– I would like to now think about what late-night television is. What’s, like, 60 years of that for? Seventy years of that at this point? – I mean, so traditionally it was so you could, you know, you could joke about the day’s news. What happened, right? – Right. You could sum up the day before you went to sleep. And sometimes it was kind of a sleepy, soothing joke like Johnny Carson. And other times it was a little more subversive joke like, say, David Letterman. But, by now, by the time “Late Night” comes around everybody’s already made jokes about the news on social media, TickTok, etc. – Yeah, yeah, yeah. on social media, TikTok, et cetera. – Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that purpose is done. And then you’ve got the purpose of, like, converstations with people promoting stuff, or guests being funny. That has also been replaced by, like, YouTube, podcasts, and this kind of thing. So there’s this narrative, which is not entirely wrong, that late-night is less and less relevant. There’s less and less of a purpose to it because of the internet, right? At the same time, read the news. The president is attacking, I mean, it’s worth, like, pausing at how crazy — this has never happened, that the president has put a target on all the late-night hosts, and is attacking them consistently, and arguably, you know, the most effective example of resistance didn’t come from law firms, or universities. – Oh no, not shots, Yeah. – not shots at the law firms, Jason Zinoman, speak. – Speak your truth. But came from Jimmy Kimmel. – Yeah. Came from Jimmy Kimmel, he — – Yeah. They protested and they pushed back Disney, they made Disney have a backbone, right? And, so you can’t exactly call late-night irrelevant, when it’s the — – in the crosshairs of, you know, you know, what we’re going to traditionally say is the most powerful job in the world. – So what explains this? Why did people get so outraged and push back on Disney? Is it simply because people care more about celebrities than they do about law partners, right? I don’t know, I think that late-night is actually a more, as you point out, like an old form that people have watched with their families. it has, it’s become an institution. And in some ways is being watched as much as it ever was. But it’s just not — people aren’t watching it on linear TV.
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