This is a lightly edited transcript of the May 21 edition of Right Now With Perry Bacon. You can watch the video here or by following this show on YouTube or Substack.
This is part of Right Now’s ongoing cover of media in the Trump era, including a discussion on the temporary suspension of Jimmy Kimmel and an exploration of why the right has been much smarter than the left in developing media strategies.
Perry Bacon: I’m Perry Bacon. I’m the host of Right Now on The New Republic. We’re talking today on the last day Stephen Colbert will be hosting his show on CBS, because CBS decided to cancel it. So we’re talking to Meredith Conroy. She’s a professor of political science at Cal State University San Bernardino, and she’s an expert on media and politics and the intersection of the two. So I want to talk to her about late-night TV and its role in politics. Meredith, welcome back.
Meredith Conroy: Thanks. Great to be here.
Bacon: So I want to go through a few what I’m going to call almost a history of seminal moments of late-night TV and politics. And rather than ask you questions, I want to go through the moment and describe it how I saw it, and then have you react to it. Because I think you and I are in the same age range—I’m not aging you—but we’re in the same range and we probably have some of the same cultural references, so we’ll do it that way.
Conroy: OK, that sounds great.
Bacon: All right. So I’m going to start with 1992. A lot of people in communications and politics say this is the big moment when late night becomes a part of politics on some level. This is when Bill Clinton is running in 1992, and he goes on Arsenio Hall.
Arsenio Hall was a late-night talk show host—he’s African American, and I think that’s relevant to this conversation. So Bill Clinton goes on and plays the saxophone, and it’s a moment where he appears more natural, very charismatic, casual. It’s the first time, I think, a major candidate has been on one of those shows.
And I know it was a big moment because my mom mentioned it to me yesterday. We were talking about politicians she viewed as charismatic—and maybe handsome, even—and she mentioned Bill Clinton when he was running and playing the saxophone. So this really resonated, even years and years later. Did you watch this? Talk about Arsenio Hall and Bill Clinton—which I did not watch, because I was 12, but looking back, I know what it was.
Conroy: Yeah. I also don’t think I watched—I think I was nine. But as you mentioned, in political communication, people who study late night—it’s always the first example in any academic article. They always start with Clinton on Arsenio.
And like you said, the effect of that was that he was likable, personal—his image was softened for a broader audience who may not necessarily be politically attentive, which academic research shows that the late-night audiences historically have been less attentive to politics, and late-night shows are a gateway for that attention.
We call that incidental exposure—by watching a late-night show where you might not expect to be encountering politics, you do. And I’m sure in the ‘90s that was especially the case. Leno and Carson certainly had made political jokes, but I think with Clinton on Arsenio, that sort of solidified the necessity for political candidates to campaign by going on these late-night shows with audiences that were different than 60 Minutes.
But that’s interesting that your mom talked about how she really liked him because of that appearance. Those appearances, I think, have that effect. I remember—I’m already jumping ahead to The Daily Show—but I remember watching The Daily Show and seeing, I think it was Huckabee, play bass on the show.
Bacon: I think Huckabee is more of a musician type, if I remember correctly. I think you’re probably- this is when he ran in ‘08 or ran in ‘08 I think.
Conroy: I should have confirmed that, but I remember being like, “Wow, he is coming off incredibly likable.” They’re doing a talent that’s unrelated to politics, and it’s just a different environment. It really can change the way that people see these candidates. What else should we say about Clinton’s appearance on Arsenio?
Bacon: So I’m going to jump to another one. I’m going to jump to 2003—about 10 years later. I actually did watch this one. Arnold Schwarzenegger decided to run for governor, and he announced this on the Jay Leno show. That was very funny at the time, and kind of funny now, although he was actually a pretty decent governor.
But anyway, he goes on—and he and Jay Leno are friends, in part because they’re both in Hollywood. Arnold Schwarzenegger was an actor, for people who don’t know—and is an actor, I should say. And so he went on and announced his candidacy on Jay Leno, and then went on to win the governorship. That was another big moment—the first time, I think, somebody had really formally announced their candidacy on one of these shows.
Conroy: Yeah. It made sense—an actor, like you said, in the state of California. And the Tonight Show is in Burbank, as opposed to Letterman, which is in New York. I definitely watched Leno as a kid. There were the Leno-Letterman wars, where you liked one or the other. I grew up—I would stay up to watch Jay Leno.
And yeah, I remember that moment as well. I think it made sense for his campaign for those reasons we just said. But again, a moment that, like you said, was probably the first. I wouldn’t be surprised if a candidate since has announced that they’re running on a late-night talk show. And I know we’re going to talk about this—given how much more political these shows have become, and that Democratic politicians in particular actively want to be on these shows. So yeah, I’m sure that’s changed. But Schwarzenegger is a Republican running in the state of California.
Bacon: It should be noted because we’re conceding that now Democrats might announce on a comedy show. But back then, Schwarzenegger is a Republican—he was a sort of more moderate version. He and Leno—I think Leno actually got criticized later on for being too favorable to Schwarzenegger because they were friendly and so on. Also, Leno’s politics are probably kind of center-ish anyway.
Conroy: Yeah. One other—Trump went on with Jimmy Fallon, and Fallon famously ruffled his hair. But I think that appearance was probably one of the last times you saw a Republican that aligns themselves with Trump going on these shows.
Bacon: Yeah.
Conroy: But I jumped too far ahead. Are there other ones you want to talk about?
Bacon: So I guess the next thing I want to talk about is Jon Stewart and The Daily Show in the early 2000s. That show became really big from 2003 to 2008. I remember there was a moment in the 2007–2008 campaign—I was covering Biden, who was running for vice president by this time, and I was on the road with Biden. Biden was making all these gaffes, and my editor was like, The Daily Show featured Joe Biden’s gaffes—that means it’s really big now, we should do a story about it.
To the point where, particularly among liberals, Jon Stewart in that period from ‘03 to ‘08 was almost an assignment editor. That show was really seminal for liberals in that period. Does that seem right to you?
Conroy: Yeah. I think it was a can’t-miss for college-educated audiences. I don’t know how liberal the audiences were. There’s some academic research looking at who watched The Daily Show, and it did tend to be people who were already highly attentive. Because one of the debates in political science was whether or not The Daily Show in particular, and other mock news shows, created cynicism.
And there was even a special issue in a political science journal where they had mock debates and a mock trial, putting Jon Stewart on trial to argue about whether or not he was creating cynicism. And one of the debates was, he’s creating skepticism but not necessarily cynicism.
But yeah, it was a can’t-miss for myself when I was in undergrad and graduate school. You just didn’t miss it—you had to watch it in order to have conversations with your friends the next day.
Bacon: Did you learn from it, or did you already—was it more humorous, or did you actually learn stuff? Did you see things for the first time there?
Conroy: I learned a lot. And there have been studies that show that people did actually, from late night and those satirical shows, become more interested in the news as a result of watching.
Because the people who watched The Daily Show probably already were highly informed in the first place, but it did lead to additional news-seeking from more traditional sources. So there were positive effects, learning effects.
I learned a lot, and then when I went on to be a professor, I am not ashamed to admit that I used—I had the DVDs. Remember the Indecision series?
Bacon: No.
Conroy: So every election they had Indecision 2004, Indecision 2008. I wore those DVDs out for my students, because I thought that satire is a vehicle for understanding a lot of what our politics is. And so I learned a lot, and I think my students did too. And then Jon Stewart even had a fake American government textbook—did you know this?
Perry Bacon: No.
Conroy: A physical copy of an American government textbook, organized just like any other American government textbook—yeah, mocking government, mostly.
But we should say The Daily Show—originally, I think their main foil was the media. Over time, they came to mock politicians, and I think The Colbert Report in particular targeted politicians more—especially, they brought them on the show and just mocked them to their faces in those “Better Know a District” series. But I think The Daily Show’s main target was you—the media. And that’s a useful vehicle or way to stay more neutral politically, when your target is the media, which is universally—
Bacon: I’m trying to remember now, because I remember Jon Stewart went on—there was a show called Crossfire, and Jon Stewart went on it to mock the idea that they made every issue Democrat versus Republican. But what was their—on The Daily Show itself—what was their critique of the media in the early phase? I don’t totally remember. On what grounds were they critiquing the media?
Conroy: They would definitely go after Fox News and the way that they used sound and images and eagles and flags and iconic American imagery to make people feel something. So I think Fox in particular was their primary source of ridicule. I do think they took on MSNBC as well—cable news, essentially. They would have lots of montages of either doublespeak or these mock debates where no one is really saying anything.
And so I wonder if his Crossfire episode—which probably people watching this or who do watch this know about—I used to show that in class as well. He takes down Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala for having a performative discussion and not a real discussion. And I’m sure that once he saw—that was one of those videos that went viral at a time when something went viral and became a topic of conversation for a month or longer.
And I think that maybe he was like, Wow, this really resonates. Let’s keep on this, let’s keep going after cable news. But I think Fox was the bigger focus of their criticisms—though I think MSNBC probably as well, and probably CNN.
Bacon: So we’ll come to Stephen Colbert now. He’s on The Daily Show for a while. I didn’t watch The Daily Show as much as other people did. But in 2006, I was at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and Colbert was the comedic guest. And it was a very aggressive attack on George W. Bush and his administration, but very subtly done through jokes and so on.
Everyone’s looking at the table, and we’re all like, Oh, this is much [more pointed than expected]. This is ‘06, before Bush has become very unpopular. People were like, Oh, he really gave a scathing speech about Bush, but in this sort of mock style, so it was harder to realize in the moment.
Conroy: Yeah, I think he’s so good at that. And on his show, The Colbert Report—where he was mocking Bill O’Reilly, I think, mostly—I think for a long time, people actually didn’t know if he was performing or not.
I genuinely think it was a debate amongst viewers. It probably was settled pretty quickly, but he’s so good at that. And I think he’s still good at it. I do think Colbert in particular has always been civic-minded. And when you hear him talk about his show and when he decided to leave The Colbert Report and go to late night, it had a lot to do with feeling like that mocking was becoming too real and almost humanizing what he was trying to take down. And so that was what led to this next transition.
In that sense, I think his—and I know we’ll talk about this—he does seem to know where the winds are blowing and follow them. He was at the height of satirical news, and he was at the height of late night in a political context.
I think the height of late night was probably the Leno-Letterman wars, but in a political context, he was at the height of it. And now whatever he does next—Podcast? That’s what I was thinking. Like Jon Stewart? I don’t know, but yeah.
Bacon: So I think that early period, from 2000 to 2008—Colbert and Stewart never said, “We are liberals,” but in some ways they were probably some of the more prominent and effective critics of George W. Bush.
Conroy: Yeah. Jon Stewart had that segment, “Mess-o-Potamia”—
Bacon: About the Iraq War, basically.
Conroy: About the Iraq War, absolutely. But that’s the one thing about media—one reason media seems politicized is because they are critical of power. And yeah, they were on air when Bush was in office for eight years. If there were a Democrat in office, do I think they would have gone after a Democrat as hard? Probably.
But because it was Bush, and because that was the height of those shows, I think they became more liberal-coded because they were critical of the people in power, and the people in power were the Republicans. And it does seem like Jon Stewart in particular has a personal, strong political opinion about Iraq and 9/11, and he’s done a lot, as most people know, for 9/11 first responders and made that kind of a personal political point of view.
Bacon: So I want to move to 2010, which I think was the height of their power on some level. Jon Stewart and Colbert had this Rally for Sanity, I think it was called, at the National Mall. And at this point, they didn’t make it—it was odd. They wouldn’t acknowledge this: it felt to me like a reaction to the Tea Party.
They were saying, The Tea Party is having these crazy rallies. Stewart and Colbert would not say, We are Obama supporters, but their ethos, their sense of humor was very in line with Obama. And I thought the 2010 event was in sort of frustration with what was happening in the country, driven by the Tea Party—that’s how I viewed that.
Conroy: Yeah. That’s right. The Tea Party rallies, for sure, and this was a reaction. Did you cover it, by chance?
Bacon: I didn’t actually end up going to that. I’m not totally sure why, because it was weird—we couldn’t quite figure out whether they were saying it was a political rally or not. They weren’t—they didn’t want to commit to it being political. They never wanted to commit to being political figures. That was part of what was going on, I think.
Conroy: And I didn’t go or know anyone that went, but I obviously knew about it and probably had wanted to go, because I was a super fan. And I think that what they were doing was good. A lot of it had to do with the fact that I personally became more interested in politics because of that kind of delivery.
But I don’t think the event—I think they’ve since commented on it. I don’t know if they necessarily regret it, but they didn’t necessarily see the function of it, and that trying to stay nonpartisan made it less effective.
Bacon: So by 2015, two things happen. And I think they correctly assessed that in the Obama years they were less relevant—their criticism was less sharp, I think that’s part of what’s going on. But by 2015, Jon Stewart decides to leave The Daily Show and stop hosting, and Stephen Colbert, as you alluded to, got a little bit bored with the Colbert character.
Then the late-night job with Letterman opens, and he’s chosen to replace Letterman. These things both happen in 2015. Jon Stewart kind of graduates out of The Daily Show—for a while, at least—and Colbert graduates to network TV.
Conroy: Yeah. I think that’s right, because much of what they needed was incompetence, and you can criticize the Obama administration for a lot of things, but incompetence isn’t probably one of them. So I imagine they lacked material, and there may have been less of a demand for that kind of political commentary.
When I was preparing for this, I was thinking about how irony and satire function. Dannagal Young—I think you’re aware of her research—she’s at the University of Delaware. She’s written about how liberals are drawn to satire and irony, and Republicans are drawn to outrage commentary. Her book is called Irony and Outrage, and it talks about the political functions of these emotions that can emerge from comedy. And those shows became so politicized that they almost ceased to do what they had set out to do, I think—and then, of course, late night became politicized next.
Bacon: We’ll come back to that in a second.
Conroy: But I think you’re right about the evolution of it—the need for those shows was less obvious during the Obama administration. And I didn’t really watch much of Trevor Noah. Trevor Noah took over, I think, initially—
Bacon: Let me come back to Trevor Noah. Hold on one second. So 2015, also—I did watch this. Early in Colbert’s run—I don’t think I had a great sense of what Colbert himself thought and what his view of the world was. But in September 2015, he interviews Joe Biden. I think by this time, Joe Biden’s son Beau had died.
And there was a discourse about whether Biden was going to run for president or whether he was grieving and shouldn’t run. Colbert was very sympathetic to Biden, encouraged him to run. They talk about their shared Catholicism. And on some level, that was the first time I realized: Colbert is a Catholic Democrat like Joe Biden. That’s what I took away from that. Did you remember that moment?
Conroy: I do. And they also had their shared experiences with grief. Colbert famously lost a father and a brother in a plane accident and was raised by his mother. And Joe Biden, obviously, had lost his first wife and a child in a car accident, and then Beau. So I think they connected on that, and the Catholicism—they had lots of things to bond over.
Going back—Biden, I think, thrived in conversations with both of them.
Bacon: Both with Stewart and Colbert?
Conroy: Yeah. I think he thrives with that kind of back-and-forth. But Biden was on Stewart in 2006 and made a joke about how he lied about having coal miners in his family. Do you remember this?
Bacon: No, I don’t remember this.
Conroy: He says, I tried that crap. It doesn’t work. He’s like, I was from Scranton. I assumed there was a coal miner in my family, and it turns out there wasn’t. But Joe Biden’s no-malarkey, just being authentically who he was and honest—I think that did work well in those spaces.
And I do think Colbert is such a good interviewer. One of the things that he does on late night is he has on engineers or scientists to talk about—not to say that those are boring fields—but he is able to get people excited about what they’re talking about. And yeah, I do think that interview was really good and probably may have informed Biden’s decision to eventually run.
But your question about Colbert’s politics being murky—I think that’s right. I kind of wonder if they formed in these roles. He’s talked about not really caring about politics before he started as a correspondent on The Daily Show, and I imagine that he became more engaged politically with that job. And the things that personally have happened to him in all of these roles probably shaped his views.
Bacon: I don’t actually think his politics at that point, 2015—I don’t think his politics are actually—yeah. I think he’s not Elizabeth Warren in terms of having a lot of views on things. And Joe Biden—I don’t think he’s that [ideological either.] He’s Catholic, he’s a nice person—that drives his politics more than that he’s read a bunch of books on policy. My sense is that for Colbert, maybe it’s a little bit like that too.
Conroy: Yeah. I think so—
Perry Bacon: What seems normal, what seems good, in a certain sense. I’m going to jump to 2017 now. This is when Trump is elected, and now we have a lot of TV hosts that I think are interesting. Colbert is very critical of Trump. Interestingly enough, Jimmy Kimmel—who I had never thought of as being interesting and never really watched—becomes the voice of—he’s defending Obamacare, criticizing Republicans. He talks about preexisting conditions and why we need to cover people with them.
I know that Bill Cassidy—Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy—just lost his primary. Back in 2017, Cassidy went on Kimmel’s show and assured him that the healthcare bill would not be that bad, and then the healthcare bill came out and it was pretty bad, and Kimmel ripped him and said, “You lied to me on my show.” That was a really—Kimmel I had thought of as always being dull, nothing to say, and he was very political.
You also had Seth Meyers, also very critical of Trump. Trevor Noah at this point has taken over from Jon Stewart and, with his background as being from South Africa, does a great job analogizing Trump to dictators abroad—that was an interesting role he played.
I had forgotten, until I was thinking about this, Samantha Bee, who’s also a graduate of The Daily Show—she also for this period has a show, and it was actually really very good, also very critical of Trump. So you have this unusual thing where comedy late night becomes five different shows attacking Trump, who’s obviously terrible. But in a certain sense, that was a moment where late night was very actively opposing the president.
Conroy: Oh, yeah. I had forgotten about Kimmel’s ACA segments. But I did used to show the one where they went on the street and asked people about the ACA and then asked people about Obamacare, and I think that would probably radicalize anyone to see how people’s opinions on the exact same thing shifted in real time when you labeled it Obamacare.
Bacon: Just so that people understand what you mean: when you ask people if they like Obamacare, they’re often very negative. But you ask people if they like the Affordable Care Act, they either don’t know what that is or they’re fine with it.
Conroy: Yeah. And I remember that was a segment that they did on Kimmel—they walked around talking to people. I actually don’t know where Kimmel is filmed—
Bacon: Studio in [Los Angeles].
Conroy: But yeah, walking around and talking to people. I had forgotten about that. But those moments were very salient for me, because I watched Samantha Bee for sure, and I watched all these late-night shows. I’ve just always loved late-night comedy, and I love political comedy.
And the moment with Trump is that he forced their hand with his attacks on media as being the enemy of the people. It’s funny, because that’s what their shtick was—they went after the media. And then now they got grouped in as media. It wasn’t just people at broadcast or online publications—they were now part of that group that was being demonized. And it makes sense that they would have to respond to those criticisms.
Bacon: One thing I hadn’t thought of until you were talking is that in the Leno-Letterman era, I think it was obvious Letterman probably voted for Democrats, but Leno and Letterman were trying to reach these big mass audiences. By 2017, there was no way—Colbert wasn’t reaching 20 million people. So being more ideological, being more partisan was fine because he already had a niche audience. There’s nothing—there’s no real broadcast by that point, right?
Conroy: Yeah. And I think that also explains the shift in what they talked about, because these audiences now—and even late—now this is the problem with late night. The fragmentation of our media environment is such that appointment television is over, right?
People don’t sit down at 10:00 p.m. on a Thursday night to watch Jay Leno. They’re watching clips later on, and these networks are starting to get hip to that, to improve their ratings—and they’re still obviously struggling.
But the popularity was narrow. As you said, they had niche audiences. So we call it narrowcasting. Broadcasting is ABC, the network. Narrowcasting—you know your audience, and you give them the information that they want. It also creates more of those parasocial relationships, because they feel more personally attached to the hosts.
And you just have this cyclical effect: your audience becomes more and more like a community, more like your friends, and then you continue to tailor your content to what they want and what they’re demanding. For other audiences, they wouldn’t even think about watching those shows. But for the audiences who do, it’s part of their regular scroll.
Bacon: Trevor Noah’s very talented, but I think his show in the first Trump administration was certainly less relevant than Jon Stewart’s critiques of Bush. And that’s because—why? Why do you think that is? I don’t think people were watching Trevor Noah to understand what was wrong with Trump the way they were tuning in to Stewart to watch Bush 15 years prior. So what do we think explains that?
Conroy: I think his comedic approach is different. I think he’s more high-level, high-minded, less—not to say Jon Stewart is slapstick, and I don’t want to say fart jokes or whatever, because that’s not what Stewart’s doing. But I think Noah’s comedy is more high-level.
It’s more—you have to think about the context that all of this exists in. And yet he brought his experiences, as you already mentioned, as a South African and Black man. It took more time for people to kind of get what he was doing. But I think it eventually became more popular, and then he left and started doing something different.
Bacon: He’s doing a podcast, I think. And we’re going to talk about podcasts—that’s where the world is going, I think.
Conroy: But I just think it was different. It’s hard when a new host comes in—they’re not going to do it the same way. I think it’s cool that he didn’t do it the same way, because that wasn’t why people [were watching].
Bacon: So I’m going to move—so the Trump era, all these hosts criticizing him. Biden comes in, these hosts are less critical because they’re more left-leaning, I think it’s fair to say. But I remember in 2024, Jon Stewart comes back to The Daily Show, and one of his first episodes is where he’s very angry about why we have these two old people running for president—Donald Trump, but also Joe Biden. Why is he running still?
It seemed like at this point Biden was skipping interviews, and Jon Stewart was pointing out, Why is this guy not doing interviews? It seems like that’s a problem—it says he’s not up to it. And I remember that was the first time where I saw liberals—my friends, people I know—being like, Jon Stewart sucks. He’s doing this both-sides crap that the rest of the media is.
And that was an interesting moment, because I think seven months later, it looked like Jon Stewart was correct. But in some ways, that was the first time where Jon Stewart’s politics were different than the average Democrat’s were for the first time, I thought.
Conroy: Yeah. And I think it made sense—that’s when he came back, because I think he got uncomfortable with his only target being Republicans and Trump. And then when he saw an opportunity where I could be critical—be what I wants to be, which is critical of bad politics or bad political decisions—that was a door that he saw open and jumped through.
And he was definitely part of the folks that were critical of Biden. And yeah, I imagine that the audience didn’t want to hear that sort of thing, because—and it makes sense, right? There are lots of people targeting Democrats. So you come to those places for something that you feel good about watching— you come to those places for something that you feel good about watching and doesn’t make you question… No, I shouldn’t say that. that it was just a safer place to critique the other side.
And so some of those points were probably not received well by the audience. But as you said—and you were probably right—had people listened to people like Stewart sooner, 2024 could have gone differently.
Bacon: So 2025, Trump’s second term. It felt—I guess Samantha Bee doesn’t have a show by this time. Trevor Noah is not on, but Stewart is back, and The Daily Show is doing what it used to do. But I feel like by 2025, the hosts are a little less critical of Trump than they were in 2017. Is that right?
Conroy: The late-night hosts?
Bacon: Yeah, the late-night hosts. Yes.
Conroy: Yeah. I think people were tired of Trump criticism. And what else can you say?
Bacon: What else can you say? I think that’s correct as well. So when CBS decides—this is last July—we’re going to cancel Colbert on the Late Night Show, what did you—I guess my reactions were: yes, this seems like CBS, or whoever’s buying CBS, might want to placate Trump.
But I’m also open to the idea that the late-night era—the era of one person, one white guy most of the time, interviewing whoever the celebrity of the day is—is over, because all the celebrities have their own podcasts. Everyone has a podcast. These people are all over the place. So I don’t like what happened, because I like Colbert, and I think CBS is probably doing some level of censorship. But in this—we probably have left the era of late night as sort of—
Conroy: Yeah. I think—setting politics aside, which I think [you’re right about]—the fact that it’s CBS that’s the first to jettison a late-night talk show does suggest that it’s political, because of the new ownership there and other decisions that were made. That makes sense. But I think what we talked about earlier is also factoring in—the appointment television era is over.
I don’t think the era of interviewing politicians is over. There is some where interviewing is [what people watch]: Hot Ones, depending on your political orientation—Ziwe—what are some other interview shows? The SmartLess podcast, Armchair Expert. These people are—
Bacon: So all of them interview politicians a lot?
Conroy: Yeah, they bring politicians on. So I think there’s still a demand for that format, and for sketches too. I think Saturday Night Live is still really popular and has been better about figuring out how to use the clip economy to keep people interested. And like I said, I don’t think the networks have yet figured out how to measure the attention that they get from those audiences in all those spaces.
But yes—I think the formatting is affecting late night. CBS is obviously the first to offload the actual show. Do I think the rest are going to? Possibly.
It does seem, though, that Seth Meyers and Jimmy Kimmel are still popular and figuring out this new format and these new audiences. Fallon I’m really interested in, because he’s the least political of them all. But his ratings are dropping as well.
Bacon: The ratings are going down because the ratings are going down, yes.
Conroy: Exactly. It’s kind of like that debate about Bluesky and Twitter—social media is dying.
Bacon: Yeah. Except Bluesky, social media is dying, at least for sure. Yes.
Conroy: Yeah. And so I think it’s just a formatting issue. And if CBS wants to try and figure out what works there instead, good luck. But I think some of these late-night shows will hang on. Some of these networks will try to hang on, to figure out if they can keep their audiences around—or where their audiences are going—and follow them. So I think it’s both: yes, the politicization, and Trump politicizing late night, has contributed to it, but it’s certainly not the only reason.
Bacon: So going back to the beginning here. If you’re looking for the Arsenio Hall–Bill Clinton example—if you’re a politician today, where do you go to reach the sort of mass audience, to show that you’re a nice, normal person?
Conroy: I think you have to go everywhere. I think you have to tailor your message.
Bacon: I meant to mention—Trump hates The View, and they’re all on The View. The View is also a talk show in a different way, but is actually very political, right?
Conroy: It is interesting. In political science, we call The View and these shows we’ve been talking about “soft news.” I don’t know if I already mentioned that. But soft news is where you get incidentally exposed to politics when you’re not expecting it. I don’t know if that’s the case anymore for The View, because of how political it’s become—and they even have someone who’s more conservative and someone who’s more liberal to have balance. So it is a political show. But yeah, The View is relevant here. Obama and McCain both did The View.
Bacon: Yeah. I should have mentioned—The View is not in late night. The time is not the same, and it’s not the same format. But in some ways, they interview people and they talk about politics a lot.
Whoopi talks about politics all the time and has the same views as Colbert and the other hosts in terms of being anti-Trump. And I know Trump also hates The View and has been trying to get ABC to censure them as well, the way he tried to handle Kimmel.
Conroy: But I think if you’re running for office now, you have to do a lot more shows. You don’t have the benefit of a single show that has a really big audience, like Leno or Letterman or Arsenio. But you have lots of shows with audiences that are attuned and care and take it as an endorsement.
Like, when you go on—I shouldn’t say that, because Crooked Media doesn’t necessarily endorse everyone that they have on. But the Crooked Media empire has a left-leaning audience, and politicians running as Democrats have to go on those shows. Ezra Klein has an audience that’s very different from Crooked Media but also slightly left-leaning, and if you’re running for office, you go on that show. He had on James Talarico, and he recently had on Alex Bores from the New York race. So that’s another stop you have to make.
It would be really interesting to see how these candidates are doing lots of shows—how they talk about themselves to these different audiences. I don’t think they’re going to do really niche shows. I mentioned Ziwe—do you know Ziwe?
Bacon: I don’t know who Ziwe is, no.
Conroy: OK. It’s incredibly dry—puts people on the spot, gets them to say something that they don’t mean. She’s a brilliant interviewer in a way that is very uncomfortable. Z-I-W-E. I don’t think they’ll probably stop there, but they probably will go on podcasts that have seemingly small audiences where those audiences never miss an episode. Call Her Daddy for younger women—
Bacon: This is one that I found challenging. When Kamala went on this show, I was like, “Who is this person?” And I can’t tell if that’s because I’m old, or male, or both, because I didn’t—I did not know who that was.
I feel like people knew who Arsenio Hall was in ‘92, even people who didn’t watch it every night. But sometimes these—I know who Joe Rogan is. But Kamala did a bunch of podcasts in 2024, and some of them I was like, “I don’t—”
Conroy: That’s correct.
Bacon: Are you reaching people? Because I know niche and small are related concepts, and sometimes I wonder: are they going almost so small they’re not hitting anybody?
Conroy: They are going small, and their audiences are nothing like what you used to get when you went on a late-night show. But I do think that if you are interested in a young female audience, you would go to Call Her Daddy. If you’re interested in a young male audience, you would probably do Joe Rogan. There are other options.
Bacon: I think Bill Simmons has been noted as somebody who might be more useful, yeah.
Conroy: Yeah. Probably. But it’s a whole new world, and I imagine working in communications for a politician these days—you have the weirdest spreadsheets in front of you. And also that data’s really hard to get. Edison has podcast listening data, but it is hard to know who watches these shows. They don’t have a Nielsen.
And I imagine all these candidates know who watches what. So it’s a whole new frontier—as someone who studies it, and for candidates and campaigns that are trying to navigate those waters. It is a whole new world. But I think going on every show seems to be what a lot of these candidates in contested races are doing.
Bacon: So we’ll finish by talking about these guys. Jon Stewart does an interview show—he’s both doing The Daily Show, I think once a week, but he’s also doing these long interviews. He interviewed AOC. And my sense is his interviews go viral in part because he is still a big deal—so in some ways, Jon Stewart has [that going for him]. Trevor Noah interviews people, occasionally politicians. And I’ll be curious what Colbert does.
Conroy: I am too.
Bacon: But I guess the question is: do these individuals matter even if they’re not in the late-night format they used to be in 20 years ago, with a big audience? Do Colbert and Jon Stewart matter today?
Conroy: I think so. And remember when we did our 2028 draft—last time I was with Perry and Nathaniel Rakich—there were people in the comments talking about getting them to run for office. So I think that these names in particular have certainly solidified their influence on American politics.
I think I’m the one who said that they should both just take on a role as kingmakers—endorsing people, not running. And I don’t think either of them would even entertain running. Do you? I don’t think they would entertain it, either of them.
Bacon: When Colbert interviewed President Obama recently, he jokingly mentioned that people want him to run, and Obama said he would be the worst person, and then Colbert said, “Is that an endorsement?” and Obama said, “No, it’s not.” I don’t expect him to run for president, but I don’t think it’s zero percent. I think it’s more—
Conroy: With Colbert—
Bacon: With Colbert. He’s someone who seems fairly political and seems fairly open to it, and I think perceives himself to have been censored in a way that is political and partisan—and wants to run against today’s right. So I sense he has more motivation than Jon Stewart does.
Conroy: OK. I would agree with that if I had to rank them—Stewart below Colbert for sure. But I do think their influence is solidified. Whatever Colbert does, an audience will follow him. I just don’t know what that will be.
A podcast seems the most obvious, but it seems like something not creative enough for Colbert. Maybe he’ll do some type of sketch show, or maybe he’ll do live events, go on tour. I think it’s probably something that him and his team are thinking about really hard, because they know that he has a lot of influence and that he does care about the outcome in the next races—2026 and 2028.
Bacon: So we think Kimmel and Seth Meyers will go on for a while longer, and we think politicians should go on those shows still?
Conroy: I do, yeah. I don’t think you’re getting the audience you used to get—politically inattentive people that aren’t politically active. I don’t think you’re getting that audience anymore. So the intention is different. But I still think you’re able to do what they’ve always done, which is be more personable, focus on your image, talk about your interests—your dog, your instruments, your kids—and they still serve that function.
And they can get away with it. One of the criticisms Stewart had initially of those shows was right—that they threw softballs. So does that mean that, now that late night is political, they can’t have a softball conversation? They can. But even back in the Leno days, he would always end with a policy question.
Bacon: Yes. Yes.
Conroy: Because you can’t—OK, you had them on the show, you can’t totally shirk your duty to ask something political. But I think there are more political questions now. It’s still—you’re not going to have a debate necessarily with these late-night hosts, because the point is to make people have a good time while learning. So I think the intention is different, the audience is different, but it’s still an avenue where politicians should go.
Have we started seeing the 2028 Democratic candidates doing any of these shows?
Bacon: The reason I thought of The View is in part because I’m in Louisville, and our governor, Andy Beshear, who’s running for president, was on The View recently. Josh Shapiro has been trying to do the male shows—he’s done a couple of sporty podcasts.
In terms of late night, I don’t watch Kimmel enough to know, to be totally honest. But I know that The View has become—I think The View is perceived as a place where you reach older liberal women. And they’re all trying to do that, yeah.
Conroy: OK. Yeah, I’ll have to start keeping an eye on that, because it does seem like it’s a rite of passage now. And you won’t see any Republicans going on those shows.
Bacon: Yeah. And with The View—I’m guessing that, though—it’s coded. Because I think even the conservatives on The View have become more critical of Trump in the last six months.
Conroy: Yeah. They have. And I don’t think you’re going to see J.D. Vance on Sunday night.
Bacon: Particularly J.D. Vance. The Republican running for president is not coded well for these kinds of shows. A Mitt Romney type might do better, but yeah.
Conroy: Or Nikki Haley—
Bacon: Nikki Haley would be a little better, or a less stiff version of that person, yes.
Conroy: But it’s a huge risk, politically, for Republicans to go on a show like that. You become associated with the Democrats and with liberals because of their own president.
It’s funny, because he has politicized them and then also given them a bigger audience because of the attention. And then his own party’s candidate can’t go on those shows because of how politicized it’s become.
Bacon: He made Kimmel more prominent by trying to get Kimmel canceled—
Conroy: Exactly.
Bacon: —and in a certain sense, yeah, we didn’t get into that, but—
Conroy: There’s no way people watched a monologue on a Tuesday had it not been—
Bacon: Yeah. That was the last time I watched Kimmel—was after he was suspended. He became the voice of America for some period, and the voice of free speech in a certain sense, which is good. But yeah.
Conroy: A former Man Show host is the voice of America. I had friends texting me, “Did you watch?”—friends that don’t talk to me very much—”Did you watch Kimmel’s monologue?” It was wild.
Bacon: All right. That’s a great place to end on. Meredith, tell people where they can find your writing and your social media and your thoughts.
Conroy: Sure. First, thanks for the walk down memory lane. I did revisit some of my old Daily Show DVDs. I have a Substack called Gender Gap, where I write about gender gaps, and I might have to dig in to see if there’s some late-night show audience data about gender.
We talked about The View’s audience being obviously women—that’s the kind of thing I do on my Substack. And that’s where you can find me. Oh, and I’m on Bluesky at Meredith Conroy.
Bacon: Good to see you. Thanks for joining me.
Conroy: You too.
Bacon: Thanks everybody who watched. Bye-bye.
Conroy: Bye.