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Farewell Colbert
Late-night TV, when it started,
didn’t have a path yet charted,
but had teams of wise advisors
who knew they’d need advertisers.
Advertisers wanted viewers,
who demanded interviewers
that could make their lives seem brighter,
while they sold what made teeth whiter.
That became the rationale in
choosing Carson, Paar, and Allen.
Charismatic and flamboyant,
every episode was buoyant.
Time went by, and each seat holder
lost a step as they got older.
New hosts came, and each addition,
caused the model to transition.
Kimmel, Fallon, and Seth Meyers
are now merely amplifiers
of progressive machinations,
which they praise in their orations.
They hate more than half the nation,
which just caused the cancellation
of Colbert, who took great pleasure
killing off a once great treasure.
They sell Kool-Aid few are drinking,
then ask why their shows are shrinking,
but if they tried being funny,
maybe they’d start making money.
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Poet’s Note: The late-night television interview format officially began on September 27, 1954, when Steve Allen hosted the first episode of The Tonight Show on NBC. CBS launched its version called The Late Show in 1993, with David Letterman as the host. Stephen Colbert took over that show in 2015. CBS announced its cancellation for financial reasons on July 17, 2025. It will end in May 2026.
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Warren Bonham is a private equity investor who lives in Southlake, Texas.
Exactly!
Life is good any time I’m on the same side of an issue as you. Thanks
Warren, you couldn’t have summed it up better!
I enjoyed the levity and your poetic composition, describing a program with self-inflicted wounds.
Cheers!
I’m glad the style and substance both resonated! Thanks
Very nice, crisp, trochaic quatrains!
Everything that was put on TV had to make money, for sure, and when the money didn’t come in, the show was cancelled. A few shows were cancelled for political reasons (“East Side/West Side”), and some because of a stupid producer’s pique (“Perry Mason”), but if a show were popular and the sponsors were happy with the Nielsen ratings, the thing could run for years. In the U.K., “The Last of the Summer Wine” ran for decades.
Late-night talk TV is collapsing for the big reason that this poem reveals: most of the shows have morphed into vicious left-liberal propaganda festiivals that show contempt for the ordinary American public and for their beliefs and attitudes. So a lot of people just tune out. Why should they listen to an incessant drumbeat of contempt for what they think and cherish?
But there’s something else. The talk shows were about DISCOURSE — that is, human verbal interaction, with all of the things that such interaction implies: measured debate, comic interjections, interesting narrative, interview questions, personal gossip, exciting revelations, and all the other things that happen when civilized persons sit down and begin to have a leisurely and relaxed conversation.
That kind of cool and intelligent discourse is mostly dead today, because of intense ideological fanaticism, polarization, addiction to visuals, and a general collapse of common cultural presuppositions and memories. The medium of late-night TV talk shows depended on calm and rational people who were interesting, and who had both wit and a sense of humor.
You know a lot more of the history than I do. For some reason, an old clip of Firing Line with WF Buckley showed up in my feed today. I just discovered that it was the longest-running public affairs show with a single host (33 years). There was definitely a lot of discourse on that show (but not a lot of entertainment). Buckley brought a very clear perspective to the show, but it always seemed like all viewpoints were welcome. I don’t think that could happen today.
Buckley’s “Firing Line” was, as you say, a public affairs program. It was an excellent interview-and-discussion show, but did not have the looseness and open-ended style of late-night TV. Also, since there was only one guest talking to Buckley, the ambience of the show was adversarial, polemical, and argumentative. But it lasted so long because it was the only TV platform for serious conservative viewpoints and counter-liberal critique.
There is a new “Firing Line” on PBS, totally run by left-liberals and hosted by Margaret Hoover, one of those insufferable “Never-Trump” faux conservatives who are just controlled opposition for the Deep State.
This is just delightful!
I am very glad you liked this one! A sad period for the TV industry.
I just love it when poetry makes an all important point – and this one says it all. A darn good giggle is what this nation needs! Thank you very much indeed for pointing those causing a whole heap of late-night misery in the right direction, Warren!
There aren’t many giggles coming from late-night TV, but I’m glad to have been able to provide one for you. Misery is a good summary for what viewers are now exposed to. Not much of a business model.