The cancellation of The Late Present with Stephen Colbert has added gasoline to a dialogue that’s persevered for a while now. Media personalities and journalists alike have been debating the way forward for the late night time TV panorama. Somebody who’s weighed in amid the conversations is veteran host Jay Leno, who particularly spoke to the presence of political humor inside these sorts of exhibits. Whereas Leno isn’t for hosts laying it on thick with politics, John Oliver has entered the chat, and he’s not holding again about why he disagrees.
When sharing his tackle political humor, Jay Leno defined that whereas he does “love” it, he believes that hosts in the end begin “cozying an excessive amount of” to a specific aspect. Leno doesn’t perceive “why you’ll alienate one explicit group” and doesn’t “assume anyone desires to listen to a lecture.” The veteran Tonight Present host was name-dropped throughout John Oliver’s interview with THR, and the Final Week Tonight headliner kicked off his ideas with a direct assertion:
I’m going to take a tough cross on taking comedic recommendation from Jay Leno.
Though Leno would contact upon political material throughout his time as a number, John Oliver and plenty of of his personal contemporaries dive deeper. What’s price mentioning is that Final Week Tonight is a satirical information program, whereas The Tonight Present is positioned extra as a simple selection discuss present. However, hosts like Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers do present political commentary, notably throughout their opening monologues. When addressing Leno’s feedback on alienation, Oliver had this to say:
Who thinks that method? Executives? Comedy can’t be for everybody. It’s inherently subjective. So, yeah, whenever you do stand-up, some folks attempt to play to a broader viewers, which is totally official. Others determine to not, which is equally official. I assume I don’t assume it’s a query of what it is best to do as a result of I don’t assume comedy is prescriptive in that method. It’s simply what folks need.
On Final Week Tonight, John Oliver not solely discusses politics, however he additionally doesn’t thoughts poking enjoyable at company entities, together with his personal employers. He famously blasted his “enterprise daddy,” Warner Bros. Discovery for canceling exhibits and making different criticized enterprise selections. Oliver even ripped into Disney and Hotstar as a consequence of a censorship scenario in 2020. Whereas Oliver approaches subjects with biting humor and satire, for him, discussing political and societal material isn’t about skewering a specific political celebration:
I feel our present clearly comes from a viewpoint, however most of these lengthy tales we do are usually not celebration political. They’re about systemic points. Our previous few exhibits have been about gang databases, AI slop, juvenile justice, med spas, air visitors management. I’m not saying that these don’t have a viewpoint in them. In fact they do. However I hope a variety of them really attain throughout folks’s political persuasions. You need folks to at the least be capable to agree on the issue, even when you disagree on what the answer to it’s.
Stephen Colbert continues to debate politics on his personal present within the aftermath of CBS’ cancellation announcement, which got here amid the completion of dad or mum firm Paramount’s Skydance merger. Whereas the community stated the choice to axe the present was purely “monetary,” there are individuals who consider there are different causes for it. Extra particularly, some assume the transfer was tied to Paramount’s $16 million authorized settlement with U.S. President Donald Trump, and that transfer had been brazenly criticized by Colbert.
Many proceed to mourn the demise of The Late Present, which is ready to finish in Could 2026. John Oliver joined the likes of Jimmy Kimmel and Bowen Yang in talking out in opposition to the cancellation. And, because the late night time panorama continues to evolve, time will inform if hosts proceed to infuse politics into their content material or step by step steer clear as Jay Leno suggests.