Comedy Central was a joke until they bet on South Park. Then they were crass and stupid (I mean, Crank Yankers?) and they reached their apex at Chapelle. It took Stewart & Co a few years to take it truly political and it wouldn't surprise me if CC decided they'd rather shy away from that.
Interesting theory. Obviously, Daily Show before John Stewart was just a silly show. After John they had been moving in the political direction, but the 2004 election is what elevated them to true relevance, even though they ultimately didn't have a great effect (damn you, Ohio!). Depoliticizing would explain some of their actions, but still doesn't explain why they were suck dicks about it. I don't know to what extent Stewart decided to cut Bee out of the deal, but by all accounts she was pretty hurt by it. Anyway, once Trey Parker calls it quits on SP, I expect CC to fall back to irrelevance, even though they've finally found a couple other shows (e.g. Amy Schumer and Broad City--ironically successful, hilarious women) to bring in viewers.
They've banked their future on Tosh.0. That's pretty much where they're at: strings of Youtube clips for basic cable. Once you start building dynasties, you have to pay for them and I'll bet they offered Trevor Noah such a tiny amount of money they knew Samantha Bee or John Oliver would laugh at them. I think that's why they gave Colbert's slot to Larry Wilmore - it was cheaper than giving him a raise.
You know what I don't get? No one watches TV anymore because TV sucks because TV doesn't make any money because no one watches TV anymore because TV sucks because but judging by the amount written about it, we care quite a bit about what's on the TV that we are not watching.
Okay, I can explain that. The people bitching about television on the Internet? They watch TV every now and then, when they're slumming, when they can't find anything they want on Netflix or HBOGo or Amazon Prime or their giant useless library of Pirate Bay shit that they don't have the time to organize. So they have a lot of opinion about a product they barely consume. The people watching television? They're still at yahoo.com. They love "sign in with Facebook" because they can barely remember one password. The relevant quote can be summoned by googling "william gibson potato." You feel lucky. I mix a very large, very famous reality TV show. I've been doing it for ten years. Our producers are very good and contrary to popular opinion, our contestants aren't always stupid. One time I was mixing a conversation about Kant and existentialism. We cut away. I asked Story why - "I was enjoying that!" "Me, too," she said, "but our audience doesn't even know who Kant is." She wasn't wrong.
`It's not like I'm using,' Case heard someone say, as he shouldered his way through the crowd around the door of the Chat. `It's like my body's developed this massive drug deficiency.' It was a Sprawl voice and a Sprawl joke. The Chatsubo was a bar for professional expatriates; you could drink there for a week and never hear two words in Japanese. Ratz was tending bar, his prosthetic arm jerking monotonously as he filled a tray of glasses with draft Kirin. He saw Case and smiled, his teeth a webwork of East European steel and brown decay. Case found a place at the bar, between the unlikely tan on one of Lonny Zone's whores and the crisp naval uniform of a tall African whose cheekbones were ridged with precise rows of tribal scars. `Wage was in here early, with two joeboys,' Ratz said, shoving a draft across the bar with his good hand. `Maybe some business with you, Case?' Case shrugged. The girl to his right giggled and nudged him. The bartender's smile widened. His ugliness was the stuff of legend. In an age of affordable beauty, there was something heraldic about his lack of it. The antique arm whined as he reached for another mug. It was a Russian military prosthesis, a seven-function force-feedback manipulator, cased in grubby pink plastic. `You are too much the artiste, Herr Case.' Ratz grunted; the sound served him as laughter. He scratched his overhang of white-shirted belly with the pink claw. `You are the artiste of the slightly funny deal.' `Sure,' Case said, and sipped his beer. `Somebody's gotta be funny around here. Sure the fuck isn't you.' Neuromancer, pp. 1 To be clear: Our current beef isn't that you're depressing, nor that you're an asshole. You're neither. But you are petulant. And petulant is unattractive, even on toddlers.The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.