BACKLASH: Hall said he doesn't like Gutfeld's work!

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2025

But he never said why: Who the heck is Colby Hall? We thought you'd never ask!

Hall is the founding editor of Mediaite.com, a news site which records the types of (significant) nonsense the New York Times may choose to disappear. In the past few months, we've read a lot of sensible opinion pieces by Hall right there at Mediaite.

We were less familiar with Hall's work back in July, when he published a profile of the Fox News Channel's Greg Gutfeld and his primetime Gutfeld! show. 

The headline referred to Gutfeld as a "prankster." Hall's profile started like this:

Opinion
Greg Gutfeld’s Disruptive Rise: How a Fox News Prankster Broke Late-Night TV

Stephen Colbert’s Late Show is over, and while the official reason has yet to be confirmed, reports suggest CBS was hemorrhaging money to the tune of $40 million a year. The show reportedly employed more than 220 staffers and cost an eye-popping $100 million annually to produce. Yes, there is the whole corporate fealty to Trump at play, which I went into great detail on Friday, but this blockbuster-movie money for a nightly talk show. In an age of media belt-tightening and digital fragmentation, that model may simply no longer be sustainable.

Which brings us to Greg Gutfeld.

Yes, Gutfeld—the often smirking, occasionally cringeworthy Fox News host who somehow emerged as a legit force in late-night-style comedy. And while I’ve personally called his brand of humor “witless” (and stand by that), it’s impossible to deny: Gutfeld has cracked the code, disrupting a TV genre once defined by Johnny Carson, David Letterman, Jay Leno, and yes, Colbert himself.

Let’s be clear: Gutfeld! airs at 10 p.m. ET, which technically makes it a primetime show. But in tone, structure, and format, it’s a late-night show—monologue, roundtable, recurring gags, rotating co-hosts with semi-celebrity status, and alt-right bona fides, with a wink toward absurdist commentary on the day’s news almost always at the expense of libturds and lamestream media.

[NOTE: As of this morning, the Mediaite site seems to be down. For that reason, we can't provide a link to Hall's essay.]

As the profile started, Hall engaged in a bit of the standard sleight-of-hand according to which the Fox News Channel has branded Gutfeld as "the king of late night" comedy. Because he knew that Gutfeld! actually isn't a late night" show, Hall began by describing the show as "a force in late-night-style comedy" (our emphasis).

Hall then acknowledged the fact that Gutfeld! isn't a "late night" show at all. Even there, an obvious corner was cut—he noted the fact that Gutfeld! airs at 10 p.m., failing to say that it airs at that time only in the Eastern time zone.

(We're assuming he would have known that.)

In fact, the show airs at 9 p.m. in the Central time zone, at 7 p.m. out on the coast. For whatever reason, it's been standard behavior for mainstream journalists to fuzz those facts as profiles of Gutfeld have appeared this year. This misrepresentation helps Fox extend the claim that Gutfeld's viewership numbers have established him as "the king of late night"—as the reigning monarch of the late-night comedy wars.

Gutfeld! actually is a heavily watched "cable news" show; it has the third highest viewership in all of cable news. On its face, that's a striking achievement—but the Fox News Channel likes to claim a higher glory, and one mainstream journalist after another has seemed to play along with this channel's vastly misleading claim, to greater or lesser degree.

As he continued, Hall continued to fuzz the claim that Gutfeld! actually is a "late night comedy" show. We would dispute both parts of that description, but here's what Hall's profile says:

(Continuing directly from above)
What sets it apart isn’t just that it’s on Fox News, but that it’s doing all this with a staff reportedly no bigger than maybe twenty people? Gutfeld’s creative team is small, tight, and far from bloated.

That lends something to his show that late-night hasn’t had in a long time: authenticity. You might not like the jokes (I usually don’t), but the DIY spirit is palpable. Gutfeld honed his voice back in the Maxim and Stuff magazine days, where the “laddie” culture prioritized irreverence, irrelevance, and low-fi swagger. He sharpened his satirical chops further hosting Fox’s cult-classic Red Eye, a weird, smart, surreal show that quietly built him a following among insomniac media nerds and libertarian night owls.

The result is a show that, while not for everyone, clearly resonates with a large audience—an audience that often feels condescended to or outright ignored by mainstream comedy. Much of that can be attributed to Fox News’ built-in viewership who, judging by the network's dominant ratings, seem eager to watch every hour of programming on the network 

Suzanne Scott, Fox News CEO, deserves credit for greenlighting the 10 p.m. shift that let Gutfeld own a bold new time slot—a gamble that paid off big. Launching a late-night show on a cable news network was risky, but she recognized the post-pandemic appetite for smart, fun, non-lecturey comedy.

By the end of that passage, Gutfeld! is being described as "a late-night show" all over again—but a second point of curiosity has now appeared:

Hall has started saying that he himself doesn't especially like Gutfeld's humor. ("You might not like the jokes," he says. "I usually don't.")

Hall doesn't care for Gutfeld's comedy—but he has twice described Gutfeld's work as "smart!" For reasons we'll discuss as the week proceeds, we're amazed to think that he would have selected that particular term as he describes Gutfeld's work.

We're amazed to think that Hall would describe Gutfeld's work as "smart!" But then, there's also this:

in the course of the profile, Hall says or suggests, again and again, that he himself isn't a fan of Gutfeld's "smart, fun" comedy. Beyond that, he suggests that you, the reader of Mediaite, may not care for this "smart, fun comedy" either. 

Here's how the profile ends:

It’s ironic, maybe even darkly comedic, that Fox News—once seen as antithetical to comedy—now produces the most-watched “late-night” show on cable. While the other networks trim costs or shut down completely, Gutfeld’s frugally produced, stripped-down format thrives. The jokes might be cheap—but so is the overhead.

To be fair, there’s room for everyone. Comedy is subjective. Gutfeld’s not for me, just as Colbert was never going to win over the Hannity crowd. But TV is a business, and in the end, the audience decides. And right now, more viewers are tuning into the scrappy, sarcastic conservative guy—notorious for his ill-advised bit in trying to reclaim “nazi” for conservatives—on Fox with a dozen writers and a former pro wrestler.

Restaurants have menus for a reason. You may not want what Gutfeld’s serving—but a whole lot of people clearly do.

Once again, Hall is fashioning Gutfeld! as "a late-night show," even though he knows that isn't accurate. Having said that, it's true:

A whole lot of people do seem to like Gutfeld's "comedy stylings." But Hall has said, again and again, that he himself isn't one of those people—and he closes his profile by saying that his readers may not like Gutfeld's "smart, fun" comedy either.

Colby Hall doesn't like Gutfeld's "smart, fun comedy!" Along the way, he has offered hints as to why that might be the case, but he never explicitly unravels this conundrum. Nor does he ever quote the sort of "smart, fun" material a reader might encounter if he or she decides to tune in to this primetime show.

Why doesn't Colby Hall enjoy Greg Gutfeld's "smart, fun" comedy? We can easily guess at the answer to that, but the answer is never spelled out.

In our view, Hall's failure to unpack this riddle raises a set of questions about the prevailing values of our own Blue American world:

In yesterday morning's report, we refreshed you as to the claims made in Backlash, Susan Faludi's 1991 "feminist classic." As almost anyone should be able to see, an obvious type of angry backlash seems to be involved in Greg Gutfeld's "smart, fun" comedy—an angry, extremely coarse backlash which has long struck us as the swill which might emerge from an overturned garbage can.

That said, mainstream profiles of the Gutfeld! show have persistently failed to describe the essence of his angry, coarse offerings. Routinely, journalists have refused to quote samples of Gutfeld's comedy stylings, just as Hall has done.

We've seen a lot of good work by Hall. Back in July, we were puzzled by this profile.

Our questions go like this:

Does Blue America have a sexual politics at this point in time? Did we ever have a sexual politics? We'll ponder such questions all week.

Tomorrow: A smart, fun start to the show