Can late night TV in America survive another writers' strike?

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With no writers around thanks to the current Writers Guild of America strike, late-night television in the U.S. has effectively come to a standstill.

But the pause in programming has come with an even greater reckoning as broadcast audience numbers dwindle: what exactly does the future of late-night TV look like?

Culture writers Rad Simonpillai, Kathryn VanArendonk and Ian Steaman joined host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to consider the impact of the ongoing Hollywood writers' strike, and how the late-night talk format may soon evolve.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow the Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud podcast, on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: Ian, maybe I'll start with you on this because you're a working screenwriter. What's been on your mind as you watched this whole strike thing play out?

Ian: We as writers are in an existential fight — and that sounds overdramatic, but then again, we are writers. The TV industry is changing rapidly. The model for how the studios and the production companies make money is changing. They are more or less still largely successful — but that success isn't really being shared with the writers, and the way writers make their living is being slowly squeezed. 

They're having less and less writers on shows. The writer's rooms are shorter. They don't want to institute minimums for certain types of shows. The residuals are being reduced because we're moving to a digital and streaming world as opposed to a linear broadcast world. It's just harder and harder for writers to make a living, and that's what they're fighting for with the WGA action.

Elamin: Kathryn, I think the word "existential" gets thrown around a lot — and I like to throw it around because it's dramatic, so we're going to use it. Let's talk a little bit about this moment for late-night talk shows, because we already have this idea that traditional TV is dealing with not only the writers' strike but also dwindling viewership, [and] the idea that streaming has eaten dramatically into the ways that people consume traditional TV. Do you think that the late-night talk format has a future here?

Kathryn: I think that the late-night talk format as we know it right now — which is one white man sitting behind a desk telling us what's funny about the news every night — probably does not. I don't think that means some version of it can't go on for a long, long time. Usually whenever we think about it, it's always like, "Something's going to die! We're never going to see it again!" It generally does not happen. Generally, what happens is it evolves into something else, and the question is what an evolution of this particular format could look like.

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Corden is not being replaced by another host in front of a desk; he's being replaced by a panel show. Stephen Colbert is executive producing it … and it's going to look, we think, a little bit more like an extremely successful British model of chat show where comedians come on and talk about the news in a more fluid format. It is, not coincidentally, also much cheaper than having a host and a whole writers room.... It really does feel like we're in this moment where late-night is in a "change-or-die" situation, and we're not sure what — I think it will be "change," but I don't know what that's going to look like, necessarily.

Elamin: I do have to say that for all the hand-wringing that people do about late-night talk shows, I watch my late-night content on YouTube the next day.… How much loyalty do you think people have to the idea of, "I'm going to watch a thing late at night?" And how important is that to the preservation of this format, do you think?

Rad: Well, I think that is exactly what is dying: the idea of us tuning in at this particular hour to watch an entire hour-long show. I mean, I consume all of late-night the way you just described, right? It's on my social media — and I think Trevor Noah did embrace that, when he had those little in-between chats that would end up on social media. 

Elamin: They were the best!

Rad: Yeah, where you just talk to the audience and stuff.

Elamin: It's like, "I have things to say."

WATCH | Between The Scenes on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah:

Rad: Yeah, right? And so I think it's interesting when you think about how they pluck Lilly Singh from YouTube and put her on a late-night show when you really should be going in the other direction, right? I think the late-night shows are embracing the social media format and trying to package their content, but they need to figure out a way to make that sustainable and economic where you are monetizing your presence on social media.… People just want that one interview or that one monologue.

Elamin: Ian, what's your read on this? Are you invested in the late-night talk show?

Ian: I echo what you guys said; I kind of consume it in small chunks via social media. You know, Quibi was a platform that was designed to kind of create content with that format. 

Elamin: Rest in peace, Quibi.

Ian: And it was a spectacular failure. There's a lot of data out showing that viewers don't really want short-form content. So I think the networks are going to have to try to figure out how to create the content that they can break into smaller packages in a sustainable way because linear and broadcast TV is becoming harder and harder to become profitable because that's not where the viewers are anymore. But the production values of short-form content, it's not necessarily drawing in viewers the way that they would hope to offset that trend.

WATCH | Pedro Pascal on Hot Ones:

Elamin: Ian, you said the word Quibi and it immediately became 2020 in my body.… Kathryn, somebody asked me the other day what I think is the most successful talk show on right now? And I said maybe Stephen Colbert or something. Their counter — and it was a really good counter — was Hot Ones, the YouTube series hosted by Sean Evans where he interviews celebrities while they eat some chicken wings, and then as you eat these chicken wings, the questions get more and more specific. Great show, but I hadn't considered that in the same realm of what a talk show is because in my mind I'm so married to that format of, "Here's a guy behind a desk and he's going to do some bits," you know? Why don't we think about talk shows like Hot Ones or Chicken Shop Date in the same kind of realm of the major talk shows, do you think?

Kathryn: Well, because talk shows have this legacy. They have all of this baggage of what a talk show is, and this long broadcast association. We picture a guy with a tie, and we picture a monologue. Hot Ones is not Sean Evans saying, "Here's what I think about all of these things." It's really a platform for these celebrities that has a great format, right? That's what feels different, is the sort of voice-of-authority thing that really has shifted away from a monolith model.

Elamin: Well, I think I am invested in this model because I grew up with it. It's something kind of romantic to me. But I guess we'll wait and see what happens with it.

WATCH | Matty Healy (The 1975) on Chicken Shop Date:

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Ty Callender.