dear late night tv, you're pandering to gen z wrong.
a yappiece expanded from a presentation i did for film class, with as many citations as i care to port over from the original slideshow.
pander? i hardly know her! (rimshot)
now that i got that out of my system, this post i’m talking about pandering and late night tv. the title honestly pretty neatly summarized everything.
before we really get into the meat of the issue, i should define what shows i’m specifically talking about when i talk about late night:
the late show with stephen colbert (2015- ), cbs
the tonight show starring jimmy fallon (2014- ), nbc
late night with seth meyers (2014- ), nbc
jimmy kimmel live! (2003- ), abc
last week tonight with john oliver (2014- ), max
saturday night live (1975- ), nbc
so what’s the problem with pandering?
It’s no secret among TV executives that the younger people who once stayed up past midnight to watch David Letterman drop objects off a five-story building are not tuning to this generation’s cadre of late-night hosts in the same way.
- variety, 2023
there are three “root causes” i’ve identified for the pander problem.
root cause 1: late night is dying
late night is EXPENSIVE to produce. these shows hire hundreds of crew people and writers, they have in-house bands, plus they have to pay both the hosts and the guests. the late late show with james corden (2015-2023) cost about $60-65 million to make per year, while only making less than $45 million (business insider, 2023)
with the exception of last week tonight, which gets money from people signing up for max, a lot of the money from these shows come from cable ad spots. and these ad spots are EXPENSIVE: a 30-second ad on the tonight show in 2015 cost, on average, $48750, according to adweek.
with the costs outweighing the benefits, some shows inevitably end up getting scaled back or cancelled entirely, including hell of a week with charlamagne tha god (2021-2023), which was cancelled by paramount, and the problem with jon stewart (2021-2023)1.
not making any of this better is the general downwards trend of people watching live tv, instead opting for streaming services or watching clips that get posted online. with less people watching, advertisers are less incentivized to pay the thousands of dollars for a cable ad spot. so in order to keep the shows they have profitable, hosts and companies have to do something to get audiences watching live again.
and thus the pandering problem was born.
but why gen z?
a 2021 study from horowitz research found that gen z is most likely to stream stuff they consider funny, and 1 in 3 gen z-ers watch political content. late night happens, by design, to be both funny and political, regardless of if it’s a monologue, segment (like a closer look), or an interview.
gen z also comprises 40% of total us consumers and has $143 billion in purchasing power. plus, 25% of people who regularly consume news through youtube are between 18-29, according to a survey from pew research in 2023. that same survey also found that 44% of people who regularly consume news through tiktok are between 18 and 29.
plus, there’s the standard reason of “if young people like us, it keeps our institution alive for just a little longer.”
root cause 2: culture keeps changing
when youtube got big in the early 2000s, snl’s digital shorts gave the show cultural relevance again. the problem, though, is that internet culture is always changing. if you want to talk about it right and be funny with it, you have to strike while the iron’s hot. even if you’re a day late, you’re out of touch. this is, again, a problem snl falls victim to more than others. because of their production schedule, they write on tuesday and shoot on saturday, meaning pop culture changes and they’re accused of “killing the meme.”
Gen Z, who, while of the digital age, is known to favor authenticity
- Rolling Stone, 2023
root cause 3: age gap
conan o’brien, hasan minhaj, trevor noah, and jon stewart were all in their 30s (more or less) when they started/took over hosting their respective shows. the current five hosts were in their 40s when they started doing late night. colbert turned 60 around a month ago.
there’s already a generation gap between the host and the audience, and any attempts at relatability and connection with youth feel forced.
snl also tends to have this problem more than the rest, as cast members age from their late 20s-early 40s while pandering to a generation who’s, at most, 27. they won’t “get” the culture or slang right every time, but they do it practically every episode, leading to big swings and HUGE misses.
slang also takes on different meanings, but when late-night tends to use it, it’s delivered with irony and a very clear “i have no idea what this means but it’s on the cue cards/prompter” tone, which the audience can 110% pick up on.
now that we’ve identified the three root causes, i feel like now’s a good time to actually show you what i’m talking about with a case study comparing how late night uses gen z culture.
to do that, i’m going to have to talk about skibidi toilet.
just trust me on this.
i hate you so much, maggie. also what the hell is skibidi toilet?
honestly? i’m not even sure. but from what i gather online, skibidi toilet is an ongoing web series about a bunch of human-headed toilets that sing, and also apparently there’s some resistance plot? i don’t know, it’s honestly not very important save for the fact that it’s popular among gen alpha (and very popularly mocked by gen z).
on may 22, the late show with stephen colbert uploaded their monologue, which had the following joke:
reportedly, [the biden administration] is looking for a meme page manager, so look forward to some hot new biden social content like “ermahgerd turmp ers hertler!”, “i can haz youth vote”, and of course, for the very online, skibidi biden.
then, it cuts to a skibidi toilet parody where a cutout of biden pops out of a toilet and sings “skibidi biden” a bunch of times. it’s just as awful as it feels.
two weeks before, maya rudolph hosted snl with musical guest vampire weekend. and in one sketch, “teacher psa”, where a bunch of weary teachers admit to their students that “y’all won”, rudolph’s character addresses the camera:
covid broke something we can’t fix. but as for me myself personally, i have officially endured my last skibidi toilet.
so why did “teacher psa”’s joke get a few laughs and move on, while skibidi biden gets called “the 9/11 of television”? because “teacher psa” understands what people actually think about skibidi toilet: that no one understands it and everyone secretly kind of hates it. skibidi biden operates under the assumption that people like skibidi toilet, and having it would capture the youth vote, which is the fatal flaw of this premise because not knowing what skibidi toilet is is more popular than the meme itself.
in the context of the two memes used before it, ermahgerd and “i can haz cheeseburger?”, two of the oldest memes ever, skibidi biden feels even more out of place. plus, no one even uses skibidi toilet to pander, because it’s so hated and its execution is so convoluted that it’s hard for a brand to use it in any meaningful way.
to pander, you have to know your audience, which “teacher psa” does and skibidi biden doesn’t.
so is there a right way to pander?
switch up the format
meet after midnight (2024- ), hosted by comedian taylor tomlinson, which airs on cbs at 12:37 am (corden’s old slot). instead of the typical talk show format, after midnight is a reboot of the comedy central panel show @midnight (2013-2017), and every episode, three comedians, ranging from comedic greats like weird al, tiktok famous comedians like caitlin reilly, and the latest stand-ups making the rounds on hollywood boulevard.
unlike other late night shows, internet culture is baked into after midnight’s format. every episode has a segment “group chat” in which panelists joke about all pop culture from the kendrick/drake beef to what’s trending on the internet recently.
digital exclusives
instead of trying to bring internet references into a talk show, bring the talk show to the internet! it seemed to work for snl.
every week, late night runs a web exclusive segment called “corrections.” it started off with meyers “correcting” mistakes in his show pointed out by youtube commenters (known as jackals), but has devolved into absolute chaos. and even though late night is already more informal than the other shows, “corrections” enhances that— meyers jokes with staff members, makes fun of his own show, and does recurring bits from week-to-week. and yes, though “corrections” relies on some reference humor (you might need to watch a few episodes to catch up on the “bird bane” lore), it’s still a pretty accessible and easy way to get invested with the show that isn’t just watching 10 minutes of trump/biden jokes every week.
also, jimmy fallon not only posts clips from his show onto tiktok (@fallontonight), but he also posts different tiktok trends (a lot of day-in-the-lifes) on his more personal account for a look into his own life and a behind-the-scenes look of his show.
late night might be dying…but can we save it?
i think so. but maybe i’m an optimist.
late night is an important part of american culture. it helps us learn about the news while also having fun, and its satire encourages us to think critically about the people we have in power in america, regardless of where you lie politically or socially.
with that, it becomes even more important to think about the future of late night, and the money thing is a genuine problem.
but it’s not like trying to save late night is a lost cause, because people sometimes DO tune in en masse to watch late night: the ryan gosling/chris stapleton episode of snl got 8.99 MILLION views on peacock in its first week2.
and every single goddamn thing has a streaming service these days, so why not use it? if tv execs find a way to encourage people to watch late night on streaming and monetize those streams, that can make up the money they’re not getting from cable ads to ensure late night’s longevity into the next generation.
though, to be fair to stewart, apple tv cancelled HIS show because he wanted to talk about china and ai, and the guys in charge were not particularly happy with that.