Opinion: Late-night television's golden age is over

CNN ^ | 8/19/22 | Bill Carter

[Libloather]

Maybe CNN should be chatting about the death of CNN.

[x]

The Golden Age ended sometime in the last century.

[poinq]

Johnny then Dave or Dick Cavett on one channel and Johnny on the other. Late night talk shows were never better. Plus the guests were far better back then.

[Jonty30]

That’s because late night talk shows wrecked themselves.

[Fai Mao]

The golden age ended with the retirement of Jay Leno.

[x]

Plus the guests were far better back then.

There were some really wild characters back then. Especially on Letterman, but also on Carson. Nowadays, nobody has anything very interesting to say, and everybody's just trying to push their latest project. In the old days, I actually thought they wanted to be there.

[NWFree]

I think it ended when they went libtard and no longer funny

[dfwgator]

The golden age ended with the retirement of Jay Leno Johnny Carson.

[algore]

The A-Team, Night Rider, Dukes of Hazzard, Airwolf, Johnny Carson, etc

That was the golden age

[_longranger81]

Carson.

[Nextrush]

Media is changing more fragmented the old media that gave us late night TV is becoming a thing of the past.

[Tallguy]

Late Night TV dies when Letterman got political and Jay Leno hung it up. Personally I preferred Carson, but Leno’s monologues were pretty much “must see” as well.

[JennysCool]

Greg Gutfeld is shredding Colbert, Kimmel and Fallon in the ratings. Therefore, CNN must declare “Late-night television’s golden age is over.”

[Gay State Conservative]

Carson: the GOAT
Letterman: Not bad in his early days
Leno: Good,but not great
Colbert: Piece of excrement

[RckyRaCoCo]

They’d never admit it, but...half this country doesn’t watch ANY of their garbage.

[dfwgator]

Craig Ferguson was pretty good though.

[dfwgator]

You could still watch old Carson episodes and laugh out loud.

[Fungi]

Bingo! End of discussion.

[George from New England]

I enjoyed Fallon until about six years ago. When Trump arrived and promptly had a bullseye placed on his back. I said goodbye to Fallon.

110% garbage since then.

[Jeff Chandler]

There was no “Golden Age” of television, late night or otherwise.

Sturgeon’s Law: Ninety-percent of everything is crud.