Why the Late Night Talk Show Is Dead, and ‘SNL’ After Lorne

The Town with Matthew Belloni

The Ringer

Society & Culture

4.3 • 847 Ratings

🗓️ 21 April 2022

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Matt is joined by longtime media reporter Bill Carter to talk about Jon Stewart’s struggling talk show on Apple+, why the modern late night talk show isn’t working, and what these shows mean to their respective networks. Later they predict when Lorne Michaels will step down from 'SNL,' who will replace him, and what the cast will look like next year. Host: Matt Belloni Guest: Bill Carter Producer: Craig Horlbeck Theme Song: Devon Renaldo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Benifer is back. Brad and Jen are friends again, and Paris Hilton is somehow still making headlines.
0:07.3	Twenty years later, we're living in the world that the 2000s tabloids created. On this series,
0:13.0	I'm going to tell you the story of a decade of American life through the trash we love to consume.
0:18.8	From Spotify and the Ringer podcast network, I'm Claire Malone, and this is just like us,
0:24.4	The Tabloids, the Changed America.
0:26.9	Listen on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
0:31.5	All right, it is Thursday, April 21st, and today we are going to be talking a little bit about the struggles of late night TV.
0:40.9	I don't know if you saw the numbers that came out this week for the John Stewart show on Apple.
0:45.8	I'm not watching.
0:46.9	You're probably not watching.
0:48.1	Nobody's watching.
0:49.0	And we're going to talk a little bit about why it's so hard to launch a late night show.
0:53.9	We're probably not going to be talking
0:55.3	about CNN Plus. Let's pour a little bit out for CNN Plus. It lasted less than a month. It was
1:01.3	shut down today. Yeah, what is that? That is about six months or five and a half months less
1:08.0	than Quibi lasted. And Quibi was a famous disaster in the streaming
1:13.1	wars. This is about what three, two and a half scaramuchis, I think CNN Plus lasted. RIP to that
1:20.2	service, it's just going to be part of HBO Max, as I predicted and a lot of people did. So we'll see
1:25.3	what they do with all those talented people that they brought over there and
1:28.3	spent $300 million to launch a service that they then quickly shut down.
1:33.3	So that's the end of CNN Plus.
1:35.3	And hopefully that is not the end of late night TV, but we're going to get into it with Bill
	...

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