Inspired in part by this thread, I have been wondering lately, if shows such as “The Tonight Show” and its ilk still have relevancy nowadays. Back in the day, these types of shows were how stars and celebrities promoted their wares, but now, there are so many different means of doing so, it seems somewhat antiquated.
Also, the replacements of Leno and Letterman skew to a younger demographic, but it doesn’t seem to be the type who will gather around the tv at 11:30 pm at night to watch the programming, instead choosing to watch highlights the next morning from various on-line sources. I feel like I’m part of the target audience (white male in my early 30s), but I can’t really imagine making a standing appointment to watch an hour-long program before having to get up for work, early the next day. (This being said, I do plan on watching the first few episodes of Stephen Colbert’s run as host of the “Late Show.”
Perhaps this is more a discussion as to how DVRs have changed our viewing habits, or that, due to a massive amount of choices in programming, late night talk shows don’t have the cultural impact they once had. Or, maybe I’m not a part of the target demographic like I thought I was, and that’s why it seems like an afterthought.
For the sake of this post, imagine that “The Daily Show,” “The Colbert Report,” etc. aren’t part of this grouping, as they tend to integrate news into their programming.
Very rarely do I watch Letterman beyond the first twenty-five minutes. I just don’t care to hear celebrities promoting themselves in general.
If I stay up much past midnight, it’s because I’m working, and I’d rather have a documentary or some classical music on the background to keep me company through the wee hours.
It depends on what you mean by relevant. They’re probably not so relevant in terms of driving the cultural conversation, or whatever you might want to call it. There are more networks, so the Tonight Show isn’t so paramount. But there are more talk shows than ever, and from a marketing standpoint they must be relevant to at least an extent- otherwise networks wouldn’t shell out so much money for the big ones. I think the people who are asking about the relevance of talk shows and wondering about their impending death are, on the whole, a good deal younger than the intended audience for talk shows. I watched Craig Ferguson’s show for several years and the musical acts were almost always country, and Fallon has his share of those too. To me that suggests they’re going for an audience that is older and has more money but is less hip, and perhaps it’s more Middle American and less coastal. Hosts like Fallon and Colbert will probably continue to target their audience while also pulling in some younger viewers who would otherwise go somewhere else.
I think the field being so overcrowded lately and the time-slots overlapping makes it all to easy to flip channels when one gets boring. Conan starts on the hour, Letterman and Fallon join in 30 minutes later, and Kimmel another 30 after that.
Throw Fergusson, Hall, and whoever else in there and it becomes a grab bag of monologues, skits, guests, and musical acts. Don’t like one just flip to another.
And see, when I think of late night talk shows, that’s exactly the target audience I envision, but I don’t necessarily see the current crop of hosts appealing to that group. Sure, I think Fallon gets some goodwill from his SNL days, but Colbert’s viewers skew younger. When I speak with older people (the type who presumably watch these shows), the majority either are unaware of who Stephen Colbert is, or they dislike him.
I just don’t see these shows as getting a good deal of viewers who will sit through the whole hour-long ordeal, when they can wake up the next day and log onto Hulu or some other website that might have the 5-minute “bit” that they want to see.
The wife and I tend to watch Seth Myers (on DVR only) because I’ve always found him worth some chuckles. He’s been mostly the same - worth some chuckles.
We often find ourselves fast forwarding past boring guests/musical acts (at least to us), so … yeah.
I do tend to watch Jon Stewart too, but rarely for his guest and almost never if it’s a celebrity pimping their latest nonsense. It’d have to be someone interesting for me to pay attention to (I also watch Daily Show on DVR the next day).
Huh? “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” are comedy shows on the “Comedy Central” network. They use daily news stories as the basis of their jokes just as Letterman, Leno, and the other talk show hosts did/do.
I would say that you’ll find more insight on a segment in one those two shows than in David Letterman’s “Top Ten List,” or Jimmy Kimmel’s “Mean Tweets.”
His show won’t be on until next year, so I’m not sure this matters much. If Colbert and Fallon don’t work out, they’ll be replaced. But the people who make their shows seem fairly confident in them at this stage.
Depending on what that’s worth to everybody - how much the shows cost to make and how much the networks make from those media - that might be good enough.
Insight? They are all entertainment and comedy shows. The Daily Show has some 25+ writers in order to make the news hilarious. Lots-O-Laffs - yes. News and insight - not really.
Yeah, with Colbert, most of their knowledge of the guy comes from hearing about how he emceed the Correspondents’ Dinner when W was President or from people lumping him with Jon Stewart - the mean comedian who isn’t funny and just picks on Real Americans.
And yeah, as someone who was way too interested in the Conan / Leno debacle, I have no doubts that the networks will be quick to replace someone who isn’t pulling in the numbers desired.
Perhaps I phrased my initial question incorrectly - perhaps it should be something along the lines of “Are late night talk shows (as we’ve traditionally known them) still relevant?” I feel like the answer to that is “no.”
Granted, there is a big difference between programming acceptable for the 12:30 slot versus the 11:30 slot, but I still think that any change of the guard will cause you to lose viewers who felt a special connection with the old host. The new host will undoubtedly bring their own fan base in, but it seems to me that you’ll skew towards a younger demographic - one who consumes media in bites and clips, versus sitting through a 10-minute interview where Katherine Heigl talk about the difficulties of balancing acting and her personal life.
IIRC, I read an article that spoke towards Jimmy Fallon’s tenure has focused on having memorable skits and bits versus spending a lot of time on the interviews. He’s even tried to find some middle ground by incorporating his guests into the bits, but he knows that those are the moments that viewers want to see, not the celebrity droning on about their personal life.
I still don’t really know what you mean by relevant. No single show is ever going to have the kind of primacy The Tonight Show did 25 or 30 years ago because there is so much more competition, and now you don’t even have to watch the thing live anymore. There’s that aspect to consider. And Leno vs. Letterman used to be seen as a two-person dogfight- maybe that won’t happen anymore either because you’ll have two newish hosts plus the Kimmel and the competition on cable channels and other media.
I’m not sure that’s true. And if things are moving away from long interviews and toward clips instead, there’s probably a good reason for it. How many celebrities would hold your attention for a whole eight or ten minute interview? I think my personal list would be less than ten people. That doesn’t suggest to me that the genre isn’t relevant anymore.
They still are, but are becoming less relevant along with any other time-based designation. They’re becoming more and more like web shows. See all the silly things Jimmy Fallon does, for example. The shows seem to be designed around becoming clips on YouTube.