A well-earned retirement.
It was announced this week that David Letterman, the man who
reinvented late night in 1982 and has been a fixture ever since, is finally
retiring from the Late Show desk and is handing it over to none other than
Stephen Colbert. It’s an exciting choice for Millennials such as I, who have
turned Colbert from a talking head into a full-fledged cultural phenomenon.
And a New York Times bestselling author.
As the host of the Colbert Report since 2005, Colbert has
been a fixture of satire, political pugilism and honest-to-goodness education
at 11:30 p.m. on Comedy Central. By assuming the character of, well, Stephen
Colbert, he has brilliantly been able to skewer politicians and gain a loyal
following while doing it. That’s just on Comedy Central though, a channel that
has a very specific viewership. Moving him to CBS opposite the Tonight Show is
more than just a promotion but a validation of his type of humor and the people
who laugh with him.
Laugh with him and give him awards.
Colbert also brings with him the youth, a demographic that
can sniff our pandering in a second and throw it out even quicker. The Colbert
Show audience wasn’t given to him but was instead earned tweet by tweet (even
if that tweet offends people even though he wasn’t the one to write it). The
networks have finally begun to embrace social media and the Internet as a whole
by its choice of late night hosts.
A similar occurrence happened on the Tonight Show when Jimmy
Fallon took over for Jay Leno last February. It was more than just a new boss
being the same as the old boss. Instead it was a paradigm shift that’s been a
generation in the making.
Who would have thought that late-night television would make for a perfect sociology lesson.
Letterman was born in 1947 and Leno was born in 1950 –
sticking them smack dab in the Baby Boomer generation. The Baby Boomers are a
gargantuan generation of victory babies created by returning World War II
veterans. They were hippies in the 60s, yuppies in the 80s and now, in the new millennium,
they’re nothing but old. Through sheer strength in numbers, the Baby Boomers have
been catered to for decades and have been in power for my entire lifetime. They
are our bosses, politicians, teachers, doctors, lawyers, parents and anyone
else in authority that makes the rules we follow. But something is happening
with the Baby Boomer generation. They’re getting old.
Leno needs his diaper changed.
There is a huge shift coming in the generation gap. The Baby
Boomers and their gray hair are finally beginning to reach retirement age and
will have to give the reigns to dreaded Generation X. The incestuous swapping
of talk shows as of late is nothing more than a symbol of that changing in
demographic. Instead of Baby Boomer Leno, Generation X member Fallon is now on
the longest-running talk show in history. With that he brings his toolbox of
viral videos, references that engender him to his contemporaries and a social
media presence.
And no, network television, forcing hashtags on us isn't engagement.
In the short time that Fallon has taken over the Tonight
Show, it’s become a whole different beast creating a buzz that hasn’t been felt
in a long time. Watching Leno on stage toward the end of his era was tantamount
of seeing our dad fumble through the newspaper and complain about the modern
world. Watching Fallon, instead, is a conversation that has a contagious energy
to it that would be impossible for Leno to pull off.
Don't feel bad for Leno, he finally has time to spend with his cars.
And now, with Leno off the air, Letterman has announced his
own departure. One can only imagine that Letterman was waiting for his arch
nemesis Leno to bow out first out of spite, but it’s a similar generational
shift as the Tonight Show. Throwing my whole theory in the bin, Colbert is debatably
not a member of Generation X. He was born in 1964, which is just about near the
dividing line of a generation timeline that nobody has ever really agreed on.
But whether he is a young Baby Boomer or an old member of Generation X, his
audience and sensibilities skew heavily toward the latter.
Similar shifts are occurring on Generation X member Jimmy
Kimmel still making jokes every night on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and Saturday Night
Live alum/Generation X member Seth Meyers taking over on Late Night.
All the while, Josh Meyers continues to be irrelevant.
Conan O’Brien, who was a fatality of the 2010 Tonight Show
war with Leno, is still making people laugh on TBS and, like Colbert, straddles
that line between Baby Boomer and Generation X. All that leaves in the late
night arena is Craig Ferguson, the scrappy host of the Late Late Show who
continues to get good rating through sheer force of Scottish charisma.
With some help from his robot friend...
It’s a changing of the guard on television and, soon enough,
the modern day workplace will follow suit. Baby Boomers are getting older and,
the longer they hold up progress by refusing to hand over the keys, the harder
that transition is going to be. Nobody thought that Leno or Letterman was ever
going to leave their respective shows. They were icons simply because they’ve
been there a long time. But now a younger, savvier and hungrier generation is
coming to the forefront. The best thing that Baby Boomers can do now to save
the world is step out of the way.
It's a tale as old as time.
