“Get those bastards off my back.”
Like parents, network presidents dread a phone call in the middle of the night. William S. Paley, the visionary executive who transformed the Columbia Broadcasting System from a handful of local radio stations to the dominant force in American radio and television, was woken at three o’clock one morning in 1967 by a phone call from Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson, one of the few people in America more powerful than Paley.
“The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” had been a big success for CBS, with about 30 million viewers each Sunday night. It stood out from some of CBS’s other hits, notably “Lassie,” “The Beverly Hillbillies,” and “Gomer Pyle — USMC,” because Tom and Dick Smothers were urbane and their songs and comedy routines pointedly made fun of the Vietnam War, which fit the zeitgeist.
In skits, the show depicted Johnson, a Texan, as an unpresidential bumpkin. He’d violated a campaign pledge to not expand the Vietnam War and was regularly met by anti-war protesters chanting, “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” The Smothers Brothers were easier to beat than the Vietcong, so he picked up the phone — the Twitter of its day — and yelled at Paley, calling the comedians “bastards.” (Still, they remained on the air until Richard Nixon became president.)
If comedy is about punching up and speaking truth to power — that’s a big if, because no one gets to define comedy, except Mel Brooks — then politicians and rulers are ideal targets. But sometimes, as we’ve seen several times recently, power punches back.
On Sept. 15, five days after the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, Jimmy Kimmel, in his monologue, said, “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”
Brendan Carr, chairman of the Federal Communications System (FCC), which regulates American radio and TV and has the power to cancel broadcast licenses, denounced Kimmel and vowed action against ABC and other news organizations that serve what he called “progressive foie gras.”
Nexstar, a company that owns more than 200 local TV stations, announced it would “indefinitely pre-empt” Kimmel’s show, which won praise from Carr. That praise meant a lot to Nexstar, which needs the FCC to approve its $6.2 billion purchase of the media company Tegna.
On Sept. 17, ABC suspended Kimmel “indefinitely.” The following day, Carr went on CNBC and declared, in his best Clint Eastwood voice, “We’re not done yet.” (This afternoon, ABC announced that after “thoughtful conversations with Jimmy,” Kimmel’s show would resume on Tuesday night. It’ll be interesting to watch if the host remains as acerbic in his jabs against the administration.)
On social media, Trump had more to say about talk show hosts: “That leaves Jimmy and Seth, two total losers, on Fake News NBC. Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC!!!” He’d undoubtedly like to replace them with sycophants. Who’s ready for “The Tonight Show Starring Jon Voight” or “Late Night With Scott Baio”?
The ABC imbroglio is the latest chapter in American media’s growing subservience to Trump. In July, the FCC was deciding whether to approve an $8 billion merger between a company owned by Trump pal Larry Ellison and Paramount, which owns CBS. A few months earlier, Trump had called for CBS “to terminate” the host of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” In a remarkable coincidence, network executives, calling it a financial decision, eliminated Colbert’s show, effective next May.
The FCC ended up approving the merger.
Even some Trump allies believe Carr’s gone too far. On Sept. 19, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas said his stance was “dangerous as hell” and likened him to a Mafia boss. The conservative-leaning Wall Street Journal has published a cascade of critical editorials and opinion columns, in which they’ve accused the FCC of “government censorship” and said Paramount and Disney “bent over” for the president.
LBJ’s successor, Richard Nixon, had his own late-night tormentor: ABC’s puckish, ascot-wearing Dick Cavett, one of the first media figures to focus on the Watergate break-in. “Is there any way we can screw him?” Nixon asked an aide, who replied, “We’ve been trying to.”
In 2001, a few days after almost 3,000 people died in an attack on the World Trade Center in New York, Bill Maher told his audience on “Politically Incorrect” that the terrorists weren’t cowards, but the U.S. was. “Lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away, that’s cowardly,” he said. Too soon?
The George W. Bush White House objected, Federal Express and Sears pulled their ads, and a few months later, ABC fired Maher. “People have to watch what they say,” White House spokesman Ari Fleischer shrugged at the time.
When there were three national networks on American television, late night had massive audiences and could sway popular opinion. As host of the “Tonight” show, Johnny Carson typically had about 17 million viewers; Colbert, whose ratings currently top late night, has roughly 2.4 million, and the show’s ad revenue dropped almost 25 per cent from 2022 to 2024.
Streaming and cord-cutting and time-shifting have made these shows unprofitable. It seems like “time is running out for one of TV’s most beloved formats,” the Los Angeles Times observed recently.
Nixon’s subordinates mostly ignored his instructions to punish enemies by auditing their taxes, but Trump staffed his administration with toadies and bootlickers. The Pentagon has begun to fire or punish troops who made negative comments about Kirk, leaving some military officials “stunned,” Politico reported. And last week Attorney General Pam Bondi vowed to “go after” (i.e., put people in jail for) hate speech.
Trump has repeatedly bashed the media as “so unfair,” and while it’s unsettling to hear the president speak like an eight-year-old denied ice cream, it reveals his perspective — “hate speech” is any speech that criticizes or insults Trump, who, of course, has spewed little but hate speech since 2015, when he started his presidential campaign.
Opposing hate speech is new to some Republicans, who believe in the marketplace of ideas, except when the marketplace rejects them. As recently as last year, a prominent conservative tweeted, “Hate speech does not exist legally in America. There’s ugly speech. There’s gross speech. There’s evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment.” The person who wrote that, in May 2024, was Charlie Kirk.
For a decade, people who called Trump an authoritarian were accused of overreacting. Maybe they were prognosticating. Recently, a reporter asked Trump, in the Oval Office, if protesters have First Amendment rights. “I’m not so sure,” he muttered.
It can be easy to shrug at the specific persecution of late-night hosts, because there aren’t many of them. But given the way Trump and his minions want to redefine permissible speech and protest, it’s worth remembering that once a landslide starts at the top of a mountain, it rarely stops until it’s hit the bottom.
