Internet Killed the Talk Show Host

Not literally! lol

Jul 25, 2025

Hi friends!

You know how in Forrest Gump, our lovable protagonist bumbles his way into some of the biggest historical events of the ‘60s and ‘70s? That’s kind of how I feel about the years I spent working in Hollywood — like I inadvertently wandered into the entertainment industry’s reshaping at the hands of tech companies, watched some very powerful people be confused by the internet, made some viral videos, drank too many Dr. Peppers, and somehow found myself telling Oprah Winfrey that I needed to pee.

This story actually begins nearly ten years ago, in 2016, on my best friend’s couch in her studio apartment, where she kindly let me sleep for three weeks when I first arrived in Los Angeles. I was fresh off of a six-month-long trip around Southeast Asia that I quit my job and took because I was freaking out about turning 30, drinking too much, and suffering from a special kind of misery that is native only to the highs and lows of living in New York City.

I had gone home to Toronto, but it was the middle of winter. So, even though I went to hot yoga almost every day, my post-journey existential crisis paired too well with seasonal depression, and I needed to find a sunbeam immediately. I flew out to California with one suitcase, my laptop, and the idea of a dream. I soaked up a February heatwave, took a few hikes, ate a few tacos, very quickly got a job writing clickbait, and stayed.

I sublet a small, light-filled room from a neurotic, gay Frenchman, a former model, who was getting his PhD at UCLA. The two of us had long philosophical discussions on our balcony while we both chain-smoked Parliaments and he contextualized my takes with his beloved academic theory. The way my brain works seemed to both enrapture him and drive him slightly crazy and I liked his company.

I had the morning shift at the clickbait factory, so I would log on from home at 8 AM and start writing headlines while I drank enough coffee for a family of four and tried not to think too hard about what I was doing exactly. I am a flower much too delicate to be watered by the news cycle, and that job quickly gave me a perpetual, low-grade migraine.

Five months in, when my head was on the verge of explosion, as if by magic, a colleague who had left the clickbait factory to work on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign forwarded me an email and asked if I was open to a new opportunity. Someone she knew had put out an SOS email blast trying to find a social media manager for Chelsea Handler’s Netflix talk show, and she thought that might be a good fit for me.

Some of my finest work from my clickbait era. Like so much of the internet, the site I worked on is now dead. Thank goddess I took this screenshot for posterity.

When I started working for Chelsea, I was in culture shock, and not just because listening to Jeff Garlin take all of his calls, loudly, outside of the Coffee Bean on the studio lot was a bit much for someone so new to LA. I was used to working for digital media companies and was transported from a world of shared desks, Slack messages, and analytics to a production office where, to my eventual delight because a phone call is how you actually take care of business, we called each other from separate rooms on landlines.

Chelsea was the first talk show produced by a streamer. And it was very much an experiment for Netflix, in making this type of show for a global audience and in creating the technology to translate it, encode it, and distribute it quickly. It also came along at a time when late night was already being cannibalized — creatively and in viewership — because more and more people were watching clips online and made-for-YouTube segments like “Carpool Karaoke” were what allowed networks to monetize. But Netflix wasn’t a linear network looking to sell ads or monetize a digital channel, they wanted the show to drive subscribers. Right before Chelsea launched, their director of product innovation told Wired that the intention was to “compel people to enjoy this show on Netflix.”

The experiment didn’t work but it had its moments, lasted two seasons, and introduced me to some talented, hilarious collaborators and lifelong friends. It was a pivotal moment in my life because about six months into my tenure, my boss got fired and I was put in charge. I learned a lot (against my will) about being in a leadership position while dealing with Hollywood executives and manchild comedy writers who tried to bully me because they hate their mothers.

So, even though it was insane, I am very glad that I joined the experiment. It was, even when it was cortisol face stressful, extremely fun. And now, I’m grateful for the experience of leading social media efforts for an experimental, streaming talk show almost a decade ago because it gives me authority when I tell you that the TV talk show format has been dying a protracted death and will, in the near future, cease to exist.

Netflix was literally still under construction when we were making *Chelsea*. That lovable, barefoot, shameless doofus holding Ms. Handler like an extroverted baby is my friend Bryce who has since taken Manhattan and is a two-time Emmy winner for his work on *The Kelly Clarkson Show*. But I knew him when he was an Associate Producer pitching me crazy ideas and looking for feedback on the jokes he wrote for Chelsea’s dog’s Twitter.

Who among us in 2025 is watching an entire episode of a talk show? Sure, I want to see Jon Stewart yelling for three minutes and love the odd FYP clip of Drew Barrymore violating her guest. But I’m not watching daytime and I’m not chasing my melatonin with topical jokes about this hellscape followed by celebrity yap-yap-yap. I love a little laughter on ye olde television screen as a nightcap, but I get it from watching 30 Rock again or slipping into a Seinfeld induced coma.

Does that mean I don’t think the Colbert cancellation was politically motivated? Of course it was. I still have two good eyes when I wear my glasses, a few brain cells left that work on alternating days, and enough sense to know that CBS pulled the plug when they did because they could hide behind the excuse of a flatlining business model. But this cancellation represents more than just one dystopian media trend — corporations acquiescing to Donald Trump while his administration defunds public broadcasting — it’s also about the reality of television becoming content (and content usurping television), and middle class jobs in the entertainment industry vanishing into thin air.

All of this has been percolating for so many years. But until quite recently, especially with my friends who still work on talk shows, I felt like a canary in the coal mine talking about it. Now? Baby, there’s no coal. Only the hallucination of some if you’re still inside the mine breathing the fumes that are left.

A late night talk show was once the flagship of network television but nobody watches network television. Broadcast and cable combined have less viewership in America than streaming. And the most popular streamer? That would be YouTube. Earlier this year, their CEO announced that, for the first time in the US, TV surpassed mobile and is now the primary way people are consuming YouTube videos. At the top of that blog post was a link to an episode of Hot Ones. It turns out that talk shows can work on streaming, as long as they’re not trying to replicate a television format and there’s some chicken for the guest.

Looking back, Ellen being publicly outed as an asshole was the bellwether of this collapse. Her show, in a different era, was the bridge between social media and TV. And for the record, I think I made it about three weeks staffed on a talk show before someone who had worked for her spilled the beans. Open secrets are as prevalent in Hollywood as celebrity pet psychics.

In 2020, the year Ellen’s reptilian face was revealed under her human mask, many a think piece was written about how covid was burning down celebrity culture. But the masses, in our godless reality, will always need people to worship. TikTok press tours are still thriving — no one’s watching talk shows but we are watching the clips — the big shift is that celebrity has become decentralized to include creators, many of whom hold more power with their audience than a TV host because their success was found through building community. The flip side being: Since anyone can now share their wacky opinions and interview conspiracy theorists in a talk show of their own creation, the one tariff this country should actually levy is on podcast equipment.

In moments of heightened conversation around the collapse of legacy media, the creator economy is always trotted out as a replacement in dumb takes by people who have no idea how the sausage is made — as if hundreds of good, steady jobs won’t be lost when The Late Show goes off the air next May. Stephen Colbert would obviously make a killing going independent. Like I said about Rosie O’Donnell last week, that’s where a voice like his (and a massive, existing fanbase) makes sense these days. But the gal who runs the teleprompter, the gaffers, the PA trying to start out in a dying industry, and my homies in the art department are not starting a Substack and earning a decent living in some sort of imaginary independent media gold rush.

Also, Substack needs to stop self-mythologizing like they’re the answer to media collapse and not a tech company milking creators (I would say writers, but they’ve seemingly pivoted to … everything) for 10%. They’re marketing themselves as an alternative to social media while they try to get people to use their janky app that is indeed social media and runs some of the worst algorithms for discovery to ever exist. They just closed a new round of funding, so I guess they’re not going out of business quite yet. But what has really been grinding my gears about their whole “good guy” schtick is that the company is financially intertwined and in close partnership with The Free Press, the publication run by Bari Weiss who has been in talks to sell her shit to Skydance. Yes, the very same company that just got FCC approval to merge with Paramount, the parent company of CBS, the same network that fired Stephen Colbert for calling the $16 million that CBS News paid to Donald Trump a “big, fat bribe.”

As reported by The New York Times, Ms. Weiss is being considered for “an influential role in shaping the editorial sensibilities of CBS News.” And according to the email Substack sent out to announce their new round of funding, they will use it to support “the people who will lead us to a better culture, and a future we can believe in.” Like they always have? I mean …

One bright spot in this CBS mess is that it seems to have artistically inspired Matt Stone and Trey Parker, who just closed their own deal with Paramount. This week’s season premiere of South Park featured, among many other beats, an animated tiny Trump penis. In response, the White House released a statement that said, “no fourth-rate show can derail President Trump’s hot streak.” LMAO. South Park is famously made down to the wire and animated like ten minutes before it goes to air. There’s a great documentary about it. If anyone is primed to keep terrorizing Trump for the next several years, it’s these rich fucking lunatics.

Never forget that in the year 2000, these two dropped acid and then attended the Oscars dressed like J Lo and Gwyneth.

One more thing before I jet!

My big brother recently suggested that my readers might like a list of my recommendations, what I’m jiving with lately, a “Lizard’s List,” if you will. My brother is an extremely funny, tortured Jewish lawyer. Most of his ideas are crazy in the best possible way. This one was shockingly normal, but we’re taking it. I actually have been begging him lately to write us a guest column, a few paragraphs even. But he claims to have two children and too many billable hours. Whatever. I get that we can’t all be free-spirited creatures of the internet … but what if we could?

One of my fave pics of us because even though it’s Y2K low res, it transcodes the vibe so perfectly.

Feel free to let him know that you’d like to hear more about the vision board he made for his midlife crisis or his idea for a TikTok series involving a tiny microphone and the office microwave:

Burn It All Down

Discussion about this post

Ready for more?