The Late Night Talk Show Wars Will Be Fought On Social Media

Former Saturday Night Live star and Late Night host Jimmy Fallon entered broadcast history this week beginning his tenure as the sixth host of The Tonight Show, NBC’s venerable late night institution.  Surrounding the departure of Jay Leno and the arrival of the younger, more tech-savvy Jimmy Fallon, has been a lot of hype over how the younger-leaning Fallon will do against the well-established competition on CBS and ABC.  David Letterman is the old guard on the late night scene and the last standing ‘warrior’ of the so called ‘late night wars’ now that Leno has left the airwaves.  It's Jimmy Kimmel, however, who has been making waves at 11:30 ever since he was moved up from his midnight time slot just last year.  Ever since Kimmel started competing with the ‘big boys’ directly, he’s been making large strides building on the younger demos.  This is the reason behind NBC’s decision to put Leno out to pasture (again): despite the fact that he was still the ‘leader in late night’ in the ratings, his younger demos continued to shrink and that was leading to decreasing profits for the late night institution.

 

The key to Jimmy Kimmel’s success is no secret and it’s a large part of why Jimmy Fallon was chosen to succeed the older-skewing Leno on The Tonight Show perch.  Kimmel and Fallon share a great talent for creating great viral content and really pushing the limits of what social media can do for their respective shows.  Ratings all across the broadcast spectrum have been trending downwards but Kimmel has shown surprising growth ever since he was promoted to his earlier time slot.  If anything, Kimmel is demonstrating night after night that in order to succeed in late night today, you have to go viral.

  

The ‘Viral’ Talk Show

Drawing in young audiences that advertisers crave has become increasingly difficult in this new digital age.  In the days of Johnny Carson, there were fewer choices but now audiences have on demand, Netflix, and numerous cable options.  Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim programming block and Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert combo regularly out-rate the broadcast networks.  Kimmel and Fallon are now in a battle for attention as much as anything else.  Any noise that these two young hosts can make can only help them cut out a larger share of that ever shrinking broadcast audience.  As Vulture’s Josef Adalian points out: 

 “To that end, they’ll each want to stake out a claim as the hippest (broadcast) hour in late night by reaching more people through viral-friendly bits that can live on outside their shows. Kimmel pioneered the power of talk-show virality with his 2008 “I'm Fucking Matt Damon” video, and has kept that going through last year's epic twerk fail video and beyond. Fallon has proven just as adept, turning everyone from Michelle Obama to Bruce Springsteen into his video co-stars.” (Adalian, 2014)

Fallon’s big premiere week has been littered with sketches destined to go viral.  The below video comes from Fallon’s very first Tonight Show, playing off one of the most viewed Youtube videos ever, this time starring one of the biggest movie stars in the world, Will Smith.  NBC has already seen an immediate jump in social media engagement compared to Leno’s time behind the chair.  “Fallon’s team jumped The Tonight Show engagement by 12.3 times in the seven days following Leno’s final show February 5, compared with 2.5 times for rival Jimmy Kimmel’s team.”  Fallon has been positioned to move the needle for NBC against a strong up and comer who knows how to attract “younger, social-media-savvy audiences.”  Fallon and Kimmel “have very good grasps of the power and importance of the social-media universe in driving online audience to offline.” (Bloom, 2014)

Comedy + Corporate Synergy 

Well, if everyone’s going to be watching clips and videos online, then how will these late night shows be making money.  With lower ratings, that means lower ad buys and both shows will show decreased profits.  Along with the viral videos, each late night host has shown themselves to be company men, through and through.  Jimmy Fallon has already announced plans to have GE sponsored sketches for some “DVR-proof product integration.” (Adalian, 2014)  Jimmy Kimmel has already shown he’s willing to play ball with this week’s trailer premiere of the latest Disney/Marvel blockbuster The Guardians of the Galaxy on his program with an introduction by the film’s star, Chris Pratt.  Also, in a fairly savvy social media move, the show made the trailer shareable exclusively through the Jimmy Kimmel Live! Youtube page where after the video is complete, links to other clips and videos from the show appear.

Late Night on the Social Web

With the first week of Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show concluded and the hype died down, where do these shows stand now?  Of course, the daily talk show grind is a long-term process and immediate ratings don’t exactly tell the story.  Six months down the road, the public will get a better view of how each host is faring against each other.  Until then, ratings won’t matter as much as the kind of attention each show gets over the next few months on the social web.  Kimmel hasn’t taken Fallon’s hugely hyped first week lying down.  In a follow-up to Kimmel’s infamous ‘twerk-fail’ video, the host got U.S. luger Kate Hansen to post a fake wolf video to Twitter and Youtube from the Winter Olympics in Sochi.

Fallon, meanwhile, continues to make waves with viral videos all week featuring Will Smith, Will Ferrell, and First Lady Michelle Obama.  Fallon even reunited with Justin Timberlake for a fifth edition of the incredibly popular (and very viral) History of Rap.  The late night talk show model may be a fading tradition in the face of ever growing competition but the efforts of Fallon and Kimmel have reinvigorated the form to some extent and may just give the late night talk show a few more years of life yet.  Both shows are certainly using social media in unique, innovative ways that truly break the talk show form down and extend it far past it’s ‘past your bedtime’ time slots.  Through viral bits and extensive interaction with fans through Twitter and Facebook, both hosts have created a level excitement for their respective shows.  For Kimmel, this has translated in some pretty impressive ratings gains.  For Fallon, things remain to be seen but certainly look up.

What does everybody else think?  What can the rest of the broadcast network shows learn from these two late night hosts’ fun, innovative use of social media? 

References

Adalian, J. (2014, February 16). The Late-Night Wars Are Now Just a Battle for Survival. Retrieved from Vulture: http://www.vulture.com/2014/02/late-night-wars-jimmy-fallon-jimmy-kimmel-survival.html

Bloom, D. (2014, February 17). Jimmy Fallon Seizing Social Media Ahead of 'Tonight Show' Takeover. Retrieved from Deadline Hollywood: http://www.deadline.com/2014/02/jimmy-fallon-social-media-surge-tonight-show-debut/