Furthermore, compare The Tonight Show in the Johnny Carson era with it in the Jimmy Fallon era. Carson liked to have guests who would talk about serious subjects. He was a science buff. Carl Sagan appeared on his show 26 times. Fallon has little interest in interviewing guests at all. He likes setting up clever little sketches or other things with them in which they can perform so that the sketch will go viral on the Internet. It’s not much of a talk show at all. The whole history of television seems to be about the disappearance of pure talking.
But, in the Internet era, is there anything left to say? Celebs are Tweeting and Instagramming their every move and when they don’t, The Media does it for them. They participate in press junkets and tell every media outlet everywhere every detail about their new project. Celeb news is a regular part of the local news, the national news.
So there’s no new content to be had for talk shows. It’s hard to get any fresh content from celebs. Fallon tries to make something new for them by just having them participate in sketches and silly games. And it works - he’s got something way different than anyone else who is merely talking.
Oh. I assumed everyone else had, so I didn’t. Bystander effect in action, I guess.
So her her show was her answering letters and singing a little bit. That’s nowhere near as hard to understand. She had stuff to talk about, not just filling time from beginning to end. And there’s nothing about how long this was. I was picturing a woman sitting alone on a set, just talking about whatever popped into her mind.
As soon as she became the only host for Hollywood on Television, they started bringing in guest stars for her to improvise with. That’s easy to understand, too.