Post by Bradley Schauer, University of Arizona

Much of the press coverage of David Letterman’s retirement has framed it as the end of an era. According to this account, the traditional late night talk show – pioneered by Steve Allen in the ’50s, brought to its classical peak by Johnny Carson, and reaching its creative apex with Letterman’s baroque, ironic approach beginning in 1982 – has been rendered obsolete by a new emphasis on social media and viral videos. Even Letterman himself recently admitted that his show’s failure to embrace YouTube and Twitter was a problem: “What I’m doing is not what you want at 11:30 anymore… I hear about things going viral, and I think, ‘How do you do that?’”

Letterman in a suit of velcro, 1984.

On one hand, the differences between Letterman’s show and those of his youthful competitors are overstated. Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, and the rest still adhere closely to the traditional late night formula: monologue, desk piece, two guests and a musical act. And Letterman, particularly in the first 2/3 of his career, specialized in short remote videos (Dave works the Burger King drive-thru) and spectacle (Dave wears a Velcro suit) that would have lent themselves to online distribution. Much of Letterman’s declining ratings with young viewers can be simply attributed to his age: a 68-year-old who makes jokes about the Andrews Sisters and Lorne Greene is never going to win the 18-49 demo.

On the other hand, Fallon’s YouTube clips do receive exponentially greater hits than Letterman’s, and it is due to more than Fallon’s aw-shucks charm. Letterman’s inability to go viral is a byproduct of his unique approach to the talk show format, one rooted in traditional modes of viewership. Whereas the newer shows’ short, self-contained segments are constructed for easy accessibility and viral distribution, Letterman rewarded the dedicated viewer. It was not only funnier if you watched the entire program, it was funnier if you watched every night. Strange jokes that were barely funny on their own became hilarious as they were repeated, out of context, across an episode and for weeks afterwards. In this way, Letterman’s show was truly cult television, creating an insular community of viewers that prided themselves on their separation from the mainstream. It was no surprise (except apparently to Letterman) when the more accessible Jay Leno began beating him in the ratings after the honeymoon period of the mid-‘90s.

Along the same lines, Letterman’s funniest moments were rarely as funny when decontextualized from the show’s offbeat comic sensibility. More than anti-comedy, Letterman’s humor is typically a blend of two contradictory impulses: irony and sincere pleasure in the mundane. The purest example is “Will It Float?”, the recurring segment in which Letterman and Paul Shaffer would earnestly debate whether or not an item would float before two models threw it into a tank of water. The audience enjoys the overblown, ironic trappings associated with the skit (including a theme song and a hula-hoop dancer), but is also encouraged to take genuine pleasure in the question of whether or not the item will, in fact, float. Letterman satirizes the entertainment industry by valorizing the trivial. But the mundane does not make for effective YouTube clips – Stupid Pet Tricks can’t possibly compete when put up against the entire internet.

The newer shows’ heightened emphasis on celebrity guests is another important distinction. The usual observations about Fallon’s obsequiousness vs. Letterman’s disdain for modern Hollywood celebrity culture seem roughly accurate. The key difference, though, was that Letterman was the undisputed star of his show, his personality and sense of humor dominating and permeating every aspect. Fallon and the rest follow Leno’s example, acting as genial emcees who each night willingly take a backseat to their guests. And while Letterman was rarely as severe to guests as his reputation would indicate, it was usually clear whether or not he was interested in what they had to say. If he was, the interview had the potential to become a genuine conversation that revealed more of the guest than the faux-spontaneity of Fallon’s parlor games or James Corden’s skits.

On the set of NBC’s “Late Night with David Letterman,” 1982.

Letterman’s show at its best had a loose, improvisational quality that hearkened back to Steve Allen more than to Carson. Especially during the low production values of the NBC years, it was as though Letterman were hosting the funniest public access show of all time. He was unafraid to use a sense of duration as comic fodder: for instance, cold-calling a CBS executive and then waiting over a minute in awkward silence for the secretary to see if he was available. As the years went by, and Letterman stopped attending rehearsal, the spontaneity only increased, with the host showcasing his gift for language in rambling shaggy dog stories told at his desk. (In his excellent show, Craig Ferguson would take these qualities to their extreme, ensuring that he would never be considered for the 11:30 slot.) Again, this type of humor does not work when reduced to internet clips where viewers demand instant gratification.

The outlook for late night talk shows is grim, with ratings only about half of what they were 15 years ago. I remember my students in 2010 vehemently supporting “Team Coco” during Conan O’Brien’s ouster from The Tonight Show, only to admit that none of them actually watched the show, but knew O’Brien entirely from YouTube clips and Twitter. Networks seem to value YouTube hits, but it has never been clear exactly how they are monetized in any substantial way. Taking into account the fragmentation of the post-network era, and the relative interchangeability of this new generation of late night hosts, it seems as though David Letterman’s legacy will be as the last real star of late night television, and, in all likelihood, as one of the last great American broadcasters. If there is a new David Letterman out there, his or her type of comedy will not find a welcome home on network television.

By naming Conan O’Brien the heir to Jay Leno’s throne, NBC replaced a comedian known for his broad appeal with one in the mode of Leno’s old friend/nemesis, David Letterman.  Like his idol Letterman, O’Brien was innovative, unpredictable, and polarizing — the antithesis of Leno’s genial, if bland, humor.  While NBC wanted to keep O’Brien from leaving for ABC or Fox, and thereby further fragmenting the late night landscape, they also retained their commitment to The Tonight Show as one of the remaining bastions of “broadcasting” (as opposed to narrowcasting).  O’Brien was thus expected to adapt his quirky humor to the tastes of an older mass audience.  According to Bill Carter’s new book The War for Late Night, NBC executives (particularly Dick Ebersol) became annoyed with O’Brien for what they understood as his refusal to adjust to the earlier time slot during his brief run as Tonight‘s host.

In reality, O’Brien’s Tonight Show was considerably watered down from its 12:30 predecessor — the bawdy, sophomoric edge of Late Night (against which O’Brien would hilariously play an aghast straight man) was buried in favor of another side of O’Brien’s persona — the pleasant, inoffensive goofball.  O’Brien’s Tonight Show had tried to appeal to a wider audience, and ended up satisfying few.

Despite NBC and Leno’s assertions that O’Brien’s low ratings played a key role in the late night shake-up, Carter’s book makes clear that the disastrous performance of the prime time Jay Leno Show was almost solely responsible — that and the unusual “pay-and-play” stipulation in Leno’s contract that guaranteed him a spot on the NBC schedule.  The 12:05 slot on NBC would have been an excellent fit for O’Brien, but his relationship with NBC had grown toxic due largely to undiplomatic behavior on the part of NBC execs like Ebersol and CEO Jeff Zucker.  Carter depicts the execs as unable to empathize with the sensitive artiste O’Brien, and as understanding late night purely in terms of numbers (in the same way, Leno is portrayed as obsessed with minute-by-minute ratings fluctuations, while the other late night hosts take a more holistic, organic approach to their craft.)

The NBC debacle served to catalyze O’Brien’s young fan base; people who avoided watching broadcast TV but knew O’Brien through the internet became ardent members of “Team Coco.”  O’Brien’s post-Tonight theater tour solidified his cult, folk-hero status.  Unlike O’Brien’s Tonight Show, which tried to win over skeptical Leno fans, Conan is aimed squarely at Team Coco.  It presumes an audience that already finds Conan charming — how else could O’Brien get away with singing (and taking a guitar solo) on a duet of “Twenty Flight Rock” with Jack White at the show’s conclusion?

O’Brien’s return to narrowcasting was never more evident than in his choice of first guest.  Even Seth Rogen himself wondered what he was doing there: “I’m so glad everyone more famous was busy right now.”  Rogen and his stories about medical marijuana and his fiancee’s “titties” targeted the 18-34 demo, with no regard for older audiences.

Overall, the TBS premiere was refreshing in its ordinariness, its willingness to be unremarkable.  There was little of the sense of “event TV” that characterized Conan’s Tonight premiere – which, for me, was a good thing.  The elephantine first episode of O’Brien’s Tonight, front-loaded with overlong, not-especially-funny remote segments, seemed like it was trying too hard.  Conan was enjoyably brisk in comparison — with each guest on for about six minutes, even O’Brien remarked at how quickly the show flew by.

The Conan premiere’s lack of showy excess is partly a function of the program’s industrial status — it’s hard to celebrate a move to basic cable, after all.  Yet working for TBS should be an artistic boon for O’Brien – the channel’s lowered expectations will allow him to further build his niche appeal and foster the underdog status that suits his self-deprecating style.

Jay Leno’s 10/9pm show had horrible ratings. As a Leno anti-fan, it gives me pleasure to type that. It gives me no real pleasure or displeasure to type the next line, though: Conan’s ratings were also pretty bad. And then a funny thing happened (the funniness sure wasn’t in Leno’s show): both shows experienced ratings spikes when cancelled because of the public airing of all the dirty laundry.

I pose that if we want to understand what went wrong with the Jay Leno Show and what NBC might learn from it, we shouldn’t just ask what Leno’s failure says – we should also ask what the combination of the failure and the momentary ratings spike says.

As Amanda Lotz has already pointed out here at Antenna, at least we could say that NBC tried something. But that something showed itself incapable of beating even poor and poorly advertised new shows that have since been cancelled and forgotten. Jeffrey Jones also noted here at Antenna that NBC just didn’t get the art of programming different dayparts.

What interests me, though, is how many people decided to watch Leno or O’Brien or Letterman or Kimmel when it finally seemed to matter. There was an event, and with it, a reason to watch. And events have done well this year – V is really quite bad indeed, and yet it premiered to great numbers. AMC’s The Prisoner notched a fairly admirable sized audience. Millions will watch an event on Feb 7 when the Colts battle the Saints, even though many won’t care about football. Jersey Shore seems to have been an event, too, as all manner of reality shows have continued to do well by being events with yet more events (tribal council, the merger, Hollywood week, the trip to Japan, etc.) built into them.

I’m not sure how much I believe this next idea, but I’m trying it on for size, so tell me if I should put it back on the rack: perhaps we’ve reached a point of televisual ubiquity and of the medium’s general “wallpaperness,” that many viewers yearn for and/or need some kind of external reason to tune in. Sure, a lot of shows are still getting great audiences, so the day of reckoning is hardly upon series television, nor do I believe it’s coming. But if NBC wants to shake things up a bit, how about some more events (other than the Olympics)? How about the British system of shorter shows? Greenlight small projects, and if some do very well, sure, make ‘em into longer series. But otherwise, become the channel with new stuff, the channel that’s got a new show on tonight (did you hear about it?), not yet another rerun of a tired procedural that nobody really cares that much about anyways, or night 5648 of Jay’s late night reign of terror.

Maybe it’s an awful idea. But it’s certainly no worse than the idea of giving Jay Leno a third of prime time.

NBC deserves an A- for taking a bold move with The Jay Leno Show, although a D for deployment. Any viewer or industry worker who thinks network television will continue without such bold changes is painfully disillusioned. I’m not typically a fan of prognosticating, but I bet by the decade’s end, at least one network will strip some part of prime time.

Where did NBC go wrong—can we count the ways? This was the wrong time frame and the wrong talent. By giving up 10:00, the experiment became a particularly contentious point for affiliates that depend on a strong 10:00 to carry audiences into news, both late-night and in the morning. Secondly, NBC gave up the opportunity for any kind of “grown-up” series programming because everything needed scheduled before 10:00. In addition to offering little of interest to a good chunk of the audience, this is problematic because of the substantial revenues for the conglomerate owning the network that come from selling programming—some of which is for a 10:00 maturity level—and NBC would soon have little to sell. Sadly, NBC’s one recent glimmer of programming potential, its effective re-invention of the cop franchise in Southland, had to be shipped off to TNT given the lack of room on a schedule bloated with Leno.

The other mistake was not entirely realizing that this is not the television business of 1992. No one wanted to repeat the mess of the Carson/Leno/Letterman saga, and executives were reasonably worried about Leno going elsewhere, but in television of the late 2000s, would this have even mattered. Would a substantial audience really have followed, especially after a period of transition? The truth is, the breadth of audience Leno’s comedy aims for is an artifact of another era. A few might have followed to another network, but probably not enough to make a big difference. Sure, no one wants to be the one that Leno get away, but it isn’t hard to see how radically the comedic landscape of US has become focused on narrow tastes.

We’ll see what happens next; programming costs have to be decreased, but the complexity of network economics—with cost savings coming cheap programming, yet revenue coming from programming that can be sold in subsequent markets and from affiliates—there is no single solution or magic bullet. The Jay Leno Show didn’t save US broadcast networks, but it will take something that bold to do so.

The reasons it will survive are numerous, including the fact that with the exception of Comedy Central, the cable nets aren’t providing anything in the way of serious competition to network talk shows. More importantly is history. Even for younger generations (especially as they grow older and become less cool conscious and more boring in their routines), NBC and CBS are simply where one turns for this form of entertainment.

And that, of course, is the point that NBC seemed to miss with this failed experiment–the very particular role that talk shows play in viewers’ lives. With notable exceptions, the late night talk show has been a tremendously stable form of television entertainment, with changes coming very gradually and more reflective of cultural sensibility than artistic creativity.  Simply put, audiences have historically tuned in for two reasons. The first is content–a regular diet of 1) a host-persona they are attracted to (this being most important), 2) a steady diet of celebrities and people in the news as guests, 3) some music, and 4) an occasional comedy sketch or public oddity. That’s it. But while that is also what “The Jay Leno Show” and “The Tonight Show” continued to offer during NBC’s juggling act, NBC violated the second component: daypart. When it comes to cable nets, dayparts are really irrelevant (think Comedy Central or HBO, for instance). But for most viewers, dayparts are what defines broadcast networks. We know where to look and when for a very particular form of routinized pleasure. And when that changes, we often don’t like it (this can even include our finickyness when the networks move a Sunday night drama to Tuesday night).

But it is the interrelationship between these two central components of late-night talk–the hosts/content and the time-slot/routine–that was violated in the NBC decision. Leno simply isn’t prime time, just as Conan isn’t early late-night (not to mention that Conan is New York, not L.A.). Perhaps NBC just didn’t run this through enough focus groups, or failed to do so properly. But one would hope that with such a dominant role the network has played in creating this relationship to viewers to being with, it would “understand” both itself and its viewers better by this point in the history of television.