Bleak future for late night hosts as viewers complain about same old anti-Trump gags

Woke late night hosts have revived their tired anti-Trump jokes as he begins his second presidency - and viewers are already bored.  

'Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and like Martin Luther King, I also had a dream,' Seth Meyers said on the set of NBC's Late Night. 'I mean, it had to be a dream, right? It's too weird to be real.'

Over on ABC Jimmy Kimmel told viewers 'Today at noon Eastern, our long, national nightmare was officially sworn in... a second time.'

Jimmy Fallon, meanwhile, mockingly donning a Melania Trump-styled hat, elicited a mix of boos and cheers at the mere mention of Trump's name.

'After this we're going to play who wore it better, me, Melania, or the Hamburglar,' Fallon said of the head covering. The McDonald's gag had been making the rounds on social media for hours by that time, with few who watched likely to be amused by Fallon's stale observation. 

He then joked, 'We're all united, that's great to know' - before likening Trump's second term to Netflix's 'Squid Game.'

Stephen Colbert, the top dog in a fading field, told his unhappy attendees, 'Don't boo - vote,' before adding, And if possible, do that several months ago.'

But viewers took to social media to complain the Trump-bashing felt tired and reheated, sparking concerns the hosts' teetering ratings could take a huge hit if they don't freshen up their material. 

One, called Casper, wrote: 'Sad these comedians went from being funny to being irrelevant, Seth Meyers, Stephen Colbert, and Jimmy Kimmel. 

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Ultramaga Hillbilly said of Fallon's hamburglar gag: 'I wish the late night shows were funny like they were 40 years ago.'

Onegringo said: 'Cheap laughs at best. Go figure.'

3rkBradford said: 'It only took 27 writers to come up with that classic...'

Melanie the Barn Owl asked why none of the hosts had anything to say the time a 71 year-old Jill Biden donned fishnet style stockings.

And Gary Goldstein focused on the linear shows' dwindling bottom line.

'In 2017, Fallon had 2.6 million viewers,' he began.

'This year he averages 1.3 million viewers. He's lost half his audience and is likely bleeding advertising revenue as a result. He is literally spitting into the wind.

Despite the audience fatigue, Stephen Colbert appears to think his viewers are desperate for more of the same Trump takes. 

'I bet, deep down, you're feeling kind of good because, with Trump coming back. the jokes write themselves,' Colbert quipped on Monday .

'And I just want to say, if you don't like the jokes tonight, it's not our fault - the jokes wrote themselves.'

The comic who categorized Joe Biden's inauguration as a 'return to normalcy' four years went on to devote his entire monologue to the inauguration, in what was perhaps a hint of how he and other hosts will handle the Trump presidency.  

Colbert had his own take on Melania's outfit, likening her to video game character Carmen Sandiego and a comic book villain.

There was little original on Kimmel, with the host making the same Carmen Diego gag and comparing Melania to Al Capone. 

All Monday's late night hosts railed against Trump backer Elon Musk, who insists his X social media network's 213 million users makes it a far more powerful media outlet than any TV show. 

Meyers, on his program, joked that Trump's swearing-in ceremony, moved indoors because of the cold, saw his regular supporters 'left out in the cold while Trump gave toasty, VIP seats to the wealthy tech oligarchs.'

He added it how was 'even weirder to see Democrats, who correctly called Trump an existential threat to democracy, palling around with him,' putting particular emphasis on the word contemporary.

Other viewers were left rolling their eyes and reaching for the remote at the gags.  

'Sad these comedians went from being funny to being irrelevant,' one X user said, singling out Meyers, Colbert, and Kimmel in particular.

'Whatever he's getting paid, the network deserves a refund!' another said of Fallon, in response to video of him parading around mocking the first lady.

'Mainstream news media and late night talk shows with one foot in the grave,' yet another griped, as someone else simply tweeted out a series of 'Z's to indicate they were sleeping.

Meanwhile, headlines over the past several years have called attention to the genre - in a manner more pronounce than any other entertainment format - is struggling. 

Late last year, the program once manned by the late Carson cut its schedule to just four days a week.

Advents such as streaming have made things worse, and ratings declines have already been noticed in the first full week of shows since the election.

Just last week, numbers shows Greg Gutfeld‘s late night-styled Fox alternative attracting the largest average nightly audience of the pack - something unthinkable a decade ago.

The pronounced shift in audience shows who's watching network TV - and how millions of Americans are seemingly fed-up with the also relatively recent phenomenon of hosts offering up opinion-based content.

As the past few nights of late night and primetime TV appeared to indicate, that trends seems set to continue.