle’s Show,” which aired at 10:30 p.m. Wednesdays, was the network’s second-highest-rated program after “South Park.”

In addition to Colbert’s spinoff, Comedy Central has “Weekends at the DL,” which airs at 11 p.m. Fridays through Sundays (“The Daily Show” runs in that slot the rest of the week). The show features Hughley and guests engaged in freewheeling conversation, interspersed with taped comedy pieces.

The early ratings for “Weekends” have been disappointing, however. The July 29 premiere had 789,000 viewers, according to figures from Nielsen Media Research, compared with 1.2 million viewers for “The Daily Show” the previous night (TV watching is often lighter on Fridays than on any other night of the week). Comedy Central executives say the show will need time to build an audience.

On Mondays at 11:30 p.m., Comedy Central has “Too Late With Adam Carolla,” starring the comedian and “Loveline” host, who recently announced he would take over Howard Stern’s morning broadcast in Los Angeles and other markets after Stern moves to satellite radio.

And for 13 weeks starting Sept. 15, Comedy Central will roll out a 10:30 p.m. series starring David Spade, a “Saturday Night Live” alum. Spade describes the series as similar to “The Daily Show” but devoted to show business instead of politics.

For Spade, the freedom to do edgier material than the networks would allow clinched the deal. “If I’m going to do a show like this,” Spade said, “this is the best place to do it.”