Free Republic

Colbert killed comedy. Then comedy killed his show.The Late Show was born out of the desperation of CBS executives to poach David Letterman. Johnny Carson had decided to bring his unchallenged reign over late night to an end. The future of the Tonight Show was up between Jay Leno, a hard-working comic, and Letterman, the darling of media types in New York, who had the hip alternative Late Night show. NBC settled on Leno, who underwent the first of a series of bastings by the chattering classes for upstaging one of their favorite cringe comics, while CBS created the Late...

“I am your host,” The Tonight Show’s Jimmy Fallon kicked off, telling his Monday broadcast crowd. “Well, at least for tonight,” the comedian added, obviously referencing the recent cancellation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Fallon quickly told the crowd he didn’t like it.

Everybody was shocked — shocked! — when Stephen Colbert announced this week that CBS canceled “The Late Show.” The despondent media reacted like a meteor was about to smash into Earth. But how surprising was Colbert’s kibosh really? Did peoples’ jaws also hit the floor when Blockbuster Video called it quits in 2014? Were they muffling their screams when blimps were phased out for air travel in 1937? “What do you mean ‘no more silent films’?!” The end of “The Late Show” was every bit as writ-in-stone as any of those predictable downfalls. And it’s not only Colbert. The Grim...

The ratings are in for the second quarter of 2025, and things remain competitive across late-night, with Stephen Colbert holding onto the top spot in his hour and Greg Gutfeld dominating his slot, and having huge gains year-on-year. According to LateNighter.com, citing Nielsen ratings, CBS’ The Late Show with Stephen Colbert topped the 11:35 pm hour in total viewers with an average of 2.417 million across 41 first-run episodes. The Late Show was also the only program to show an increase over the first quarter, with the show up 1%. In the coveted 18–49 demo, Colbert brought in 219,000 viewers....

The news of “The Late Show’s” cancellation by CBS doesn’t just end a franchise that had, to this point, lasted more than 30 years. It looks like the beginning of the end of an entire category of television. With one network now opting out of late-night talk entirely, how long will it be before the genre just goes away? CBS announced the cancellation nearly a full year before it is to take effect, making current host Stephen Colbert a lame duck of sorts; he will continue hosting the show through May 2026, at which point it will simply disappear. Observers...

“The quick-wittedness that he has is really second to none,” People fully grasp how serious and thoughtful he is about what he does. He can be informative; he can be offensive; he can be hilarious. He’s certainly going to be provocative. But at the base level, it’s based on preparation as much as anything else.”

Late-night comedy hosts including Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel spent 2024 repeatedly bashing now President-elect Donald Trump — and experienced another bad year as their cultural relevance and viewership continue to crash. The network comedians told a total of 1,463 jokes about Donald Trump and Kamala Harris during the recent fall election period, with a whopping 98 percent of them aimed at Trump, according to a recent study by the Media Research Center. The study covered the period from September 3 through October 25.

Late-night hosts relentlessly made Donald Trump the focus of nearly all of their jokes before the presidential election, but failed to sway the voting, as revealed by a new study. A shocking 98 percent of the jokes made by Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers and Saturday Night Live in the lead up to Election Day made Trump the butt of the joke, according to media watchdog group Media Research Center. As many as 1,428 of the 1,463 political jokes on these shows - from September 3 through October 25 - were targeted at Trump, the study found....

Late night hosts Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers are offering their takes after Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris in the 2024 election. The host of Jimmy Kimmel Live! kicked off his monologue, telling his audience, “Let me tell you, that was the worst Taco Tuesday of my whole life. We had the choice between a prosecutor and a criminal and we chose the criminal to be president of the United States. More than half of this country voted for the criminal who’s planning to pardon himself for his crimes. I guess this election wasn’t rigged.” Later during his...

Four people were killed and at least 21 others injured when “multiple shots” erupted in a popular entertainment district of Birmingham, Alabama Saturday night as police assured they will “hunt down” those responsible. Birmingham Police said it was responding to the scene where “multiple people were shot with possibly multiple casualties just after 11 p.m. near 20th Street and Magnolia Ave. in Five Points South, a popular nightlife section of the city. The Five Points South area has numerous entertainment venues, restaurants and bars and often attracts large crowds on Saturday nights.

President Joe Biden divulged details of secret negotiations over Israeli hostages to late-night comedy host Seth Myers on Monday — giving away bargaining positions by a key U.S. ally, while predicting success that all sides in the talks said was premature. Biden, eating ice cream with the host of NBC’s Late Night with Seth Myers, said that he hoped for a “ceasefire” by next Monday. He did not specify whether he meant a temporary or permanent ceasefire, and both Israel and Hamas said there was no such deal. Reports, in fact, emerged on Monday that Hamas had rejected the terms...

During an interview aired on Monday’s broadcast of NBC’s “Late Night,” President Joe Biden stated that the Senate border bill “would allow us to control the border” and if he’s re-elected it will be taken up in the House and be passed, which Democrats didn’t do when they had control of both chambers and the White House from 2021 to 2023. After host Seth Meyers said, “You even got an immigration bill that passed in the Senate, but never got taken up in the House,” Biden declared, “It will be.” Meyers then asked, “What do you — would you want...

It’s never been funny to tell the same joke twice. If the material on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel Live! wasn’t already stale by the time it left the host’s mouths, it certainly will be when those same episodes are looped back into rotation as production on the late-night circuit is halted following the initiation of a strike among movie and television writers. Late-night TV took the first hit when the strike was announced on Monday evening. The Writers Guild of America West unveiled plans to go forward with the strike after the threat of doing...

I was searching the internet for examples of electronic voting machine hacking and the history thereof and I came across this webpage, "National Election Defense Coalition". National Election Defense Coalition The webpage shows videos of hacking and discussions of the vulnerability of electronic voting machines. One video includes John Oliver admitting Trump was right. Electronic voting machines are vulnerable John Oliver: 'Trump was right. Electronic Voting machines are vulnerable' (20 mins) See RELATED below.

For some ungodly reason, John Oliver has an audience. As a comedian, that’s not really all that surprising. But his biggest audience these days seems to be people who are looking to him for news and information about how the world works, and that’s pretty mind-blowing. It’s actually disturbing, if you really stop and think about it, because he’s actively misinforming/disinforming his audience. Whether it’s because he himself is misinformed, or it’s because he’s comfortable just lying to people’s faces, it’s not something that should be celebrated. But it is being celebrated, much like radical trans activism. Which, incidentally, Oliver...

However, Oliver then questioned if the delays in fixing the problems had anything to do with “who’s been getting hit the hardest.” “You have to believe that if monkeypox was spreading largely through heterosexual sex things would be drastically different,” Oliver said. “It is not homophobic to acknowledge who is currently most affected, which is gay and bisexual men, sex workers, and people who participate in sex with multiple partners. What is homophobic is when you blame or shame the people who are suffering or when you decide you don’t need to care about this because you don’t see their...

John Oliver on Sunday pointed out that housing is now “the thing a 16-year-old TikTok millionaire can afford and you can’t.” (Watch the video below.) On “Last Week Tonight” the host took aim at skyrocketing rents and some of the greedy attitudes behind them.

Left-wing HBO host John Oliver has dismissed calls for sending more police into schools following the deadly school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, saying that the solution is more gun control. In Sunday’s episode of HBO’s Last Week Tonight, John Oliver launched an anti-police rant and cited a study claiming that a police presence in schools could even motivate shooters to come more heavily armed.

During Sunday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Last Week Tonight,” host John Oliver took a shot at Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R), who signed legislation into law earlier this year prohibiting doctors from performing gender-reassignment surgeries and prescribing puberty blockers and hormones to minors. Oliver lashed out at Ivey, asserting that Alabamians deserved “a lot better” than Ivey as governor. "Y’all — am I saying that right? Y’all? I don’t think I can carry that off. You are important. I can’t imagine trying to build self-esteem in childhood as your own government attempts to undermine your very existence. But you should know...

HBO’s host John Oliver launched a vitriolic and profanity-laced attack on Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) over the state’s recently passed Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act, which makes it a felony to conduct surgery or provide puberty blockers and other hormone treatments to children under the age of 19.