Under 50, and the more under 50, the more attractive to most advertisers. Screen shots of the audience at a taping likely look nothing like the actual at-home viewing audience.
As I noted, the percentage of actual viewers of these shows which is under 50 is a small minority. Again, using the viewership numbers from the article I linked to earlier:
Kimmel: only 12% of his viewers are age 18-49
Colbert: only 9% of his viewers are age 18-49
Fallon: only 13% of his viewers are age 18-49
You can get a good idea of how old the viewing audience is for a particular show by what percentage of the ads are for prescription medications.
I was curious how these figures compared to, say, Johnny Carson’s. I found this LA Times article written right before’s Carson’s 1992 finale:
For many Americans, [Carson] has been as much a part of their daily routine as cornflakes for breakfast or brushing their teeth before bed. Unlike his most successful late-night competitor, Arsenio Hall–who mostly appeals to younger viewers–Carson has a much broader audience. About 40% of Carson’s viewers are over 50; roughly half are between 25 and 49.
Though I’ve said this previously, I want to stress that the decline in young people watching the late-night talk shows isn’t primarily about those talk shows, or their hosts: it’s about how younger Americans watch TV now. Most of them don’t have cable or watch terrestrial/linear TV at all: they exclusively watch TV via streaming and online services.
Every single TV show on the traditional networks, and on cable, suffers from this same issue, to a greater or lesser degree. A lot of age 50+ viewers also have cut the cord, but it’s even more prevalent among those under 50: less than 1/4 of Americans under 50 still have a cable or satellite TV subscription.
Since this season began—LONG before the Kimmel show was sidelined—new South Park episodes have been shown every two weeks. Always that interval. And yes, the fifth new episode broke that pattern.
But that doesn’t prove that the SP people are planning changes to the episode to avoid offending Trump. It’s possible that they just wanted to hit on the Kimmel situation directly, and so re-worked the episode to accomplish that. We’ll know in a few days.
As for “will NBC fold”—-it depends entirely on their read of public reaction to the Kimmel case and to Trump’s overreach, I think. The more public opinion goes against Trump, the stronger NBC backbones will become. AND if they have no pending business requiring FCC approval, their backbones will become steely indeed.
Examples of courage may start to snowball. Here’s one star declining to cower in fear for his career:
I’ll have an immense amount of respect for Kimmel if he decides, in the words of Jack Paar, “there must be a better way of making a living than this” and never returns to ABC. There’s no apology good enough for the stunt the network pulled on Jimmy.
Don’t forget, Paar came back after three weeks. About his decision to return, he said, "When I walked off, I said there must be a better way of making a living. Well, I’ve looked… and there isn’t.”
This clearly IS an attack on the First Amendment. I would almost like to feel sorry for Carr, but he is so into the nonsense he spouted in the quoted link that he lost my sympathy.
When the first calls to attack anyone who did not bow down to Kirk’s memory came out, Carr issued a statement that everyone should calm down and not raise the volume over the quarreling.
Then he flips on his own statement and pretends that Kimmel is running a “news” show with misleading information. Kimmel is entertainment and his mild comments about MAGA efforts are accurate. That looks to me that Carr was ordered to change his tune and join the MAGA lies.
Discussion about consumers vs viewers and falling revenue are irrelevant when the head of the FCC (that is part of the governemt) threatens to revoke licenses to broadcast over fairly temperate comments in an entertainment show prologue. The way that Trump is (usually illegally) firing members of the government makes a change in direction prudent. Changing the narrative to claim that Kimmel was lying as a news show is craven–and if he believes it, he is as dishonest and stupid as RFKI jr.
I see something different going on. I see the networks taking advantage of the opportunity to get rid of expensive, late night talk shows and their expensive hosts who are not making money. Like the Rural Purge of TV shows in the early ‘70s when they got rid of every show that had a tree in it and TV became urban cop shows, detectives, drama.
I see networks taking advantage of the situation and looking at the bottom line. I do not see the influence of Trump in this at all. Network bosses are not running scared. All late night talk is going away. It spun in, there were no survivors.
Trump has been calling for these hosts to be fired/cancelled for years, and the Colbert and Kimmel situations both involved media companies seeking approval from the Trump administration for mergers, andTrump’s FCC chair threatened ABC and its affiliates if they didn’t suspend or stop carrying Kimmel’s show. But, no, no, nothing to see here.
CBS giving Colbert one final season could be spun as strictly an economic decision. The pending Paramount-Skydance merger makes it hard for me to believe there’s no Trump influence involved, but for the sake of argument, let’s say there isn’t.
The Kimmel suspension is an entirely different matter. The coordinated outrage over a single joke, Carr’s suggestion that individual station owners should stand up to the networks, followed instantly by Nextar’s decision to do just that (and Nextar needs FCC approval for its merger with Tegna) followed by Sinclair’s piling on is just too damn cute to be a coincidence.
As for the bottom line, ABC is still paying Kimmel and his staff while they’re on suspension, and getting zero revenue from its replacement programming, and having to make good whatever advertising contracts had stipulated the commercials run during Kimmel’s program. That isn’t “taking advantage of the situation.” It’s running scared.
What opportunity? It’s been MONTHS since they announced the impending end of Colbert’s show and we have heard exactly zero plans for his replacement. Old reruns aren’t going to get any ad rate worth talking about and anything else comes with a cost which might well wipe out any “savings” by cutting Colbert’s contract. If I understand it correctly, one of the reasons that networks LIKED late night talk shows is that they typical have small staffs and are cheaper to produce than scripted television. They also give a chance for cross-promotion of upcoming efforts.
This is the line being taken by Trumpites, but there’s no truth to it.
The networks make money from FAR more than the showings on cable (or broadcast). The ratings of those showings are not a good measure of the shows’ value. They make a lot of money from ads shown with clips on YouTube and other social media. From streaming. And from cross-promotion. ABC makes a ton of content and a lot of it gets promoted on Kimmel’s show.
As someone up there said, these corporations don’t need political controversy as an excuse to stop doing something that’s losing them money. Ergo, these shows are NOT losing them money.
Exactly - the announcements for network shows that are not returning for the 2025-2026 season were made between March and June.If it was really a matter of ratings they would have either 1) announced it somewhere between March and June, like all the other network cancellations or 2) announced it sometime early in 2026, as both Kimmel’s and Colbert’s contracts expire in May 2026. The only reason for those announcements to come now is to appease the administration. Especially since my understanding is that networks would have to buy out the hosts contracts - meaning they don’t save that money and there will be much less revenue from whatever replaces the two shows.
