Photo Credit: Kaitlyn Ferreira

“From Studio 6B in Rockefeller Center, in the heart of New York City, it’s The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon!”

Background

Ever since The Ed Sullivan Show aired on June 20, 1948, the whole late-night talk show has changed completely over time with many different people hosting shows or creating their own shows. The late-night talk show format was popularized, not invented, by Johnny Carson with The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson on NBC which aired on October 1, 1962.

The Late Night shows that are currently on air have gone through so many hosts, formats and places. For example, The Tonight Show didn’t start out as The Tonight Show, it started with the name Tonight starring Steve Allen and then changed to Tonight! America After Dark to Tonight starring Jack Paar and after that it finally became The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson. Other shows that started with the same name but different host is The Late Show which started with David Letterman, The Late Late Show, started with Tom Snyder, and Late Night which also started with Letterman.

Ratings
The shows that have the highest ratings are The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Late Night with Seth Meyers, and The Late Late Show with James Corden.

The debut episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon averaged a 3.8 rating in adults 18–49 and 11.31 million viewers overall in Nielsen‘s fast-national estimates. This made it the second-largest audience for The Tonight Show since May 2009, behind Jay Leno’s final farewell two weeks earlier and the transition to Conan O’Brien nearly five years prior. Jimmy Fallon seems like the favored host out of the other hosts because a interviewee, Brandy Brennan, a teacher, said that “he has fun games and good guests which makes The Tonight Show awesome.”

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert debuted to 6.55 million viewers according to Nielsen Media Research, beating out all late-night competition and averaging a 4.9 rating among metered market households. The show’s ratings quickly dropped to second place behind The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon but remained ahead of Jimmy Kimmel Live! While Colbert still managed to get more young viewers than Letterman in his first few months, analyst Bill Carter wrote that his “opening splash seemed to dry faster than expected.” He suggested this was due to little social media presence as where his competitor, Fallon, surged. A study from The Hollywood Reporter revealed Colbert’s version of The Late Show draws the most heavily Democratic audience of the three hour long late-night shows in its time slot. So far in 2016, Colbert has trailed Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show with an average 2.94 million viewers and a .07 rating among adults 18-49.

In the week of February 8th through the 12th, 2016, Jimmy Kimmel Live! brought in a 0.58 rating among adults 18-49 which is the best it has done since the short Thanksgiving week last November. It was also the week’s No. 2 late-night talk show, besting CBS’ The Late Show with Stephen Colbert by 5 percent.

According to broadwayworld.com, Late Night with Seth Meyers has dominated the late-night ratings week of March 28 – April 1, 2016, topping the ABC and CBS time-period competition in every key measure – adults, men and women 18-34, 18-49 and 25-54, plus total viewers, which is ironic because the survey that The Declaration conducted, Seth Meyers had a total of 4 votes.

James Corden‘s first night hosting The Late Late Show brought a 17 percent lift over its season-to-date average. The series had 1.66 million viewers and a 0.4 rating among adults 18-49, and the adults 18-49 watching has improved 33 percent from Craig Ferguson’s average before his December 2014 exit.

Survey

Recently, The Declaration staff conducted a survey about what late night show is people’s favorite. The options for the question were Jimmy Fallon with The Tonight Show, Jimmy Kimmel with Jimmy Kimmel Live!, James Corden with The Late Late Show, Stephen Colbert with The Late Show, Conan O’Brien with CONAN, and Seth Meyers with Late Night.

When making this survey, It was believed that Jimmy Fallon would win the “battle” and he did with a total of 486 votes out of 896 votes. Something that was surprising was the fact that Seth Meyers only got 4 votes because when he was on Saturday Night Live, many people liked him in the Weekend Update segment.

One question that was asked was ‘If these late night shows aired earlier like some daytime shows, would you be more inclined to watch them?’. The answer that had the most votes was the yes category with a total of 81 votes while the no category had 31 votes.

Effects of Late Night Talk Shows on America

One effect that these talk shows has on people is making the younger generation more involved with politics and issues that we have in the world like Jimmy Fallon pretending to be Donald Trump or having a presidential candidate appear in an interview or a skit, or when David Letterman addressed the 9/11 attacks in his opening monologue on September 17, 2001. Things like that essentially gets more people to pay attention to everything so much more. But according to one of the interviewees, Nick Abrantes, a college student at Kean University, Late Night talk shows does not get people more involved “it just brings awareness but only in a comedic way.”

According to paper titled “Effects of late night political comedy on candidate image during campaigns” that was presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association in 2009, by Compton, J., & Pfau, M. The paper said that the monologue and political parodies which usually show negative portrayals, would have damaging effects on feelings and attitudes toward candidates and their images, whereas candidate appearances can enhance feelings and attitudes toward candidates.

The second effect is that Americans do not get the necessary seven to eight hours of sleep per night because of these talk shows. Recently, in an interview, IT director, Susie Lopes, said that “they are a great distraction at night, but I feel tired in the morning.”