Why is Late Night Comedy One-Party Territory?

Groupthink grips Colbert, Kimmel, and Fallon (Part 2)

Say you wake up one morning with a funny idea jiggling around in your noggin. It’s a comedy bit that lampoons Biden or dips a toe into some other forbidden water.  

You’re excited about your idea because it’s fresh. Maybe it could be a sketch or fodder for a monologue. You refine it and decide it would work well as a man-on-the-street segment. Those are cheap, and if it works, it could become a recurring bit. 

And I should mention something else—you’re a writer for Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show. 

Like so many good ideas, yours seems obvious in hindsight: Jimmy asks New Yorkers to contribute to Donald Trump’s legal defense fund. Imagine the indignation. Imagine the litany of “I would rathers.”

So would you pitch your idea to the boss?

Of course not.

There are many reasons to keep the idea to yourself. 

Keep It to Yourself

Fallon would almost certainly hate your pitch. After all, that kind of comedy could make him seem soft on Trump! And every Tonight Show staffer must know what the infamous hair tousling incident of 2016 (allegedly) did to Fallon’s ratings!

Then again, your pitch would never make it to the boss because your writer colleagues would shoot it down before it had a chance to reach him. 

And consider your personal aspirations. By pitching that bit, you’d risk presenting yourself as “problematic,” and that designation would not be good for your career goals. 

Then again, you would never pitch that bit in the first place because you would know how your colleagues would react. And you probably wouldn’t even wake up mulling that kind of a bit because you’d be directing your brain power toward material that actually has a chance of airing. 

Even monoculture organs like Politico now note how network late night shows are becoming one-party territory. The Team Blue boosterism is so common that someone like Stephen Colbert can transition effortlessly from hosting The Late Show to helming a Biden fundraiser, as he recently did. When art and politics overlap so completely, there’s no need to squeeze for different kinds of creative juices. Just keep on flowing with what works during your “day” job. 

Yes, occasionally a milquetoast one liner that mocks Biden will slip through, but for the most part, the late night jokers on ABC, NBC, and CBS look at the smorgasbord of juicy material that America’s 46th president offers (gaffes! hair sniffing! Hunter!) and say, “No, thank you.” 

Last week I argued that Politico’s view of the world doesn’t do much to make sense of late night groupthink. Only about eight percent of America is progressive, yet the biggest brands so often tailor their material for that demographic. There’s so much more market out there. We know Fallon and company hunger for ratings, so why not pursue the rest of the market with equal vigor? 

My one-word answer: incentives. 

When I placed you in the role of a Jimmy Fallon writer, you had little incentive to get daring. 

Sure, you had some incentive to try something new. 

Making 92 percent of America laugh is a big incentive, and incentives may also be quite personal. Writers want to be regarded as innovative, and one of the worst things you could be as any type of comedian is a hack—the person who goes for the obvious laugh or the overused gag. It’s like an endless sequence of kicks to the groin. 

All of that matters. It just doesn’t matter enough. That’s because you’re self interested. You care about your career, and you feel how the incentive structure leans on you to stay with the flock.

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What About the Big Shots?

Sure, it’s hard for some random writer to shake things up, but what about those higher up on the food chain? What about The Tonight Show’s network execs? What about Fallon?

People often assume that Hollywood runs on fear and greed. Fear makes big shots cautious, and greed makes them adventurous. Framing the incentives that way can give the impression of balance, but that’s probably misleading. Often fear and greed stand on the same side of the tug-o-war. 

Greed may pull Fallon and his network bosses to take risks, but only sometimes. Many times greed can have the opposite effect, especially for those who have already “made it.” 

Among the broadcast network hosts, Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show languishes in third place. Greed might tug the show toward innovation (Let’s catch Kimmel and Colbert!). But it’s probably more likely that greed tugs toward caution (Let’s not make things worse!). 

The big-picture truth is that America is a vast, politically-diverse land, but network big shots must also deal with small-picture incentives. They could mix in some jabs at Biden and other progressive targets, but there’s no guarantee that would expand the show’s audience. They might lose more viewers than they gain. And why risk provoking online mobs and trade publications? 

So don’t expect Jimmy Fallon and his peers to deliver too many pointed Biden cracks, and you’ll have to tune into YouTubers like Ryan Long for the “Asking New Yorkers to Donate to Trump’s Legal Defense Fund” bit. Even sketches that tweak Team Blue as well as Team Red are probably forbidden.

Big shots want to be bigger shots, but they’re also terrified to lose what they already have. Who knows what they’ll do to cling to their audiences, but chances are it'll be uncomfortable.

Not uncomfortable in a clever Norm MacDonald kind of way—uncomfortable like that moment during the fundraiser when Colbert laughs way too hard at Biden’s canned Trump joke. 

Ted Balaker is a filmmaker, and former network newser and think tanker. His recent work includes Little Pink House starring Catherine Keener and Jeanne Tripplehorn, Can We Take a Joke? featuring Gilbert Gottfried and Penn Jillette, and the new feature documentary based on the bestselling book, The Coddling of the American Mind, by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. Stream the very first “Substack Presents” feature documentary here.