By Dawn Chmielewski
LOS ANGELES, May 22 (Reuters) - Stephen Colbert’s sign-off as the host of the CBS “The Late Show” may signal the end of a historic TV franchise, but the late-night tradition is far from dead.
Comedy is booming on podcasts, where former late-night hosts like Conan O’Brien, Chelsea Handler and Samantha Bee have all found second acts. They’re joined by established comedians like Amy Poehler, stand-up acts like Theo Von, and emerging stars like Kareem Rahma, whose celebrity interviews
on the New York City subway have captured widespread attention.
Trevor Noah, the former host of “The Daily Show,” commands a much bigger total audience on his podcast “What Now? With Trevor Noah,” than he did on television. His podcast has attracted nearly 4.6 million subscribers on YouTube, more than 10 times higher than his Comedy Central show audience, which averaged a reported 372,000 viewers in his last year hosting the show.
“YouTube is fantastic. It’s a place where I get to make the shows that I want, with the people that I want, in a way that I want,” Noah said, while hosting YouTube’s upfront presentation to advertisers this month.
Compare that to late night TV where audiences have steadily declined. Fifteen years ago, top comedy programs on the networks could earn more than $100 million a year. The economics have drastically changed. Colbert’s “The Late Show,” which employed an estimated 200 people, including writers, producers, musicians and support staff, was losing as much as $40 million a year.
Podcasts cost a fraction of television and the talent owns the show, allowing them to reap the financial benefit of the advertising, subscriptions, sponsorships, events and even product sales.
Ad dollars have followed the audience. At least $30 million in spending has shifted from TV comedy shows to podcasting over the last quarter, according to ad tracking firm Guideline. Ad spending on late-night television, meanwhile, has fallen nearly 60% since 2017.
YouTube’s dominance in the living room has helped fuel the surge in podcasts, particularly video podcasts, which look like TV talk shows. It has become the most popular destination for weekly podcasts, eclipsing Spotify and Apple, according to Edison Research at SSRS.
In October alone, viewers watched more than 700 million hours of podcasts on YouTube from their living rooms, up from 400 million hours a year earlier.
O’Brien helped blaze the trail for other comedians who have exited the late-night stage. He launched the “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” podcast eight years after walking away from NBC’s “The Tonight Show” in 2010.
It now ranks 15th among the nation’s top 50 podcasts, according to Edison Research, and has racked up more than 230 million downloads since it debuted in 2018.
“He got pushed off late-night,” said Megan Lazovick, Edison’s vice president of research. "Now, he has this huge career, and really the freedom to do whatever he wants.”
That freedom stands in stark contrast to the corporate and political pressures found in traditional TV, forces that led to the dismantling of CBS’s “The Late Show” franchise.
“You’re not just a hired host on someone else’s real estate,” said Ben Davis, co-head of digital at the WME talent agency, who represents “Hot Ones” host Sean Evans and Amy Poehler. “You can own your show, do what you want with it creatively.”
Davis said that owning a podcast, and building its business through advertising, sponsorships, and licensing deals, can yield the sort of payoff that “dwarfs the upfront compensation” talent might receive from a traditional TV show. He declined to provide specific financial details about the agency’s clients, which include Colbert.
Advertising giant WPP estimates ad revenue from podcasts has increased by 25% in the first quarter of the year, compared with a year ago.
Comedy has always been at the “fringe of brand safety,” said Sean Wright, Guideline’s chief insights and analytics officer. “The whole point is to push on boundaries to make things funny.”
As for Colbert, he may not take the podcast route anytime soon. He is working with filmmaker Peter Jackson on a new movie based on the early chapters of J.R.R. Tolkien's novel “Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.”
“I will see you all in the shire,” he said in a YouTube video announcing the project.
(Editing by Ed Lee and Nick Zieminski)
