After a first night that felt a bit like the first day of high school, awkwardly nerve-wracking yet sentimental, Jimmy Fallon took over “The Tonight Show” like a seasoned pro.
What, exactly, does that mean? Did he imitate the show’s former host, Jay Leno? Certainly not. Did he attempt to recreate the legendary antics of Johnny Carson? Nope. Jimmy Fallon delivered exactly what millennials and industry professionals alike needed: a terrific opening monologue, lively guests and short sketches and games that editors could cut into five-minute clips ready for YouTube Tuesday morning.
There is no doubt NBC executives hired Fallon to bring in the 15 to 35-year-old audience members to replace the baby boomers falling asleep earlier and earlier.
“Jay Leno is like my dad,” Alexis Cervantes, junior art history major, said. “Jimmy Fallon is like my brother; he’s just more entertaining.”
Cervantes and so many other students, however, aren’t actually sitting down at 10:30 p.m. to watch the late-night show when it airs across the country. When it comes down to it, millenials either aren’t paying for cable or are doing a million other things at 10:30 p.m.
Entertainment blog Vulture, along with a number of other media publications, have suggested that the death of late night is nigh. The argument puts up a fair fight. More and more, the generation in high school and college gets news from The Daily Show’s YouTube channel, short, satirical articles from The Onion, links from Huffington Post or wherever else a vast majority of Facebook friends share from.
Although the format of consumption may be going under the knife, the hilarious delivery of world news through Fallon and his expert writers will not only survive but thrive through the technology takeover. As of recent, “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon” enjoys more than two million subscribers on YouTube, while Jay Leno’s channel holds a sparse 130,000.
“We want everything in Drive-Thru format,” Andrew Huber, junior theatre arts major, said. “Who actually watches cable anymore-there’s this thing called ‘the Internet.'”
Even with major budget cuts this year, NBC not only focused energy into bringing in younger audiences with their new, fresh host, but also having an understanding of the switch to social media. According to The New York Times, NBC has been busy monitoring Jimmy Kimmel’s success with “Celebrities Read Mean Tweets” and “I Told My Kid I Ate Their Halloween Candy,” bits that have been wildly successful in the past year.
Currently, Fallon’s two million subscribers still rank under Jimmy Kimmel’s more than three million. Let us not forget, however, that Fallon comes from the Saturday Night Live niche and has already gathered a cool 5.5 million views of his collaboration with Justin Timberlake for “History of Rap.” Kimmel just isn’t whipping out sketches the way Fallon was able to create “Ew,” a sketch with Will Farrell and First Lady Michelle Obama, nor is he having celebrity guests dress up as teen heart throbs (Kristen Wiig did an entire interview as Harry Styles in the first week).
Although not quite ready to play with the big boys when it comes to YouTube subscribers, Seth Meyers took over Fallon’s apprenticeship on Late Night last week and confirmed speculation that his comedy-straight-man abilities would give the show entertaining interviews with a wide-range of guests from Kanye West to Vice President Joe Biden. With Lorne Michaels, the executive producer of “Saturday Night Live,” at the helm of both shows, NBC should only see their YouTube impressions soar and their social media take flight. Fallon and Meyers are delivering sketch material that can easily be digested in six minute video clips-the key to late night television success.
To call Fallon the voice of our generation would not be fitting because he is just a few years younger than our parents. Unique sketches and satirical news delivery that can instantly appear on our newsfeeds and Twitter updates at our convenience will propel Fallon (and Meyers) into a new form of comedy and news that will live on.
