February 26, 2023

SNL WAS STILL MAKING NIXON JOKES IN 1980: ‘SNL’ is Afraid to Satirize Biden, Remains Focused on Trump.

It’s not only Trump who appears more frequently than Biden. Defeated GOP candidates Kari Lake and Herschel Walker have made double the appearances of the president.

The show also hasn’t found a bit suitable for Rachel Levine, a kooky transgender admiral, or Sam Brinton, Biden’s former nuclear official/luggage thief.

Content gold gone to waste.

Both the Left and Right provide endless fodder for satire. But brands like “SNL,” “The Daily Show,” and late-night programs pander only to one-half of the country.

Thus, the viewership exodus of each program.*

In 2021, Matt Purple of Spectator World referred to the myriad leftist cable hosts who followed in the wake of Jon Stewart’s version of The Daily Show (a show that itself was inspired by SNL’s “Weekend Update” segment) as churning out “partisan comfort food.” In the age of a massively splintered media, the palace guard approach is the safest method to holding onto an audience that’s a sliver of what Johnny Carson enjoyed:

This is also my theory about the big entertainment awards shows like the Oscars and the Emmys. If the big, broad, general audience you used to have is gone, and deep down you think it’s never coming back, then why not make a harder bid for the loyalty of the smaller audience you’ve got left? In a time when the entertainment industry is (or thinks it is) a one-party state with no dissenters, you had better echo that politics back to your base.

What were once cultural institutions with a broad, bipartisan audience are becoming niche players with a narrow fan base. They no longer view partisan politics as a dangerous move that will shrink their audience. Instead, they’re using partisan politics as a lure to secure the loyalty of their audience, or what is left of it. Not that it’s going to work over the long term, because people who want to have their biases confirmed will just watch the five-minute YouTube clip Chris Cillizza links to the next day.

—Why Late Night Hosts Like Jimmy Kimmel Are Suddenly So Political, Robert Tracinski, the Federalist, October 5, 2017.

* And Greg Gutfeld becoming the new king of late night TV: Conservative Night Live. “The winner in the Who Can Hate Republicans the Most Contest could rely on about 1.5 million Democrats to remain loyal daily viewers, and that’s all they needed to remain competitive—and even on top—in the ratings battle. The only problem is you drive away everyone else. Four or five hosts were competing for the liberal Democrat audience, and the rest of us—half of the country, at least—have nothing to watch. What we could not choose was a show hosted by a center-right personality. If you were watching a nightly talk show, you were watching a liberal.”

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): On the other hand, they weren’t afraid to open with this.

Posted at 10:45 am by Ed Driscoll