Do

Quang Do

Dr. McLaughlin

Multimedia Writing and Rhetoric

24 November 2015

Social Media: A Late Night Nightmare?

After an hour of trying to think of what to write my research paper on, I decided that it

was time to take a break. It was around eleven o’clock so I decided to see what was good on TV.

I was flipping through the channels and I landed on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

Immediately, I turned up the volume and began to intently stare at my television screen because

he was my favorite. I then noticed that I was watching a rerun of an old episode so I began to flip

through the channels once again. After landing on multiple late night talk shows and watching a

few minutes of each, I began to notice a commonplace in all of the shows. On each of the late

night shows, there is always a caption at the bottom of the screen that told the audience to follow

them on Instagram, like them on Facebook or use this hashtag on Twitter. Then I started

wondering how much of an affect social media has had on late night shows. How much has

changed on the late night shows from Johnny Carson to Jimmy Fallon? The light bulb went off

in my head and I instantly knew what I was going to write about.  

        To people the year 1978 might not have significant meaning, but it was the year that

changed the world as we knew it today. 1978 was the year that Ward Chrsitensen and Randy

Suess created the first online social network (Simon 1). This was the beginning of something

new and amazing. It allowed people from opposite sides of the world to communicate in real

time and started the digital age that people live in today. This small network of computers began

to grow and ultimately gave birth to the first major social media outlet: MySpace. Chris DeWolf

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and partner, Tom Anderson, saw the growing interest in social media and technology and

thought of creating their own. Soon MySpace became a place where “musicians, celebrities,

movies, TV shows…and every adolescent with access to a computer soon flocked…to establish

online identities” (Simon 4). Little did DeWolf and Anderson know that Mark Zuckerburg was

starting up a website that will soon become a direct competitor and ultimately cause the downfall

of MySpace. Facebook started out as a way for Harvard students to connect with each other, but

when Zuckerburg saw the extreme popularity of it on campus he decided to open it up to other

universities and then worldwide. This was the start of one of the most popular social media

outlets there today and started a domino effect of creation of countless social media outlets that

will change numerous aspects of the life (Simon 5). One aspect that has been greatly affected by

social media is a type of entertainment that usually takes place at night. It is not what one might

be thinking. It is late night shows.

        One might ask what does social media have anything to do with late night shows, but

they are more closely related than one might think. To fully understand how social media has

affected the late night comedy business, one has to first know what the business was like before

social media has become so popular.  The late night shows before the rise of social media had

been following the same format since Johnny Carson has been on air. They usually start with an

opening monologue and then continue with a couple interviews and on special occasions will

have a musical guest. Each late night show will usually have aspects that made each late night

show unique. One of the most popular late night show hosts at this time was David Letterman.

What he did to be different from the other shows on the air was that he parodied what other

shows did. For example, because “Carson liked to have funny animals on his show, so Letterman

had "stupid pet tricks" to have his own unique twist on the late night show (Weinman). Late

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night shows at this time almost entirely consisted of having guests on the show. Usually the

guests will be stars that have upcoming movies or albums and are trying to advertise it. In

addition to having guests on the show the late night shows also have comedy bits such as David

Letterman’s Top ten list. This bit consists of Letterman listing ten things that deal with a certain

humorous topic such as Top Ten Rejected James Bond Gadgets and usually revolved around

current events (Weinman). Even though each show tried to seem different from the others, it was

still basically the same format. This will all change with the rise of social media.

Social media began to become a craze to teenagers and young adults. With this new

dependency on social media and technology, more people began to have their mobile devices

with them everywhere they go. This changed the way people did everything. People used to have

conversations on the phone or have an actually face to face conversation at a restaurant.

Nowadays, everyone is on their smartphones either texting or checking their social media. Even

when people are watching TV, they will constantly check their mobile devices. Over 86% of

internet users say that they use their mobile devices while watching TV (Patel). The TV

companies began to notice this influx in more people using their mobile devices while watching

their shows and also that they depend on mobile devices almost all day. They started to create

content that uses social media in order for the audience to interact with the show, “adding a

parallel and synchronized layer of interactive companion content to the TV experience” (Proulx

84). For example, shows began to create hashtags on Twitter so that the audience could interact

with the show almost instantaneously. One question that might be popping up in one’s mind right

now is if a mobile device will negatively affect a person’s experience while watching television.

And the answer to that is no. There was a study made by Neuro-Insight which is a company that

does studies on the neurological behaviors of people for market research. In this study, Neuro-

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Insight chose a group of people to watch an episode of a live television show with a mobile

device of their choice. They were allowed to freely use their mobile device during the course of

the show to interact with any type of social media of their choice. Their neural responses were

going to be recorded for the entire duration of the hour long television show. In the end, the

study showed that compared to the control group, the people who were free to use their mobile

devices had enhanced neural responses for the entire show. This means that they paid more

attention to the show when they had a mobile device with them (Pyntha 7). Many shows got the

memo, but none of the late night shows understood that social media was the key to success until

a man called Jimmy Fallon came along.

First appearing on the Tonight Show in 2009 after replacing Jay Leno, Jimmy Fallon had

become one of the most watched late night shows on TV. He is currently number one in

viewership with over four million viewers per show, compared to Stephen Colbert’s 3.6 million

and Jimmy Kimmel’s 1.1 million (Ringen). What makes his show so successful? Ever since he

has come into the business, he has placed a focus on getting the audience to interact with the

show using social media. He has multiple parts of the show that specifically deal with what the

audience sends to him over social media. For example, he has a part of the show called Hashtags

where he releases a question a couple of days before the show on Twitter and then talks about the

responses that he receives. Along with this part of the show, he also uploads the funniest parts of

his shows on YouTube. This allows for anyone who cannot watch the show at night to be able to

watch what they missed the next day. Because Fallon does all of these social media interactions,

he is able to spread his name more effectively since he is not only limited to television

advertisements, but to all of social media and the internet. The videos that he posts on YouTube

also have unimaginable amounts of views which absolutely help him rise to popularity. His lip-

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sync battles have been watched more than 49 million times which proves just how much social

media can affect the popularity of shows.

Jimmy Fallon is a prime example on how social media is affecting the late night shows.

There are more people today that watch the late night shows compared to the amount of people

before. Because of all of this publicity that social media creates for the late night shows, it leads

to a higher number of viewers. With social media, audiences do not have to wait until the next

day to discuss what happened on a show, they could do it right away (Patel). This allows for a

greater amount of people to know about their shows in a shorter amount of time because of how

quickly information can spread through social media. With his 29.9 million followers on Twitter,

it would take no amount of time for him to gain more viewers to watch his show (Ringen).  

Along with the increase in people popularity of the show, social media also affects the

content of the shows. Because of the booming popularity of social media interactions with the

audience as shown with Jimmy Fallon, other shows are starting to adopt these new techniques of

interacting with the audience. A great example of this can be found in Jimmy Kimmel’s late

night show. In a segment called Mean Tweets, popular celebrities read mean tweets that people

write about them. It is a perfect example because it shows how shows are beginning to use social

media in segments of their shows because they know that it is popular with the younger

audience. The shows are moving away from the traditional segments of the late night shows and

are moving to more modern segments that deal with technology and social media. On the late

night shows today, there seems to be more of a focus on audience created content instead of the

shows solely being based on the jokes that the hosts come up with.

In addition to moving away from the more traditional segments, the rise of social media

also affected the intended audience that the shows aim to capture. Even though the late night

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shows are still shown during primetime, the jokes made by the hosts are adjusted to appeal to the

younger audience. This change was made because of the content on the shows are being released

onto YouTube and other forms of social media that the younger audience could watch. This

made the TV producers create more segments that might interest the younger audience in

addition to the original audience of the late night shows. Instead of interviewing a famous actor

like the old late night shows would have done, the new late night shows would have a short

interview, but then have another segment that might appeal to people of all ages. An example of

this can be found in Jimmy Fallon’s segment about “the evolution of mom dancing” where

Michelle Obama and he danced to multiple famous songs throughout history telling the evolution

of the styles of dancing of moms in the United States (Ringen). This new type of content would

create an interest in the younger audiences but will also be interesting to the older age group that

traditionally would be the intended audience. By making this intended audience group larger, the

late night shows would get more viewers watching their shows increasing their popularity.

Who would have ever thought that one little part of the internet would affect almost an

entire industry. It would come to change the late night shows considerably. From changing the

content of the show to the popularity of it, one could say that social media has changed the late

night shows for the better. Social media has allowed late night shows to grow to new heights. It

has given the shows opportunities to spread to new audiences and to evolve into a show where

families could come and laugh together.

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Works Cited

Patel, Kunur. "Is Social Media Killing TV?" Advertising Age 18 Apr. 2011: 0004. Business

Insights: Essentials. Web. 12 Nov. 2015.

Proulx, Mike, and Shepatin, Stacey. Social TV : How Marketers Can Reach and Engage

Audiences by Connecting Television to the Web, Social Media, and Mobile. Hoboken,

NJ, USA: John Wiley & Sons, 2012. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 16 November 2015.

Pyntha, Peter, et al. "The Power Of Social Television: Can Social Media Build Viewer

Engagement? A New Approach To Brain Imaging Of Viewer Immersion." Journal Of

Advertising Research 54.1 (2014): 71-80. Business Source Complete. Web. 16 Nov.

2015.

Ringen, Jonathan. "Jimmy Fallon's Happy Hour." Billboard 26 Sept. 2015: 38+. Business

Insights: Essentials. Web. 16 Nov. 2015.

Simon, Michael. “The Complete History of Social Networking – CBBS to Twitter.” Social

Networking. Ed. Kenneth Partridge. New York: The Reference Shelf, 2011. 5-10. Print

Weinman, Jaime J. "Dethroned King Of Comedy." Maclean's 128.16 (2015): 50-52. Academic

Search Premier. Web. 16 Nov. 2015.

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