Post by Bradley Schauer, University of Arizona

Much of the press coverage of David Letterman’s retirement has framed it as the end of an era. According to this account, the traditional late night talk show – pioneered by Steve Allen in the ’50s, brought to its classical peak by Johnny Carson, and reaching its creative apex with Letterman’s baroque, ironic approach beginning in 1982 – has been rendered obsolete by a new emphasis on social media and viral videos. Even Letterman himself recently admitted that his show’s failure to embrace YouTube and Twitter was a problem: “What I’m doing is not what you want at 11:30 anymore… I hear about things going viral, and I think, ‘How do you do that?’”

Letterman in a suit of velcro, 1984.

On one hand, the differences between Letterman’s show and those of his youthful competitors are overstated. Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, and the rest still adhere closely to the traditional late night formula: monologue, desk piece, two guests and a musical act. And Letterman, particularly in the first 2/3 of his career, specialized in short remote videos (Dave works the Burger King drive-thru) and spectacle (Dave wears a Velcro suit) that would have lent themselves to online distribution. Much of Letterman’s declining ratings with young viewers can be simply attributed to his age: a 68-year-old who makes jokes about the Andrews Sisters and Lorne Greene is never going to win the 18-49 demo.

On the other hand, Fallon’s YouTube clips do receive exponentially greater hits than Letterman’s, and it is due to more than Fallon’s aw-shucks charm. Letterman’s inability to go viral is a byproduct of his unique approach to the talk show format, one rooted in traditional modes of viewership. Whereas the newer shows’ short, self-contained segments are constructed for easy accessibility and viral distribution, Letterman rewarded the dedicated viewer. It was not only funnier if you watched the entire program, it was funnier if you watched every night. Strange jokes that were barely funny on their own became hilarious as they were repeated, out of context, across an episode and for weeks afterwards. In this way, Letterman’s show was truly cult television, creating an insular community of viewers that prided themselves on their separation from the mainstream. It was no surprise (except apparently to Letterman) when the more accessible Jay Leno began beating him in the ratings after the honeymoon period of the mid-‘90s.

Along the same lines, Letterman’s funniest moments were rarely as funny when decontextualized from the show’s offbeat comic sensibility. More than anti-comedy, Letterman’s humor is typically a blend of two contradictory impulses: irony and sincere pleasure in the mundane. The purest example is “Will It Float?”, the recurring segment in which Letterman and Paul Shaffer would earnestly debate whether or not an item would float before two models threw it into a tank of water. The audience enjoys the overblown, ironic trappings associated with the skit (including a theme song and a hula-hoop dancer), but is also encouraged to take genuine pleasure in the question of whether or not the item will, in fact, float. Letterman satirizes the entertainment industry by valorizing the trivial. But the mundane does not make for effective YouTube clips – Stupid Pet Tricks can’t possibly compete when put up against the entire internet.

The newer shows’ heightened emphasis on celebrity guests is another important distinction. The usual observations about Fallon’s obsequiousness vs. Letterman’s disdain for modern Hollywood celebrity culture seem roughly accurate. The key difference, though, was that Letterman was the undisputed star of his show, his personality and sense of humor dominating and permeating every aspect. Fallon and the rest follow Leno’s example, acting as genial emcees who each night willingly take a backseat to their guests. And while Letterman was rarely as severe to guests as his reputation would indicate, it was usually clear whether or not he was interested in what they had to say. If he was, the interview had the potential to become a genuine conversation that revealed more of the guest than the faux-spontaneity of Fallon’s parlor games or James Corden’s skits.

On the set of NBC’s “Late Night with David Letterman,” 1982.

Letterman’s show at its best had a loose, improvisational quality that hearkened back to Steve Allen more than to Carson. Especially during the low production values of the NBC years, it was as though Letterman were hosting the funniest public access show of all time. He was unafraid to use a sense of duration as comic fodder: for instance, cold-calling a CBS executive and then waiting over a minute in awkward silence for the secretary to see if he was available. As the years went by, and Letterman stopped attending rehearsal, the spontaneity only increased, with the host showcasing his gift for language in rambling shaggy dog stories told at his desk. (In his excellent show, Craig Ferguson would take these qualities to their extreme, ensuring that he would never be considered for the 11:30 slot.) Again, this type of humor does not work when reduced to internet clips where viewers demand instant gratification.

The outlook for late night talk shows is grim, with ratings only about half of what they were 15 years ago. I remember my students in 2010 vehemently supporting “Team Coco” during Conan O’Brien’s ouster from The Tonight Show, only to admit that none of them actually watched the show, but knew O’Brien entirely from YouTube clips and Twitter. Networks seem to value YouTube hits, but it has never been clear exactly how they are monetized in any substantial way. Taking into account the fragmentation of the post-network era, and the relative interchangeability of this new generation of late night hosts, it seems as though David Letterman’s legacy will be as the last real star of late night television, and, in all likelihood, as one of the last great American broadcasters. If there is a new David Letterman out there, his or her type of comedy will not find a welcome home on network television.

For Colbert, the move to the Late Show on CBS is an obvious good one.  As Louis C.K. reminded us in a compelling three-episode story arc during season 3 of Louie, the seat currently occupied by Letterman is the apex (however daunting) of a particular career trajectory.  And of course, Colbert has long tried to keep pace with his best frenemy, Jimmy Fallon. They’ve fought over Emmy awards and ice cream flavors, so it only makes sense now that Fallon has moved to the Tonight Show, that Colbert really couldn’t stay on basic cable much longer.

For CBS, the strategy here is equally clear. Fallon is trying to reinvent the form of late-night chat for a 21^st century audience, and Colbert certainly is a strong choice to lead a similar effort at CBS.  Les Moonves and crew are hoping Colbert will bring to the Late Show the same youthful audience he has on Comedy Central.  Research from the Pew Center identifies The Colbert Report audience the youngest among all news and public information programs, with 43% of the audience between the ages of 18-29, and fully 80% 49 or younger.  By contrast the late-night audience has, in general, gotten older each year, with the average age for Letterman’s Late Show climbing north of 58-years-old in 2013.  Colbert has also cultivated a highly committed fan base.  On the first episode of The Report, he proclaimed his audience to be the “Colbert Nation,” inviting his viewers to identify with him and, more importantly, one another.  Now CBS is hoping that the citizens of the Colbert Nation will immigrate to the vaster, but rapidly depopulating continent of network TV.

A key to that will be the extent to which Colbert’s Late Show will be able to exploit its host’s internet savvy.  Colbert has, over the years, offered numerous provocative performances, both on and beyond TV, that were designed, as Henry Jenkins and colleagues would put it, to be spreadable among horizontal, digital pathways of content exchange.  He also has routinely provided his audience opportunities to participate in the construction and circulation of satirical and parodic content.  If the network late-night chat show is to remain a relevant textual form, it will need to move in similar directions.  That will be one of Colbert’s challenges.

But the move is not without risk, either. Much of Colbert’s appeal has been his daring, from his subversion of the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2006 to the recent, and less-well received, resuscitation of his controversial character “Ching Chong Ding Dong” as a means of critiquing ethnic stereotypes. This experimental risk-taking has been enabled both by the looser institutional environment of cable TV, and by his enigmatic character. After all, because the Colbert who hosts The Report is a mask – a cartoon character of sorts – he is free to say and do things that could be quite dangerous for a real person.  Not even Jon Stewart enjoys the kind of discursive freedom Colbert does.  He’ll be far more exposed, though, when he transitions to network TV, leaving behind both the character and the snug confines of Comedy Central.

Undoubtedly, Colbert will be as sharp and witty on the Late Show as he is on The Report, and the form is flexible enough that he will have room in which to work.  One major question, though, is how much of his political edge he can retain.  Network TV has never been a place for edgy political commentary, let alone the kind of media criticism that The Colbert Report so often offers (and for which some of us loyal viewers tune in).  It’s never been much of a place either for exploration of the avant-garde.  But those forays into the unfamiliar have been what has made Colbert so thrilling to watch over the past eight-and-a-half years.  For this to work, he (and CBS) will need to strike a careful balance between the boundary-probing experimental work that defines The Report, and the mass market, consumer-friendly appeal that has long been the network late-night stock-and-trade.

The other major question this move leaves us with is who will fill Colbert’s shoes?  Comedy Central has plenty of talent to shift into the 11:30 time slot, but the wider landscape of American political media will be losing one of its most important voices.  For several years, Colbert has been doing what I’ve referred to as the “heavy lifting of the Fourth Estate.”  At this point, it is far from clear who will take on that role next.

“Stooge of the Night” may be pretty feeble stuff when compared to the biting progressive satire of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. However, when considered within the context of network late night television, the segment is startlingly bold. Unlike Stewart and Colbert, who preach to the choir, network host Letterman’s audience is a demographic mix that skews much older and more conservative than Comedy Central viewers. Late night talk shows tend to avoid overt commentary on political policy, particularly in such a direct, cringe-inducing manner. For “Stooge of the Night,” the senator’s official head shot and Twitter feed fills the screen for at least a full minute, an agonizingly long interval during which Letterman offers a few tame riffs (“[Iowa senator Chuck Grassley] enjoys ceramics, big band music, and his ‘A’ rating from the NRA”), but is also content to let the audience sit in awkward silence. (“Let’s just leave that up there a little longer,” Letterman says of the photo of Sen. Jim Inhofe’s rictus, as the audience titters nervously.)

In a sense, Letterman’s decision to enter this particular debate should be uncontroversial, as an estimated 90% of Americans support background checks on gun buyers. However, recent polls also suggest that only 65% of Americans believe the Senate should have passed the Manchin-Toomey amendment. And indeed, “Stooge of the Night” has drawn the ire of the conservative blogosphere. However, Letterman has already been targeted by conservatives for his alleged liberal bias, a charge that dates back to a 2009 monologue joke about Bristol Palin and Alex Rodriguez, which Sarah Palin (most likely willfully) misinterpreted to be a “sexually perverted” joke about the “rape” of 14-year-old Willow Palin. After that exchange led to Letterman’s vilification by the conservative media, the host has continued to aggressively confront right-wing pundits like Bill O’Reilly and Donald Trump, while fawning over Rachel Maddow. (Having said that, Letterman has also not shied away from criticizing Democrats, for instance recently challenging Al Gore on the hypocrisy of selling Current TV to Al-Jazeera.)

With “Stooge of the Night” Letterman operates from a position of power, not only as arguably the most iconic late night host in television history behind Johnny Carson, but more importantly, as a man with job security. Unlike NBC, which forced Jay Leno to retire (again) to make room for Jimmy Fallon, CBS is allegedly content to allow Letterman to choose his own retirement date. Leno’s impending departure offers Letterman the chance to top the ratings for the first time since Conan O’Brien took over The Tonight Show in 2009; Letterman could benefit from “the Jimmy wars,” snatching up Leno’s older viewership while the two younger hosts cannibalize each other’s ratings.

Letterman’s more confrontational political approach runs the risk of alienating conservative viewers, but it also offers a point of departure from the Jimmys, whose interactions with politicians are more obsequious and inoffensive (e.g., Fallon’s “Mom Dancing” skit with the First Lady). Fallon’s “nice guy” demeanor, similar to Leno’s, may ultimately prove a better fit for the wide general audience sought by the networks – “Mom Dancing” has over 15 million hits on YouTube – but Letterman, even the checked-out Letterman of recent years, will continue to produce television that is frequently sharper and more thoughtful than his network competitors. Letterman’s prickly personality and disdain for the celebrities he interviews has been his trademark from the beginning; applying this cantankerous attitude to politics adds an additional layer to the generally innocuous late night talk format, aligning it more closely with the popular Daily Show and Colbert Report.

Critic Ken Tucker argues that Letterman alone offers “a core of seriousness that has enabled [him] to surge ahead of his genre colleagues in moments of national drama, whether it’s presidential politics or the entertainment industry’s vexed reassertion into post-9/11 American culture.” Bill Carter quotes an anonymous executive who wonders “how the younger hosts will handle being in the heat of a presidential election where they have to be accountable and ask tough questions.” With his contract up in 2014, it’s unclear if David Letterman will be around for another presidential election. But as one of Letterman’s key comic strategies is excessive repetition (both of comedy bits and key phrases, extracted from their context) it seems likely that “Stooge of the Night,” at least, will appear in all its awkward glory for at least another month.