Network Talk Shows Are Played Out
By Dan Brown Given the fuss over the axing of the Late Show With Stephen Colbert, you might get the impression network talk shows matter. They don’t. Such programs haven’t mattered for years, and few TV viewers would notice if ALL of them went off the air. The format of a monologue, phony interviews, then a musical performance is played out. In a world in which seemingly every slightly famous person hosts a podcast, network talk shows are not the draw they once were. When was the last time you watched an episode of Colbert from start to finish? What about the likes of Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, or Seth Myers? Contrast those guys with Johnny Carson. He was such a fixture back in the day that his retirement from late night in 1992 amounted to a cultural earthquake. Carson’s heyday was a different era. Network TV ruled the roost, with cable coming on strong. When the Carson-inspired David Letterman took off in the 1980s, his brand of late-night comedy was considered edgy, dangerous, subversive. You WANTED to stay up late to see what Dave was up to. Fast-forward to 2025 and it feels as though the list of celebrities who have hosted a late-night chat show at some point in their careers is longer than the list of those who haven’t. They aren’t special anymore. No one is interested in watching a procession of minor stars fake their way through a pre-scripted interview to promote their latest project. We can get our entertainment news in so many different places now, and the supply of celebs far outstrips the demand. The last late-night interview that mattered aired in 1995, when Jay Leno got to ask Hugh Grant why he had hired a prostitute named Divine Brown days earlier: “What the hell were you thinking?” in 2025, no one is eagerly anticipating the next guest who will step out from behind the curtain. Networks have hung on far longer than anyone thought they would, but according to the Los Angeles Times, the proportion of the television viewing audience watching streaming is now larger than that watching linear TV. Talk shows were relatively cheap to make when companies actually advertised their wares on network TV. In their day, they had cultural sway. A new generation has taken the format and is running with it, doing interesting things online. The idea of an interview show with the guests all eating spicy hot wings might sound loony, but it actually works. Or how about a parody of talk shows called Between Two Ferns on which every interview is hilariously uncomfortable? Maybe you would rather watch yet another minor movie actor talk about what a great time they had on set making the latest programmatic Hollywood sludge. You’re in a shrinking minority. If talk shows on network TV have accomplished anything down through the decades, they’ve killed interviewing as an art form with their rehearsed conversations. Which is OK. With a million podcasts to choose from, none of which are time-limited, on any number of platforms, we’ve got space for all the genuine follow-up questions imaginable. That’s where the real talk is taking place with hosts who don’t need to feign their interest. Oh, and just for the record, the best talk show ever was on pay TV – it was called Night After Night and was hosted by Allan Havey with sidekick Nick Bakay in the early 1990s. I taped it every night. So let’s retire network talk shows — all of them. At least for a few years or decades. Letting the genre lie fallow for a while can only lead to positive things for the entertainment industry. Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 32 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
But What About the Movie?
By Dan Brown Movie advertising in 2025 is about everything but the movie. What I mean is, the folks in Tinseltown who devise campaigns to advertise big-budget motion pictures, like the latest Mission: Impossible and the upcoming Superman, want the public to be aware of some important details – that have little to do with the content of each film. Why is this a problem? Because Hollywood isn’t exactly doing blockbuster business in the age of streaming. Let me make clear at the outset that I’ve never worked in marketing: This is a civilian take from someone who has never made a movie ad or trailer in his life. All I’m basing my thoughts on are my decades of experience as a moviegoer and movie fan. Let’s start with the obvious example, the publicity campaign for Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, which landed in theatres last month. Whether you’ve seen it yet or not, you already know one thing about this sequel – that Tom Cruise did his own stunt work. You know this factoid because long before Cruise appeared at the Cannes Film Festival or on TV chat shows, Cruise was bragging about it in online clips that appeared while he was still on location two years ago. What he didn’t talk about while hanging off a brightly coloured biplane was the movie’s premise, or his acting in it, or the script. Or any other detail. Doing his own stunts may be a foolish thing for an actor to do, I don’t know, but I do know it’s an odd claim to make since an action star risking certain death in real life and Cruise’s character risking his on-screen life are two different things. What are we supposed to do with this knowledge? Or think of it this way: Did anyone who bought a ticket to see Final Reckoning walk out of the theatre and say to their date, “That movie was pretty mediocre, but I’m just glad knowing Tom Cruise risked life and limb to make it.” As Peter Suderman over at Reason magazine said in his review, the Mission: Impossible films are “ extravagant stunt spectacles, powered by the awe of watching an aging movie star appear to risk his life for our entertainment.” Not by the plot, or the camera work, or anything else intrinsic to the movie. Another example. As Cruise did, many movie actors appear on TV shows like The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon to drum up interest in their latest work. One question that always comes up while this promoting goes on is how much fun the performers had while making the upcoming feature. This must be very important, as I have never once heard a celebrity plugging the fact they had a bad time on set. There are inevitably anecdotes about what a riot it was to work on the production, and if George Clooney is involved in any way, there will be a story about how he pulled pranks on his co-stars during shooting. Again, does this factor in anyone’s decision to see a particular film over another? Does anyone exiting the movie say, “That was a fantastic film, and knowing the cast had a fun time makes me want to see it again.” Not to be cold, but I don't care. As a moviegoer I just want to be entertained. If a movie is strong, it doesn’t matter to me whether the cast was having fun or utterly miserable. I don’t care. I just want my money’s worth of entertainment. Heck, Martin Sheen had a heart attack during the filming of Apocalypse Now, which can’t have been fun, but I don’t think that fact alone interfered with anyone’s enjoyment or non-enjoyment of the Vietnam War epic. A final example. Word has also reached my online feeds, maybe yours too, how actor David Corenswet put on a large amount of muscle while preparing to play Superman in the James Gunn-directed picture that will reset the DC cinematic universe this summer. These posts show Corenswet pumping iron. Again, I’m not sure what to do with this news nugget. It would be like, if Raging Bull was released today, the studio first released video of Robert De Niro stuffing his face in order to gain the necessary weight to play Jake LaMotta in his over-the-hill years. If publicity tactics like these come across as acts of desperation to you, then I agree. What happened to traditional trailers that tried to give you a sense of the flavour of the film, that boasted about intriguing characters, talented directors and the script’s twists and turns? All of this is another sign Hollywood is in crisis, with the big studios still hurting from the pandemic years and unable to supply a compelling answer to the rise of streaming as the dominant method of entertainment. They’ll do anything to put butts in seats. Now, I’m no marketing genius. But I do see one ploy the Hollywood big brains haven’t used yet that just might work: Try making better movies. Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 32 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
