Stephen Colbert’s Late Show replacement is a depressing sign of the times

After the politically incisive late-night host said his final goodnight last week, Byron Allen’s Comics Unleashed offered a grim look at where TV is heading The applause, dear God, the applause. It has you bracing against the headboard and groping for the remote when Comics Unleashed detonates onto the screen just before midnight. A soulless barrage of whoops, cheers and apparatchik-grade terror clapping, it hits like a jet engine at takeoff, swallowing the show’s disembodied announcer in a s...

By Andrew Lawrence