The Chaser Report - Are Late Night Shows FCC-ked?

Episode Date: September 23, 2025

Dom and Charles have a candid discussion on satire's future, as comedic voices around the world are encouraged to self-censor. Listen and learn how their experiences in making fun of the people in power have shaped their understanding of what has happened recently to Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert. ---The Chaser Report: EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/chaserreport Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee 🌍 Buy the Wankernomics book: https://wankernomics.com/bookListen AD FREE: https://thechaserreport.supercast.com/ Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us: [e-mail] CEO’s Super-yacht upgrade Fund: https://chaser.com.au/support/ Send complaints to: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gadigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello, and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. Hello, Charles. You sound upbeat. Oh, that's right. We're being upbeat now, aren't we? Yeah. Yeah, this is going to be very upbeat. Yeah. Look, we have acknowledged, not for the first time, that I'm sure I can occasionally

resemble a slide into the dystopia that we often see around us. But let's try and find something positive to say about our and especially, or, I think, Charles, life's work about making fun of politicians and why it actually matters because a whole lot of Hollywood celebrities just signed a letter saying that it does matter that shows like Jimmy Kimmel live and, I don't know that that goes far as Jimmy Fallon, but Stephen Colbert, that they're actually quite important. And John Oliver? John Oliver, of course, last week tonight.

The Chaser Report. Is not on the list? Oh, really? Yeah, no, we're not on the list. Oh, I thought, because you said, oh, the thing about the Hollywood celebrity signing the letter and I thought it was in favour of us. It was not in favor of us. But it does give a sense that it is actually valuable to somebody somewhere to make fun of politicians.

Let's talk about why that is in a moment. Want to get your hands dirty for a good cause? Volunteer with gardeners and help support students in Chicago's South and West Side Schools as they learn to grow fresh food, care for gardens and build healthier futures. No gardening experience needed. Just your time, energy and a desire to help local youth thrive. of all, you'll be making a direct impact where it matters most. Sign it to volunteer today at gartineers.org.

So, Charles, as we record this, the news has just come through that Jimmy Kimmel Live is back. Yes. We don't know exactly how Chase and Kimmel. I assume he's allowed to say whatever he wants up to a point. But not every ABC station in America has welcomed him back. The Sinclair Broadcasting Company, which is quite conservative. and it's been made fun of extensively on John Oliver, by the way, over the years.

They have said that they won't have him back yet. So it's not a complete victory for Kimmel at this stage. And Donald Trump hasn't even commented on it as we speak. So we'll see what the next movie is with the FCC heavies, ABC. But yeah, look, they have, it now looks like they were trying to do what we were talking about the other day, was that it might have been a pause to let the heat go out of the situation. And of course, what happened was the heat went up. And instead of the heat coming from the right, the heat came from the left.

instead, and so Disney ended up looking terrible, and so they brought him all back. But not just the left, just sort of normal people. I mean, even Ted Cruz, even Ted Cruz came out and said, this is a terrible precedent. I don't like the guy, but what will the next Democratic president do to all of our people? And that's a fair point. But also, I mean, the point was made by John Oliver that the FCC intervening in the political speech of and trying to shut down and determine the programming of, you know, the political speech for network, absolutely went against the idea of free speech. The idea being that free speech

is about not allowing the government to dictate what you can and can't say. And it's interesting because people, I think, had been sort of comparing that sort of style of authoritarianism, really, to the sort of idea that, oh, you shouldn't say sexist things. Or, you know, like the cancel culture. Yeah, yeah. The supposed cancel culture of the left, which is, you know, you're not allowed to say hateful things about blacks and Muslims and homosexuals and that sort of thing. But there's a huge distinction there, which is the whole idea of, you know, sort of publicly shaming people for speech because they're being racist or sexist assholes is done not by people who, you know, have all the power of the government. It's by, you know, like, it's a crowd, it's an audience saying, no, this isn't something that we want to hear about anymore. Now, I'm not saying cancel culture is good.

I think that there's a huge problem with the sort of victim mentality that, you know, where people use shame to try and stop people from saying what they say. But it was never, like, cancel culture was never at risk of being an authoritarian ideology simply because it didn't have the power of government. It was, that's not what that was about. It was actually, it was often about trying to protect marginalized people who'd never really had a voice and giving them some sort of more space to be able to sort of live in a predominantly white sexist culture without fear of being, you know, made fun of and victimised

and things like that. Yeah, and look, it's worth noting that a lot of politicians have railed against the media in the past. And I mean, someone wrote an op-ed, piece today saying that, you know, Bob Hawke used to get on the phone and get very, very cross about political coverage and so on. We know that a lot of presidents in the past have complained about the way they were portrayed. But the way Donald Trump has been talking about this and Brennan Carr, his FCC chair, has been, you know, the whole we can do it the easy

or the hard way thing, which he said, on a podcast out loud. Nothing behind closed doors. It wasn't like he was ringing up on the phone and saying, dump the guy. Everything happens on a podcast now, Charles. But this is quite unprecedented for a president to be not just criticizing someone in the media. And fair enough, if you criticize the president, he can criticize you back. He's got a huge audience. He can tweet. He does that.

But to actually call for the show to be taken off the air and for that to happen because of the subtext of these deals. And this is what this is all about. It's all about Next Star wanting to take over its rival that has a lot of ABC affiliates. And by the way, completely break the concentration rule. They're at 39% of the audience now. They want to go to about 80. I learned from watching John Oliver. and they need the FCC to sign off.

Sinclair wants to expand as well and needs the FCC to sign off. And by the way, Skydance Paramount, which already dumped Colbert, is potentially buying HBO. And so John Oliver might be in the target soon as well. So it's to do with a business deal and the politics of the president

and the president's nominee saying, we will only approve the deal if you do the right thing. It's a pretty obvious subtext to what he said. Yeah. And I think it sort of exposes the larger problem here, which is, yes, it's a victory that Jimmy Kimmel gets to be back on late-night television. But late-night television itself is sort of fading and relevant. It is.

I mean, this is the extraordinary thing about this moment, is it people actually really care about shows which are hemorrhaging viewers. But the other sort of broader trend, though, is that, you know, this Pyrrhic victory happens against a broader context of, you know, there is still the plan that the me media should be bought out by sort of far-right companies and, you know, that ultimately what happened to X with Elon Musk, what happened to Twitter with Elon Musk, turning it into X and a sort of hellhole of Nazification is going to happen, you know, Skydance is not your friend, you know.

But this is the whole point of broadcasting regulations and the reason why you have an FCC to begin with and similar authorities in Australia. I mean, ACMA being case in point, is that if you're a whole point, is if you're If you have one of the very small, limited number of broadcasting licenses, if you're given that privilege, you have to have standards for lack of bias, news, correct reporting. And that stuff doesn't apply to cable. In theory, you can't have Fox News on free-to-wear television in America because the rules are so-

That was the Reagan era. That was the fairness doctrine. I think they got rid of the fairness doctrine. Yeah. Well, anyway, I won't pretend that I totally understand it. But certainly the journal of a piece that we should, everyone should watch goes through and points out that a lot of the, you know, by the standard of what was under Kimmel, Sinclair's own programming, you know, falls foul of accurate news reporting and so on. But the relevance

point. But the broader issue is that the idea that the media should be controlled by capital and capitalism is, you know, like that actually large corporations are basically the only institutions that have the ability to sort of shape what you think and know in society is a terrible idea. Yeah. And they were supposed to follow these rules. But they didn't. But then their time is ending. I mean, if you look at Jimmy Kimmel's ratings, I've got them here. He was getting, in the second quarter this year, about 1.77 million viewers a night.

Not that much by American standards. It's not nuts. Not nothing. But in 2015, it was 2.4 million. So he's lost a third of his audience in 10 years. People watch on YouTube. Of course they do. And that's much bigger.

But it's that business model doesn't work. So you can't, I mean, the guy who's got the business model for the business model for this era right is Josh Johnson, the comedian who goes and does those stand-up sets and does a topical piece every week in a comedy club and gets paid for that and gets a big audience. That's just one guy. No one's going to be able to afford to have the full band and the TV studio and the Ritzie studio. But isn't that because capitalism now wants to take like 90% of all the money that Jimmy Kimmel

creates through his franchise and just bank it to pay off the private equity debts that they've accumulated? In the mergers. Well, they could afford it if it mattered to them. If they thought it was important. It's actually just the sort of capitalist notion that everything has to be unbelievably super profitable and keep growing in profits every year. That's the real problem here.

And these late-night shows were a prestige thing. I don't think they've ever made a huge amount of money. They were seen as like the jewel in the in the crown of the network in a sense, back in the kind of Letterman and Lino days, did Johnny Carson and so on. because Australians might understand just how late these things are on like the early late night show is the one that's on at 11.30 or something

and then the late late show or the Seth Myers show or whatever that's like a 1230 in the morning isn't it? It's amazing anyone watches that stuff Americans watch a crazy amount of television. It's because Americans have horrible lives like when we were living in New York all our friends did not leave work till 8 or 8.30 at night.

You get home exhausted and collapsed in front of the TV. Well, you'd go to the bar, you'd meet up at 9, and then you'd all go home at about it, 11.30, and that's when you'd watch the late show and go to sleep then. Yeah. And in actual fact, and it's because their work required them to work late, because everyone else was also working late. Yeah. And they were up at 7 having had no sleep. Well, no, no, no.

The thing is that the trade-off was that no one actually turned up to work until about 10 a.m. Oh, okay. It was actually just a completely later culture. I quite like that. But it was all performative. The last three hours were just like people not doing anything. Yeah, you couldn't do anything. But having to be there.

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Learn more about sponsorship opportunities at gardeners.org and let's grow something together. The Chaser Report, news you can't trust. But look, it is a pretty low bar. Can you make fun of the person who governs your country? And, I mean, we should note Australians have been doing, like, we found for so many years you're actually allowed to walk up to the Prime Minister with a silly prop or with a dumb off or whatever. And everyone expect that it was OK you were there. I mean, that is a very precious thing that I think we perhaps took for granted. There are always a couple of journalists who carried up their ass.

Yeah, there are some people who would go, oh, you shouldn't be here. This is serious. Yeah. These are the matters of state. Only serious journalists must be here. What did someone say to, it was Bob Hawk, actually, said to Norman Gunson, you know, not today, Norman or something, when Norman Gunson was on the steps of Parliament House for the dismissal.

But isn't it great, he was there? Yeah, he was the best part of the dismissal. He was the reason why I actually, you know, secretly like the fact that the dismissal happened. And when you and I saw the musical of the dismissal, it was narrated by Norman Gunston. By Norman Gunston. Indeed. So look, this actually is my point, is that what you and I and the rest of us have developed, have divided a lot of our life to laying jokes about politicians.

When you don't have that, that's really troubling. It's a really troubling thing. So our work has some meaning and some value, or at least maybe if it was done better. But isn't the point also that, like, what actually happens is, even in repressive authoritarian regimes, you still have people making jokes about the powerful. Yeah, Winnie the Pooh. It just becomes more and more coded. Yeah.

And what has been wonderful about the sort of, you know, the tradition of America's, you know, cultural influence around the world is it's very out and open. It's like, it's almost patriotic to be someone who thumbs their nose at the president and, you know, and takes them down a notch. And, you know, I'd like to think that Australia's the same sort of thing. But the problem is the actual ability for that cultural art form and cultural expression to be funded is just getting narrow and narrower and narrower. And this is the real problem. And the problem is, that even the public broadcasters are so scared by the current sort of system

that they don't fund proper commentary that actually is really healthy for a democracy. Well, I still remember when we first went on TV with the ABC, Sandra Levy, who was the head of television at the time, saying, you know, you'll make my life really difficult over the next few weeks, but that's okay, that's the point. That's the job. That's her job. He's the election chaser.

She was making the point that, you know, there would be blowback on her and that that was okay. That was kind of the point of her role was to absorb that. Now, admittedly, the context of that was she wanted to get Andrew Denton back to the ABC to make enough rope. It wasn't that we were valuable. It was that the guy who was sponsoring us was a precious asset for the ABC. And he came back and made that series that did very well. But she did acknowledge that, yeah, blowback was even then before social media.

It was part of what goes with the territory. And jokes do go wrong. I mean, Kimmel's joke was based on, there was a little bit of a false premise in there, in that he kind of mischaracterised the politics of the shooter in that case. But that's what happens when you rush to write jokes quickly, right? Like, you do make inaccuracies, you do, or maybe the sense doesn't quite come through the way you want it to. But the alternative is not having topical humour. Because you can't possibly proofread every single joke to make sure no one will possibly take offence at it.

And it was a completely orchestrated takedown. And what rights do we have to not be offended by what a comedian says on a show? We don't, like, you're right as to not watch Jimmy Kimmel if you don't like Jimmy Kimmel, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. Or you can not listen to this podcast, which is an option that a very large number of Australians take every single day. Yes. But the thing is, and John Oliver made this point talking about Jimmy Kimmel is, you know, the leadership of media companies. And this includes media companies in Australia, right, have this notion that actually their job is to sort of risk manage their way to the next bonus check or risk.

manage their way to not getting too many complaint emails. And in actual fact, if you're put in charge of a company that has cultural institutions underneath that actually play an important part in your democracy, your actual fucking job that you're being paid a fucking fortune to do is to defend those people, regardless of what happens, to push back against the sort of completely outrageous and illegal sort of attempts to disrupt it and dislodge it. And the whole point is have a system that, and it's imperfect, but have a system where politicians don't get to censor content.

And to sort of draw a line and go, no way. Like, that's it. Like, you cannot, you know, like, and actually the more, it's funny, because the ABC used to have this wonderful, the ABC in Australia used to have this wonderful legal principle that they would defend everything, right? that essentially if it made it to air, then the ABC would just fight and never, ever cave, right? And there was this golden period, this was sort of in the late 80s to the sort of mid-90s,

where there was not a single settlement done, and the ABC lost not a single lawsuit, because they were known to be so ferociously defend everyone who was working at that institution that no one bothered anymore to try it on. And wouldn't it be great if that, if that, you know, existed here in Australia now, but also if that same level of courage could just be transmitted across the world to all the sort of capitalist media companies that are doing such a poor job of defending their own turf. We've seen in Australia some extraordinary defence of journalism in recent times, not of comedians,

but of factual reporting. I mean, full credit to nine for sticking with Ben Robert Smith stuff. and it's being funded by another media baron and with the Bruce Lehman stuff with Channel 10. I mean, these things are very easy to settle and then they go away. It costs you much less money. It risks you much less money.

But it undermines your journalism. It makes you look like people can't trust what you publish. And so that is corrosive. But by the same token, if comedians, if they don't think that the network is going to back them, they're not going to write such edgy stuff. And the chaser were most of the time backed a lot by the ABC, with one or two prominent exceptions to that.

But, yeah, I mean, if you, if something's gone through an editorial process and gone to air, in a sense, you do own it. It's the institution. You had the, you're actually attacking your own executives as well and your own editorial management and so on. You're saying we, we stuffed this up. We made a mistake. And then why would the viewer, it's actually corrosive to trust in a sense as well. But look, of course, we are now then moving into an era where none of these middle people matter anymore and people can just publish what they want on YouTube up to a point on. media. There's much less censorship there. And more to the point, you don't have to go through a

whole panel of editorial review. You can do what you want. The problem is, as you say, Charles, there's no money. So the whole machine that Jimmy Kimmel has or Stephen Colbert has with 200 staff making comedy every day, I mean, yeah, people can sit in a studio like this and record themselves like we're doing right now, but it's not going to have that mass audience unless they're very, very lucky. And that's what's sad in a way is that the economics of comedy on TV just don't just don't work anymore. That's the really sad thing. That's the thing that will ultimately defeat Jimmy Kimmel and the rest of them, I guess.

Yes. Damn, we're going to try and have a more positive end to this. But to go to circle back to what I was saying, it does show that making fun of politicians is a really healthy thing to be able to do. And to get to be paid to do as we were for so many years. And as in a sea of defeat, today with Jimmy Kimmel back on air, there has been a little drop of hope. Do you think people canceling a Disney Plus subscriptions is why this happened? Because a lot of people did.

Yeah, right. Okay. Yeah. Oh, I should cancel my... You should retrospectively cancel it and then I'm canceling. Anyway. So, I mean, look, the best comment you can possibly make, I think, on this, if you believe in Jimmy Kimball, um, it's to subscribe to this podcast.

Yes. Money. I think that's really the only way you can possibly... Cancel your Disney. No, no, well, cancel something else. Cancel your fucking binge subscription, give the money to us. Does anyone subscribe to binge anymore? Just cancel one coffee a week or something.

Well, month, one coffee a month. Yes. It's all we're asking for. We're part of the Iconiclass Network and... We don't have much money for making double comedy either. Yes, we do. We've got tons. It's just somewhere else.

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