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whats with usa obbession with late night talk shows?
kylie_madonna
Posts: 405 Forum Member
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Why are the American late night talk shows so popular and go out so late? Imagine a brand new show starting at 11.30 in the uk!!! Then they have the late late shows after the main late shows. Do Americas not sleep ha ha?!!
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I understand they record shows in this day and age don't we all. But these type of late shows seem to have been a staple and tradition since the 50s and 60s and you don't exactly get new shows starting at these times in uk recording them or not
Ratings for 30 May - 3 June:
The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (NBC) - 0.70/4 - 2.66m
Jimmy Kimmel Live (ABC) - 0.71/4 - 2.64m
Late Show with Stephen Colbert (CBS) - 0.40/2 - 2.08m
Late Night with Seth Myers (ABC) - 0.35/2 - 1.17m
Late Late Show with James Corden (CBS) - 0.26/2 - 1.07m
Last Call with Carson Daly (NBC) - 0.22/2 - 0.70m
Averages for the season to date:
The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (NBC) - 1.02/5 - 3.73m
Late Show with Stephen Colbert (CBS) - 0.64/3 - 2.87m
Jimmy Kimmel Live (ABC) - 0.55/3 - 2.39m
Late Night with Seth Myers (ABC) - 0.47/3 - 1.58m
Late Late Show with James Corden (CBS) - 0.33/2 - 1.27m
Last Call with Carson Daly (NBC) - 0.28/2 - 0.89m
The numbers above, i.e. x.xx/x, are representative of the ratings points/share.
Nielsen estimates that there are 116.4m television households in the US for the current TV season so one ratings point represents 1% of the total households, i.e. 1,164,000 households. A ratings score is the percentage of households that are tuned in to a show from the total TV households in the country.
Using the above figures, for the current season, 1.02% of US TV households have tuned in to watch The Tonight Show.
Rating = number of viewers/total TV households
The share is the total percentage of TV's that are turned on and watching. The difference being that this is a percentage of the viewers that were watching it as it went out, so for The Tonight Show above, 5% of all TV's watched it 'live'.
Share = number of viewers/total number of live TV viewers.
Compared with the main broadcast shows in primetime:
18-49 demographic (rating/viewers in millions):
NBA Finals Game 1 (ABC) - 7.3 / 9,264m
NBA Finals Game 2 (ABC - 6.5 / 8,280m
NBA Finals Post-Game (ABC) - 3.5 / 4,467m
America's Got Talent (NBC) - 2.6 / 3,256m
NBA Countdown Thursday (ABC) - 2.1 / 2,709m
American Ninja Warrior (NBC) - 1.7 / 2,198m
NBA Countdown Sunday (ABC) - 1.6 / 2,050m
The Bachelorette (ABC) - 1.6 / 2,007m
The Big Bang Theory (CBS) - 1.6 / 1,987m
Maya & Marty (NBC) - 1.4 / 1,782m
Broadcast shows by total viewers (millions):
NBA Finals Game 1 (ABC) - 19,207m
NBA Finals Game 2 (ABC - 17,489m
America's Got Talent (NBC) - 11,667m
NBA Finals Post-Game (ABC) - 9,150m
60 Minutes (CBS) - 7,786m
The Big Bang Theory (CBS) - 7,786m
NCIS (CBS) - 7,422m
NCIS: New Orleans (CBS) - 6,980m
Person of Interest (CBS) - 6,665m
American Ninja Warrior (NBC) - 6,350m
Then, after the Tonight Show and Late Night, NBC has Last Call at 1:35am.
It does seem strange and why do they pay the people who host the programmes such ridiculous amounts.
Do they pick up a particular type of viewer that the advertisers want to target or is it just because everyone else does them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9i6A6LGwa4
Yes I considered them to be so popular attracting top A list stars very easily
Spending a few weeks in New York it really did seem odd that Daily Show starts at 11 if I caught Meyers at all it was because I'd fallen in front of the TV and had woken up
Late Call with Carson Daly the only time I'd ever get to see him was if I was on-call and had been paged. It was strange to see Richard Bacon hosting an overnight ABC News Channel from about midnight to 5am. One of the US;s best news shows
The late night shows also are great promotional vehicles for cross promotion between a networks sister cable channels and movie studios.
They actually aren't anymore. While DVRs have kept viewership levels slightly higher than a worst case, the actual total viewership numbers for even the most popular of these shows STILL isn't all that high.
The best rated of all of them, for example, is The Tonight Show. Throwing aside all of the fancy data about "shares" and such, do you know how many people actually watch The Tonight Show in a typical week? Well the data for the week ending April 15th is out there, for example (it was the first I stumbled upon). 3.24 million was the estimated number. Now I know that sounds like a lot of eyes, but it's not. This is 3.24 million out of 322.76 million. In other words, around 1% of the population. That's for the show that's considered the smash hit compared to the other late night talk shows.
EDIT - And... I see promo-only had the data for the week ending June 3rd. And the viewership is even lower.
Because they are profitable for the networks. The average viewer is younger or a light tv viewer so advertisers pay a premium to reach them.
hopefully they bring it back after BB is done.
but was something to watch at the time.
Has Craig Ferguson been ditched, sacked or retired to rehab ?
Corden may be be wowing them lately , but Ferguson paved the way for Brit craziness on the chat show circuit.
Yes, it's the all important 18-49 demographic that the advertisers go after. Slightly strange but the total amount of viewers in millions is fairly irrelevant to the broadcasters and advertisers - it's the 18-49 rating share that they focus on.
Given that their local morning news programmes start as early as 4am in some places, I’ve concluded – no, Americans don’t sleep.
Yes, ‘The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon‘ particular rates very well, despite it’s late timeslot. The ratings you provided above actually cover a week that the show was in reruns, so they are a bit misleading. The yearly average gives a much better view of how successful it is – sometimes getting a demo rating (and that’s the only rating that counts) higher than programmes in primetime.
In the day an age of digital satellite I think you can probably take that one step further... The West Coast are 3 hours behind the East Coast, yet I’m fairly sure digital satellite viewers will have access to East and West Coast feeds of the major channels. So if you live in LA you can tune to the NBC East Coast feed and watch The Tonight Show at 8:30pm.
Yes, this is very true. Jimmy Fallon, for example, has pretty much become the face of the NBC network. So that act as more than just a late night talk show host.
But you’re looking at actual viewer numbers – which hold no value in the US. In the US it’s all about the 18-49 demo rating as that’s what the advertisers are interested in and that’s what sets advertising rates.
For example, some of CBS’s dramas have more viewers than some of NBC’s dramas. But those NBC dramas have high demo ratings (in other words, that have more people aged 18-49 watching), that are considered more successful and therefore less likely to be cancelled. If you’re a viewer aged 50 or above you have no value to the US networks.
It’s a weird concept to grasp because the UK works very differently, but that’s how it’s done in the US.
Craig Ferguson stepped down from The Late Late Show in December 2014. Personally I suspect he stepped down because he knew he wasn’t going to have a place in CBS’s new ‘post-Letterman’ line up. However he did 10 years as host which is impressive, and brought a very unique take to the genre.
He now hosts syndicated game show ‘Celebrity Name Game’, which starts its third season later this year. He’s also won the Daytime Emmy for best game show host two years running now. And he recently started hosting ‘Join or Die with Craig Ferguson’ on the History Channel, which is the closest thing you’ll find to a panel show on US television.
Corden replaced Ferguson, Ferguson's show was by World Wide Pants, Letterman's Production Company and when Letterman left Ferguson did too, whether it was voluntary or not I don't know
Ferguson these days does a Hollywood Game Show for the Tribune Network in Chicago that I thought run late nights but also seems to be shown during the day
Depending on the Satellite Vendor and where you live. Generally with DiretTV (the largest Satellite Vendor) your viewing is Geo-locked if you live in Chicago then the NBC channel you get is your local channel so it's not easily possible for LA viewers to watch the East Coast feed plus satellite footprints mean that the East Coast channels aren't available in your footprint
However if you live in a area where your local channels aren't available via satellite you're given a "National" feed of the channel which may be either a NYC and LA feed
DishTV the other Satellite Company may offer feeds of NYC & LA as standard
CableTV tends to only offer the local channels
I guess there's nothing stopping you watching a NYC station via the web, they may Geolock to stop people outside the US from watching but they don't usually exclude anyone outside of the Metropolitan Area from watching
NBC's full title being NBC Universal and both owned by Comcast so Fallon tends to get to promote Universal's films too as well as their theme parks
Meanwhile over on ABC, owned by Disney Kimmel gets to interview a lot of Superheroes ;-)
Don't the over 50's have money to spend as well?