Political satire has taken over late-night comedy.

Last Tuesday, in a hilarious skit on “The Colbert Report,” Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert tacitly celebrated this conquest. The skit opened Colbert’s first show since last Sunday’s Emmy Awards, when his show ended the 10-year winning streak of “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” in the Outstanding Variety Series category.

Colbert jokingly gloated to Stewart, who deflected the bait by saying how happy he was for his friend.

The two portrayed themselves as adversaries in the skit, but they were clearly in on the same joke: With 11 straight Emmy victories against adversaries like David Letterman and Jay Leno, political satire has surpassed the celebrity-driven talk show as the more celebrated form of late-night comedy.

The ascension of fake news in the 2000s is similar to the ascension of the celebrity-driven model in the 1950s and 1960s. One host, Ed Sullivan, made it popular. Another, Johnny Carson, showed that its success was not limited to one star.

Within the growing celebrity culture after World War II, “The Ed Sullivan Show” harbored breakthrough performances by musicians like Elvis Presley and The Beatles.

In 1954, six years after Sullivan’s show premiered on CBS, “The Tonight Show” premiered on NBC. When Carson became the host in 1962, “The Tonight Show” became the launching pad for comedians like Sullivan’s show was for musicians.

But when Carson became Sullivan’s equal, they spawned two generations of imitators.

Throughout time, celebrity-driven talk shows, while maintaining their popularity, lost their vitality because of a sudden abundance of competitors.

In the early 2000s, NBC and CBS premiered extra late-night talk shows immediately after late-night talk shows. ABC also became a competitor by hosting “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”

Performers were no longer competing to be on the shows because the shows were competing for them.

With the Internet, entertainers also didn’t need primetime television to launch their fame. Where they once created celebrities, talk shows began to just promote them.

This opened the door for a fresh late-night alternative.

Comedian Lizz Winstead envisioned a late-night news parody format similar to the “Weekend Update” segment on “Saturday Night Live.” Comedy Central adopted Winstead’s vision and “The Daily Show” premiered in 1996 with ESPN’s Craig Kilborn as host.

In January 1999, Stewart took over and shifted the focus from pop culture to politics. Much like “The Ed Sullivan Show,” “The Daily Show” became a pioneer for its format that got good at the right time.

The Internet proliferated in the late 1990s, making it easier than ever for people to voice displeasure about public policies and how the media portrays them. By playing on these themes, Stewart became an everyman leader who kept us educated and offered identifiable perspectives.

At about the beginning of Stewart’s Emmy streak in 2003, political satire gained the vitality the celebrity-driven model had lost. While celebrity-driven talk shows became promotional, political news became educational.

Stewart focused on events, trends and people we didn’t know much about because politics was less transparent than entertainment. His guests included scientists, economists, authors and experts from other important professions that aren’t typically visible in mainstream media.

With the rise of “The Colbert Report,” political satire has sustained this vitality. And Colbert, after his Emmy win, has finally been acknowledged as Stewart’s equal.

In their skit, Stewart and Colbert were not just celebrating the present, but a long and prosperous future with similar imitators. But as celebrity-driven talk shows have proven, if you give too much of a good thing, it becomes less and less important.

Jarrad Saffren is a senior political science major. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at jdsaffre@syr.edu.

Published on October 2, 2013 at 2:55 am