Peter Bart: Stephen Hid in His Foxhole

http://deadline.com/2016/02/big-sundance-festival-deals-jon-stewart-stephen-colbert-donald-trump-people-v-oj-simpson-1201695300/

[Bold mine]

BART: Next topic. It was exactly one year ago this week that word first leaked of the Big Decision – arguably the most bewildering in the recent history of the TV business. Jon Stewart quit his show right before the start of a presidential election that seemed pre-ordained for his slash-and-burn wit. Then Stephen Colbert, too, signed off, to reinvent himself as an upmarket Letterman. One year later, does any of this make sense? The news media has been trampled by Trump. News anchors have played into his hands, numbly magnifying his rhetoric and expanding his stage. Where was Stewart when we needed him?

FLEMING: Stewart clearly grew tired of being that guy. He was ready to make room for the next smartass.

BART: Polls from the Pew Organization have revealed that Stewart and Colbert provided the principal source of news for an entire generation of younger viewers. Yet at the moment of truth they hid in their foxholes. Sure, Comedy Central tried to pave over the cracks, but Larry Wilmore and Trevor Noah haven’t measured up to the challenge (their ratings at one point plunged 40%). Stewart has announced a new deal at HBO but nothing has materialized as yet. Colbert, too, has had ratings troubles against the machine-tooled stunts of the Fallons and Kimmels. Even Samantha Bee is moving into the late-night turmoil with Full Frontal, a political satire show designed to break the all-male dominance (Rivers and Chelsea Handler had previously tried to defy the Bros). Colbert got an early boost by corralling presidential candidates who were enamored of the Early Colbert mythology, when his persona was deftly masked behind that of a stodgy right wing a sshole But the new Colbert has become Late Night Bland – he has the big smile but no distinctive point of view. His interview last week with former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was a case in point – Colbert struggled so hard to advance a lucid question that his guest said, “Look, I’ll save you the embarrassment and ask the questions.” On a typical evening Colbert confronts the same list of Hollywood actors pushing their latest releases that has greeted every late-night host going back to Carson, but there are none of the oddball zealots who occasionally graced his previous show.