Wow, Conan only gets 500,000 viewers? He gets quite a lot of A-list guests, and clearly a lot of money is spent on the show. For an 11PM show, I wonder why they think it's worth it. The vids on his YouTube channel that get the most viewers are the ones that aren't even really part of the show itself, like Clueless Gamer.
It is odd. Unless it's to give the big guests a platform for promotion. Would it not be cheaper to repeat primetime programmes, especially in the 12:30 and 1:30 (in NBC's case) slots?
:-(
A former member
Last Call with Carson Daly is strange thing, its not even a proper chat show,
Quote:
On April 3, 2013, NBC officially announced that Jimmy Fallon would succeed Jay Leno as the host of The Tonight Show following the 2014 Winter Olympics.[20][21] Daly was again passed over for host of Late Night when Seth Meyers was announced as Fallon's successor on May 12, 2013.[22]
In September 2013, NBC announced that Daly would be moving to The Today Show and leaving Last Call; it was not revealed if the program would continue without him.[23] It was eventually decided that Daly would limit his role on Last Call to the opening and closing segments as of the 13th season. All other segments are either interviews done by producers or production assistants without comment by them, or straight musical performances with only Daly's continuity introducing them.[24]
Last Call was originally to resume production for its thirteenth season in April 2013 but this was delayed and production did not begin until fall. The thirteenth season premiered in late October 2013. The show's future was uncertain, with speculation that the show may continue with another host, format, or end entirely and an initial announcement by NBC in September 2013 that Daly was leaving Last Call entirely in order to take up his new role on the Today Show. A full season of 24 original week's worth of episodes was announced, however, with Daly as host but he now only tapes opening and closing segments; interviews are now conducted by the show's producers with only the interviewee appearing on camera.[3][24]
Though there was originally talk of expanding Fallon's Tonight Show to 90-minutes which would have bumped Last Call to 2 am or possibly have resulted in its cancellation, the change of late night time slots did not come to pass and the show's start time remained unchanged.[25] The show began airing its new episodes January 30, 2014, with a hiatus during the 2014 Winter Olympics. New episodes resumed on February 24, following the premiere of Late Night with Seth Meyers. Currently the show is in its seventeenth season, and is currently the longest-lived late night weeknight show on American television with the same host, behind the 1991-premiered Charlie Rose on PBS.
Put some effort in though and the viewers stay up. Put repeats on and they go to bed. If the money wasn't there they wouldn't be doing it. CBS did actually use the 11.35pm slot for repeat runs of some procedurals (CSI mainly I think) in between Letterman and Colbert - not sure how they did.
It's also worth remembering that UK television giving up after about 11pm is a relatively recent thing - prior to the arrival of their digital offshoots ITV, C4 and C5 at least, and to a certain extent the BBC, still had "original" programming airing into the early hours throughout the nineties. OK, alot of it was imports and the original content is generally remembered for all the wrong reasons, but the audience was clearly there to justify it.
There's a chat show that airs at 1.35am?? Imagine the calibre of guests!
BBC One has usually gone off to bed by that point...
I always enjoy watching clips of Tom Snyder's Tomorrow Show, which used to be on at 1am in a lot of areas originally. That's what I always think a late night chat show should be. Something a bit quieter and thoughtful. Or maybe bizarre like early Letterman. I imagine the most modern equivalent in the States is Charlie Rose.
In fact it's weird when you think what the show has become, but 'The Late Late Show' used to actually be hosted by Tom Snyder in that kind of style. I always enjoyed watching that show live. Whereas I really don't think any modern late night chat show is really suited to the time slot it is in.
Put some effort in though and the viewers stay up. Put repeats on and they go to bed. If the money wasn't there they wouldn't be doing it. CBS did actually use the 11.35pm slot for repeat runs of some procedurals (CSI mainly I think) in between Letterman and Colbert - not sure how they did.
It's also worth remembering that UK television giving up after about 11pm is a relatively recent thing - prior to the arrival of their digital offshoots ITV, C4 and C5 at least, and to a certain extent the BBC, still had "original" programming airing into the early hours throughout the nineties. OK, alot of it was imports and the original content is generally remembered for all the wrong reasons, but the audience was clearly there to justify it.
To this day I'm still amazed that Channel 5 used to run Sport overnight for years, often with its own presentation and continuity. Originally it was under the Live and Dangerous brand before it became Sport on Five.
Even only as short as ten years ago the main channels often had new shows on at 11pm/12am, it just wouldn't happen now.
I note Family Guy later on in the evening rated well for BBC3, and still rates ok for ITV2, I wonder how many more viewers that gets than the main channels.
Of course there used to be 'new' programming much later than that, the likes of The Hit Man and Her at 2am or whatever time it was on.
But I can't recall a time there has been anything high profile and live at Midnight
Do american's not have to get up and go to work in the morning?!
Also those ratings don't seem that great, they almost seem like the sorts of figures shows here would be expected to get, and we are a much smaller country.
Wow, Conan only gets 500,000 viewers? He gets quite a lot of A-list guests, and clearly a lot of money is spent on the show. For an 11PM show, I wonder why they think it's worth it. The vids on his YouTube channel that get the most viewers are the ones that aren't even really part of the show itself, like Clueless Gamer.
Conan getting only 500,000 viewers might have something to do with the fact his show is only broadcast on basic cable channel TBS in the States, rather than any of the main USTV networks. As for the "Clueless Gamer" video game segments, that is actually featured on the show, not just on the Team Coco YouTube channel, although extended versions are sometimes uploaded to YT.
Allowing TV stations to move their allocation of advertising to prime time pretty much killed off the idea of late-night TV in this country. It was already under threat due to the fragmentation of the audience in the digital era.
I don't think ITV is going to panic too much over the immediate response to this show. Worse case scenario they get to try out a new format, and have some on-air pilots for any new chat show if anyone hits the mark. I still think there's an opportunity if it really doesn't work on ITV to get an ITV2 chat show out of this, almost like an off-season Big Brother's Bit On The Side with similar guests.
My bigger concern is with ITV's active "never mind the reputation, feel the ratings" mentality at the moment. From a commercial perspective that makes complete sense, but ITV goes through cycles of damaging its brand, then working on its reputation again. The early Carlton era/early joined-up ITV1 era are still in my head.
Conan getting only 500,000 viewers might have something to do with the fact his show is only broadcast on basic cable channel TBS in the States, rather than any of the main USTV networks.
True, though I'm sure I remember the TBS show getting a million plus viewers at one point. Though that might have been when he started.
It's also worth remembering that UK television giving up after about 11pm is a relatively recent thing - prior to the arrival of their digital offshoots ITV, C4 and C5 at least, and to a certain extent the BBC, still had "original" programming airing into the early hours throughout the nineties.
That's something that happened only for a few years, though. In the early nineties, as Genome will ilustrate, BBC1 and BBC2 were still regularly closing down before midnight. You only really got ITV doing anything new after midnight, and if there was still an audience for that they'd presumably stil be doing it.
Imagine the calibre of guests!