As Jon Stewart Returns and 'After Midnight' Show, Night Slowly Evolves

Change is slowly coming to late-night television. Talk show hosts occupy their seats for years and years and usually only leave when they're ready.

After spending almost a year and a half without deciding on a replacement for Trevor Noah, its host since 2015, “The Daily Show” has once again turned to Jon Stewart. Stewart, 61, who chaired the show for 16 years, will this week become the show's regular Monday night host and also executive producer. (Guest hosts and “Daily Show” “correspondents” will fill out the rest of the week.) Its “this can't be happening” effect may be just what this absurd year needs (it's expected to last until the presidential election), but it remains to be seen whether this step back is a step forward or a step forward that's just a Step back.

Meanwhile, at CBS, the major television network, where James Corden left “The Late Late Show” after eight years, the young and talented comedian Taylor Tomlinson, 30, has been anointed as his successor, at least in terms of taking over the time slot. . This seemed like good news to me when I heard it, both for her youth (the torch was passed to a new generation and all) and for her gender: you can count the number of women who have hosted network late-night shows on one's fingers. hand. (Cable and streaming platforms have also seen female hosts, but only Chelsea Handler's “Chelsea Lately” and Samantha Bee's “Full Frontal” have had any kind of life.) I was excited to see what he would do with the medium.

Imagine my disappointment, then, when it turned out that “After Midnight” was not a talk show (and by “talk show” I mean anything from a show that is all conversation to one closer to variety, with sketches and musical numbers and all that), but a revival of an old Comedy Central panel, “@midnight.” (The confusion was all mine, it wasn't a secret). I remember that show, which aired from 2013 to 2017 and consisted of guest comedians revisiting Internet videos and memes, as being funny and energetic. (Though I mostly remember host Chris Hardwick yelling “Points!” as he arbitrarily assigned them to the guest contestants.)

So I have nothing against “After Midnight,” per se, which ably fulfills its mandate, provides work for comedians I like, and, as far as I can tell, hits the mark with its target market. It could work until there is no more Internet to mock. (Stephen Colbert produces the show; the idea of ​​bringing back “@midnight” obviously preceded Tomlinson's choice as host.)

Still, it seems like a missed opportunity to me, a conservative choice with a strict format for a television sector that has historically been open to innovation, and has even depended on it; Sillier and more serious than prime time, it's a place for masturbating bears and closer looks, for toy instruments and in-depth discussions, robot co-hosts and personal revelations, among many other things you'd never find on prime time. maximum audience. Political satire, which to a greater or lesser degree is an aspect of most late-night shows, does not exist before 11 p.m.; Stewart's “Daily Show” could only have happened after prime time.

New late-night hosts typically arrive with their own creative team and, after a period of adaptation (during which they may receive skeptical, often negative, notices from viewers and critics), establish an identity, a rhythm, bring silly ideas to the table. productive life and discover the fragments and characters that keep the audience coming back. Conan O'Brien, an unknown when he took over “Late Night” in 1993, and something of an oddity, barely survived cancellation in its first year, but ultimately stuck around for 16 seasons. His weirdness won out.

The world has changed, of course, around these programs, which date back to the dawn of the medium. (“The Tonight Show” turns 70 this year). Until the adoption of the VCR, late-night television was only available at night; it had what could be called a circadian subtext. While consumers now fit television into their schedule, television once shaped the day. Late night television was for people who were happy not to sleep, or couldn't sleep, or had nowhere to be in the morning. You might not be ready to go to bed after Johnny Carson is over, or you might come from a club or a movie or whatever and turn on the set, and there'll be Tom Snyder talking to John Lydon, Orson Welles or Chris Elliott. living under the bleachers on “Late Night With David Letterman.” The later the start time, the lower the financial risk and therefore the more freedom to play and possibly the more dedicated the fans. Craig Ferguson's still celebrated, unusually autobiographical “Late Late Show” was constitutionally a 12:30 a.m. show; It wouldn't have worked at 11:30. And people remember it.

Taylor Tomlinson has joined the short list of women who have hosted a late-night show, although her show is more of a panel than a talk show.

(Sonja Flemming/CBS)

Bowing to the new clip economy, all the TV networks have made their deals with that devil, creating their own streaming platforms: You can get CBS through Paramount+ and NBC through Peacock and shows from ABC and Fox on Hulu , and see them whenever and wherever you want. want; For these users, “late night” is an aesthetic rather than a chronological term. And every late-night show has a presence on YouTube, where last night's show will appear cut into digestible chunks the next morning.

I admit I got my late-night television this way, sometimes long after the fact, although there was a time when I was in the trenches in real time, watching until the end of the “broadcast day” when the picture faded to snow. . And I probably watched the snow for a while.

As a CBS show, “After Midnight” has a certain cachet; Tomlinson's management wouldn't be big news if it were shown on Comedy Central. It's important in that limited sense and I certainly wish it success. (Though he's already having success elsewhere; his third Netflix special, “Have It All,” premieres Tuesday.) Would I like her to host a program she created herself? Something she hadn't seen before, whatever it was, for better or worse, less or more to my taste, something that might become really important, somehow unpredictable? Yes. I am a dreamer. But that is for another day, that is, for the night.