Roy Wood Jr. sees remaining late night hosts as “the last of their kind”

Network television is in an ever-tightening spot. The major networks don’t pull viewership numbers anywhere near how they used to, Comcast sold off most of its NBCUniversal cable holdings, and MTV is mostly Ridiculousness. Things aren’t all that better at Comedy Central, which has few offerings at this point beyond The Daily Show. Roy Wood Jr. knows this, and though it doesn’t sound like it really weighed into his decision to step away from the political comedy series, he sees some writing on the wall. 

“If you look at the landscape of political satire and late night, [Wood’s new series Have I Got News for You] is the only new show to launch in the last few years,” the comedian says in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “They’re making cuts. They’re trimming fat. They took Jimmy Fallon’s Friday. [They] took Seth Meyers’ band. James Corden’s show got replaced with After Midnight — which is fine, but it’s way cheaper.” While Wood has sold three shows recently (“Let’s get that straight.”) he knows that that’s an anomaly. 

What Wood does think we will see more of is stuff like what Shannon Sharpe or Jason Bateman have been doing. “I think the evolution of media will eventually see talent become the network, the producers and the purveyors of the content. What [Pat] McAfee or SmartLess Media are doing, that will eventually be a norm,” he continues, but explaining that those guys can do that because of their track records. “I think about this a lot. Not everybody’s going to sell a podcast for $100 mil because not everybody’s going to get an ROI. The idea of taking a chance on someone and just putting a motherfucker on TV? That’s done.”

Even the guys with a track record aren’t completely safe, as he mentions with Fallon and Meyers. “I really believe that the boys we see on TV right now are last of their kind. Ain’t going to be no more $20 million-a-season white men at 11:30. And whatever comes next is going to be something that’s already been ideated and connecting with people, because the networks are hedging bets,” Wood adds. “I won’t call ’em broke, but they’re definitely hedging bets.”