‘Gutfeld!’ Rules Late Night: How Fox News’ Comedy Blockbuster Is Crushing Colbert and Redefining the Genre in 2025

For decades, late night television has been a battleground where giants fought for laughs, loyalty, and the largest piece of America’s after-hours attention span. For years, familiar faces like Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, and Jimmy Fallon ruled the roost, surviving on a playbook that blended topical humor with A-list celebrities and musical guests. Yet in 2025, an unexpected king sits atop this unpredictable heap — and his name is Greg Gutfeld.

Fox News’ ‘Gutfeld!’ isn’t just leading the late-night race; it’s lapping the field. With an astounding average of 3.1 million nightly viewers, the irreverent panel show is leaving Colbert — now a distant second at 1.8 million — to contemplate the meaning of “prime time.” Once dismissed by establishment critics, ‘Gutfeld!’ has become a cultural juggernaut, upending everything the late-night format stood for and rewriting the rules on what America wants at 11 p.m.

Comedy, But Make It Countercultural

When Fox News launched ‘Gutfeld!’ in 2021 as a challenger to the established late-night order, few believed the network — best known for its news and opinion programming, not its studio slapstick — could keep pace with the holy trinity of Kimmel, Colbert, and Fallon. Conventional wisdom dictated that the left-of-center, urban, coastal sensibility was synonymous with “funny.” Greg Gutfeld, a former magazine editor and Red Eye provocateur, had other plans.

The secret to his success is hiding in plain sight, summed up by one word: perspective. ‘Gutfeld!’ cracks jokes from a viewpoint rarely seen on mainstream comedic television — center-right and unapologetically so. While Colbert might roast Republican foibles, Gutfeld traffics in ribbing progressive orthodoxy, poking fun at the sacred cows of the cultural left, breaking taboos that Play-It-Safe TV wouldn’t touch, and catering to America’s heartland with a wink and a punchline.

Viewers noticed. Tired of a late-night landscape that often felt homogenous and overtly political, millions flocked to the one desk where the jokes didn’t follow the prevailing winds of Hollywood. “It’s like discovering there’s another side to the comedy moon,” says 42-year-old viewer Mike Carmichael, from Indianapolis. “He riffs on things no one else dares. It just feels more real.”

Breaking Out of The Echo Chamber

‘Gutfeld!’ is not just building its audience from Fox News’ built-in viewership. Research from the Pew Center in 2024 revealed that nearly 35% of Gutfeld’s audience describes themselves as “independent” or “moderate,” a higher figure than found in prior Fox comedy attempts. The show’s rotating panel of comedians, journalists, and wildcard guests means any sacred topic — from Biden’s missteps to Kardashians’ yoga routines — is fair game on any night.

“Greg’s a disruptor — not just politically, but comedically,” says Jason Nichols, a veteran TV producer who’s worked with both Fox and CBS. “When everyone is making the same orange-man jokes, you stand out by doing the opposite. Gutfeld has made Fox News a destination for people who’ve never watched Fox News in their lives.”

It’s not just the content — it’s the vibe. The show’s loose, unscripted feel offers an antidote to what some observers call the “lecture comedy” of recent years, where moralizing sometimes diluted the laughs. Gutfeld’s set looks less like a talk-show shrine and more like a suburban basement rec room, where you might encounter sharp debate and even sharp elbows — but also unfiltered (and frequently unhinged) fun.

Star Power By Committee

Traditional late-night thrives on the cult of personality; think Johnny Carson’s kingly presence or Letterman’s eyebrow. ‘Gutfeld!’ is more like a comedy garage band, with Greg as lead singer and a rowdy, ever-changing backup crew. Regulars like Kat Timpf, Tyrus, and Tom Shillue bounce off “straight man” guests from across the media-political spectrum. The effect is less “celebrity confessional” and more “family argument at Thanksgiving.”

This format keeps ratings strong and unpredictable. With less dependence on A-listers and viral segments, viewers know what to expect: a daily romp through whatever’s blowing up on social media, filtered through voices that might contradict — or even demolish — each other on air.

Colbert and Kimmel, meanwhile, have struggled to adapt their more scripted and star-centric shows to a social media news cycle that can render a joke stale before the next commercial break.

Why Colbert Is Losing Steam

What’s happened to ‘The Late Show with Stephen Colbert’? For several years, Colbert’s earnest, pointed satire — especially his lampooning of Donald Trump — was late-night’s gold standard. But as Americans moved past the intensity of the Trump era, so too did they seem to move past the necessity of watching Colbert lambast the former president night after night.

“This is the classic case of a show peaking at the perfect political moment — and failing to find a new one,” says cultural critic Amy Rosen. “The fatigue is real. People want levity, variety, unpredictability. ‘Gutfeld!’ is giving that to them.”

With Colbert’s numbers falling to under 2 million a night and ‘Gutfeld!’ soaring beyond 3 million, industry insiders now openly speculate whether CBS will rethink its once-infallible formula. The race for TV’s most valuable timeslot is no longer just a battle of jokes, but a clash of worldviews.

A New Era for Late Night?

Does ‘Gutfeld!’ signal a permanent reordering of the late-night universe? One show’s success doesn’t make a trend — yet its outsized influence is impossible to deny.

Other networks have taken notice. Paramount is currently test-piloting a “center-left” comedy news format, while digital upstarts on YouTube and Rumble have begun streaming their own genre-twisting panel shows in the Gutfeld vein. The old model — monologue, desk, celebrity, band, repeat — looks ancient compared to what’s succeeding in 2025.

As audiences scatter across hundreds of streaming services and social media platforms, ‘Gutfeld!’ proves that, just maybe, television isn’t dead: it’s just hungrier than ever for something different, risky, and most of all, funny.

In this new late-night age, it turns out the biggest innovation was simply making room for a new punchline. And for now, Greg Gutfeld is the one telling it — night after night, to millions more than anyone else.