Real Time with Bill Maher returns from hiatus tomorrow night. A pity there's been nothing in the news he can talk about.
There are many things I don't like about Bill Maher, including viewpoints he has that strike me as very wrong. But in almost every episode, I hear him utter at least one thing that makes me say (a) that's very, very perceptive and (b) wow, I've never heard anyone else have the smarts and/or guts to say that before. That's one more than I get from almost any other show I watch apart from Seth Meyers's or John Oliver's. (Mr. Oliver's show, in case you've been wondering, resumes after its hiatus on February 16.)
In a related topic, NBC has just announced that its new streaming service called Peacock will be making available The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and Late Night with Seth Meyers at earlier hours — Fallon at 8 PM, Meyers at 9 PM. They'll also be offering all nine thousand seasons of Saturday Night Live during each of which people said, "It's not as good as it used to be."
The last decade or so, folks looking at the ratings of the late night shows have been predicting the demise of late night as a playing field in television. I'm thinking what will be going away is the "late night" part of "late night comedy shows." When a program airs is becoming less and less relevant as more and more people time-shift. 11:35 might be when your DVR records The Tonight Show but you're going to watch it when you damn well feel like watching it… hours, days, even weeks later. I just watched some Colbert shows from back when Kirsten Gillibrand was still in the Democratic race.
If the day comes when most people are watching The Tonight Show during the day or prime-time hours, is it still a "late night" show? And if it isn't, what is? The morning news shows wouldn't be considered morning news shows if you watched one at night…right?