Jimmy Fallon and Late Night: The Future Of Broadcast TV

Jimmy Fallon stormed into the Today show studio last Wednesday morning decked out in pink Uggs and pink vest, skintight white pants, a wig and make-up. Hoda Kotb, Kathie Lee Gifford and other Late Night writers crossdressing for the taping of the "Real Housewives of Late Night" sketch couldn't hide their amusement. In an interview the next day, Fallon says the "Real Housewives" character is his favorite to play right now, a recurring parody sketch currently in a weekly run within his Late Night show, but also thriving on the web. It's the latest example of the dual role of Fallon's new late night show - and another reason why his program is a model for the future of broadcast TV as a whole. "It doesn’t hurt to try things," Fallon tells Mediaite in an interview last Thursday in his 30 Rock office. "Especially with this show, it's like we're doing above and beyond what any other show is doing as far as production, viral videos. It's good for us because it shows people we care about this show. We want this to be the funniest show." Fallon's office is an example of what the show does well - with the newest video game consoles sitting next to the nostalgia of an old school Nintendo system. It's a formula that has turned the show's self-contained website LateNightWithJimmyFallon.com into a hugely popular, award-winning website - and not just as a disseminator of the show's TV content, but as a unique property. It employs three full-time bloggers who put up content both about the TV show and unrelated to it. “We concentrate just as much on our website as we do on our show.” Mike Shoemaker spent more than two decades with Saturday Night Live, including the eight Fallon was on the show, before joining Late Night as the program's Executive Producer for its March launch. He also stressed the importance of the web. "I don't know how you can do a show now and not have that strong web presence," he tells Mediaite. "It is very second nature to us." Fallon put the impact of the web bluntly: "We concentrate just as much on our website as we do on our show." Gavin Purcell is the show's Supervising Producer, who was brought over from the gaming network G4 for the show's launch. He's been a big influence on the growing web presence as well, but identified where it starts. "The only reason that stuff exists is because Jimmy cared enough about it," Purcell tells Mediaite. "Not only to bring somebody like me on, but also to fight for stuff and to know that this is an important part of what you do today... the best take on how to do an internet version of a show, that isn't just shuffling content from TV onto the internet." With Late Night still young, Fallon knows the web, where he connects with more than 2.3 million followers on Twitter (putting him in Twitter's Top 20), is an important outlet. "Some people don't even know I host the show," he says. "The country's a big place. So I don't think you can really get overexposed right now. The more exposure for us the better." But as segments go viral, and others fade away, Purcell notes that "just because something is popular on the internet doesn't necessarily mean it’s going to make good TV content, and just because something is good TV content doesn't necessarily mean it’s going to make good internet content." And even as the impact of the web expands, Purcell knows the website doesn't diminish the main plan: Ultimately, our whole goal here is to make people watch the show still. In the long run, it would be great to have the website mean as much as the show but it doesn't mean nearly as much right now. The website does well for what it is, but the show is where everything is most important. Which brings us, inevitably, to ratings. >>>NEXT PAGE: Late Night ratings - and a whole new late night strategy based on "love" not "like". While the ratings started strong for Fallon's Late Night launch in March, they've predictably come down a bit since then. The patten the show has seemed to settle into is winning the demographics (almost always in the 18-49 category, and even more so in 18-34), while the total viewers victory goes to CBS' Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson. While Conan O'Brien struggles to keep the race close with CBS' Late Show the hour before, Fallon's ratings in his first year have dipped behind what O'Brien was doing when he left Late Night. “The way we like to approach an audience is we like to do things that certain people love, as opposed to something everybody likes.” The question is - does it matter? For Fallon, he's looking to change that. "I'm going to work as hard as I can," he tells Mediaite. "I want to win households, I want to win everything. I think we have the best show on TV." But Shoemaker points to a different strategy for the show - one that allows the program to grow slower but with a more hardcore base of fans. "The way we like to approach an audience is we like to do things that certain people love, as opposed to something everybody likes," he says. "That's an approach that is fed by this generation that looks at things on the web. Everyone has the main blog that they look at, but then there's that one weird thing that only you like." But will the execs at GE/Comcast/NBCU care if the newest "Robert is Bothered" (featuring Fallon playing Twilight star Robert Pattinson sitting in a tree complaining) goes viral, if it doesn't pump up the ratings that week when it originally aired? "I know that people are happy that we have a good, growing blog, that wins awards, that we'll do something that goes viral," says Shoemaker. "I think everything is taken into account. I think you have to. It's not the same world." Fallon also points to the guests on the show - which consist mostly of the stars you'd see elsewhere but pull from the gaming world and other new media outlets as well. "There's no real ratings spike if you get a crazy famous guest or not," he says. "It's like, people watch the show or they don't. I think people tune into our show because they just want to see interesting people." Fallon, Shoemaker and announcer Steve Higgins worked together during Fallon's entire tenure at Saturday Night Live, a show that vacillated in the Nielsen ratings between 2008 election juggernaut and a solid, if not spectacular late night weekend draw, depending on the year and recent news-making events. But it too has a life on the web - with a Digital Short focus and one of last year's biggest viral sensations, Tina Fey's hilariously dead-on Sarah Palin impersonations. And many of Fallon's viral hits seem like they could have been part of SNL pitches themselves. What has the experience brought to Late Night? "Jimmy, Steve and I have known each other for such a long time, there's a shorthand that we’re very lucky that we have together," says Shoemaker. As for the viral hits, like "Real Housewives": "It is SNL-like in a way. It's like the digital shorts, but they don't do serials. But that's something we happened upon and realized we can keep doing them. And we got really lucky that we have people who know how to do them." So after more than nine months of TV shows, and clips that have circulated the web, what is the biggest viral sensation to come from the show so far? >>> NEXT PAGE: The biggest viral hit, and new media plans for the future. In early July, in the midst of Fallon's attempts to reunite the entire Saved By The Bell cast, Zach Morris himself was interviewed on Late Night (really, it was Mark-Paul Gosselaar displaying Daniel Day-Lewis-like commitment to the role). Purcell says it still is the show's biggest viral sensation - a perfectly executed self-contained moment that resonated with the type of crowd who emails videos to their friends, Diggs and will watch a hilarious clip a dozen times or more. “We go into the business of creating these things thinking about how they will live off the TV show.” "That blew up almost instantly, people were talking about it because it was a crazy moment," Purcell tells Mediaite. "But the Neil Young thing was fascinating to watch because it kind of trickled out in some ways because I think some people weren’t sure what it was at first, then they started to get it, then some people started going crazy for it." (Here's that Neil Young thing - Fallon playing Young singing "Fresh Prince". Just watch.) Purcell says the web life after a segment airs is taken into consideration. "We go into the business of creating these things thinking about how they will live off the TV show," he says. "It's not like we go and say 'how will we create a viral hit?' but we definitely think of these as, 'how do we make them so they can live on in a different way?'" And the viral hits range far and wide - from solving beefs between Glenn Beck, Keith Olbermann and other feuding stars to Sarah Palin's "Going Rogue" book...going rogue itself. One thing that separates the show from others on late night is Purcell picks one segment, one moment to put up on the show's website as the show airs. This means anyone checking out the site while it's airing can start the process of turning a worthy clip viral overnight, instead of the next morning. That immediacy is sure to help - and recognizes another key facet to the way the web works. While Fallon's interviewing style has seen mixed reviews, it's hard to argue it's not "fun". It leads to unexpected moments like the showdown between Olivia Munn and Artie Lange (video on next page). But just getting someone like Munn in studio - who co-hosts gaming show Attack of the Show! on G4 - is a result of focusing on what some people love and not what everyone will like. Purcell brings his experience from G4 to the more buttoned-up world of NBCU. "G4 doesn't get enough credit for being a pioneer in trying stuff," he says. "The greatest thing about the digital cable world is you can really get away with trying stuff and people don't look at it as closely." But even with the larger public spotlight in his new role, Purcell and Late Night haven't shied away from trying stuff. Before the show launched in March, Fallon put out a nightly web segment to get an audience acclimated with seeing him every night at 12:30am. It re-introduced Fallon to the world - and showed him in a role different from his movies or even SNL years. "I think he was super brave to do it," says Purcell. "In this day and age I think he's still one of the most high profile people to do something like that." There's another X-factor to the show: the most un-house band like house band in late night show history. The Roots, a hip-hop band that can literally play anything (as seen during their "Freestylin' with The Roots" segments on Late Night), were a surprise choice when they were announced as Fallon's group. Fallon says his friend Neal Brennan, formerly producer of Chappelle's Show suggested he get in touch with them when he was looking for a house band - not that they'd take the position, but that they might know someon. But Fallon asked, and The Roots agreed to a meeting. "I gave my biggest pitch ever about how I think they could raise the bar about what a late night band is, what a house band is," said Fallon. "It's a perfect match because we all want to work hard. We're all out for the win." (Also, bandleader Questlove is a big new media buff himself - follow him here, and get ready for mid-show Twitter updates.) So what's next for Late Night? Purcell points to iPhone apps and games for the website, which he hopes to keep adding to as well. But he also has another idea. "I'd like to find some way to create a space for the fans of the show to kind of congregate virtually while the show is on," he says. A nightly live blog? Fallon talked about some of the new technology the show is looking to use, including Vidyo - a video conferencing program similar to Skype. "I just want to call up college kids and be like, 'Show me your dorm,'" he says. "See what it's all about, let's see what you got, what you need. And then maybe help them out. Get them a TV or something. Now that we have GE and Comcast, I’ll get them a TV, get them a subscription to cable, hook them up with a refrigerator - that's pretty good. Toaster oven, that's all you need. That's a great semester!" Less than one year in, Fallon and Late Night have made arguably a bigger impact online than on TV. In the long run, the strategy will likely pay dividends, but in the short term, that means waking up early, putting on the make-up and pink Uggs and spending hours pre-taping a segment that will air within Late Night for a few minutes. It means editors, producers and writers working until Midnight to turn around the footage so it can air the next day (video on next page). And it means all parts of the show trying to find that next segment or guest or viral hit that resonates online - but mainly, draws more eyeballs to NBC at 12:30am. It's a work-in-progress, but one that's on a path other broadcast TV shows need to pay attention to. "Everyone works their ass off on our show, and you can see it," says Fallon. "It pays off." >>> NEXT PAGE: A few of Late Night's big viral videos. Real Housewives: Olivia Munn/Artie Lange interview: "Robert is Bothered": ----- » Follow Steve Krakauer on Twitter

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Jimmy Fallon and Late Night: The Future Of Broadcast TV

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