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Comedian Conan O’Brien realized that late-night shows were in deep trouble after his viral appearance on the popular online show “Hot Ones.”
In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the former late-night host weighed in on the cancellation of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” as well as the brief pulling of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” following comments made after the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
O’Brien appeared in 2024 on “Hot Ones”, a show on YouTube where celebrities answer questions while eating chicken wings that increasingly get spicier. His appearance on the show has received more than 15 million views.
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“That was the moment the scales fell from my eyes,” O’Brien told The Hollywood Reporter. “If a guy can do World Series numbers with overhead that looked, to me, to be about $600, and you have every big star lining up to do his show or Chicken Shop Date … that’s when I profoundly understood that late night shows are in trouble.”
Colbert, whose program is ending in May, called O’Brien the “patron saint of ex-talk show hosts” and revealed he’d been urging Colbert to quit for years. O’Brien had a near three-decade stint across multiple late-night programs, hosting “Late Night” (1993-2009) and then briefly “The Tonight Show” (2009-2010) on NBC, before moving over to TBS and hosting “Conan” until 2021.
“We were out, a few Emmys ago, and he kept saying, ‘I want you to know there’s a lot of fun to be had when this is over, so don’t feel like you need to stay.’ It almost hurt my feelings, but he was just being kind. He Dutch uncle’d me,” Colbert told The Hollywood Reporter.
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Some believe Colbert’s criticism of President Donald Trump played a role in his show ending. Trump’s FCC (Federal Communications Commission), headed by Brendan Carr, had to approve David Ellison’s Skydance Media purchasing CBS parent company Paramount.
O’Brien said, “I’m of the mind that yes, these shows are going away and will become something else.”
However, O’Brien added, “But I don’t like when other malign forces intervene, because they’re trying to curry favor. That pisses me off.”
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In September, Kimmel’s late-night show was pulled off the air after his remarks about Kirk’s alleged assassin sparked outrage and a veiled threat from the FCC. Disney decided to suspend the show after two major affiliate owners pulled airings of Kimmel from their stations, and Kimmel reportedly had told executives he would not apologize for his comments. His show returned following the brief hiatus.
CBS announced last year that Colbert’s show would go off the air this May, citing it as a purely financial decision and denying it had anything to do with the then-looming merger between Paramount and Skydance.
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O’Brien, who has stayed active with a podcast and HBO Max show, is hosting the Oscars this Sunday for the second straight year.
Fox News’ Brian Flood and Joseph A. Wulfsohn contributed to this report
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