Film Theory: Hey Fallon, You're Doing it Wrong!

Colbert Jimmy one Jimmy two I've called you all here for one important reasons to listen up you can't shoot any more late night shows here in our beautiful overly expensive studio so congratulations you're all youtubers now meet your new audience boys hey there sport you like jokes about politics and Karen it's film theory with Stephen Colbert Jimmy Fallon Jimmy Kimmel generic image of a man generic image of a woman and of course your host of two-dimensional cutouts vaguely animated to have emotion hello internet welcome to film Theory living in strange times aren't we handshakes aren't cool anymore we're not just allowed but encouraged to be wearing face masks into places you probably shouldn't be wearing face masks normally like gas stations banks and liquor stores and most strangely of all late-night television shows are doing something unheard of they're being forced to change let me give you a little bit of backstory here it was 1954 when tonight starring Steve Allen the precursor to The Tonight Show first hit the national airwaves at the time the concept of a live late-night show was so fresh so new that Steve Allen basically had to explain to his national audience what they were seeing in the first episode that was actually a live picture you were looking at that was not movie film you know we're actually seeing Time Square here in New York City but audiences in 2020 need no explanation mostly because they've been watching the exact same formula for 64 years this is that 1954 broadcast and this is from this year let's try this actually this might be fun let's turn the screen black and white wheeze in that aspect ratio had a bit of that old-time graininess to it and lastly Josi audio master let's crank up that treble and turn down that bass now let's play this whole thing again it is just like the 50s sure we have better cameras and sound but the formula is still the same then just does it start to feel like late night shows would continue doing their best impressions of a 50s era variety show for the rest of eternity everything changed in the blink of an eye early March 2020 with social distancing orders imminent in California New York many late night shows announced that they would continue shooting episodes in studio but without the studio audience present only people the eyes right now are some members of my staff hi guys almost immediately thereafter many of those same shows changed their minds and elected to suspend production outright in order to protect their staff and crews which makes sense because the staff and crews of these late-night shows are massive I mean get a load of how many people are credited on Colbert's January tenth episode alone if you're counting along at home that is 23 writing credits 39 producer credits who knew that it took that many people to rip off youtuber formats Bondi Beach that'd be fun then one by one the late night shows all reemerged in their quarantine forms these episodes had severely pared down production values and were shot from the hosts homes while in quarantine celebrity guests started dropping by via videoconference the hosts own family stepped in as iPhone camera operators and recurring guests said when my wife is a cameraman my crew is still one of my children tonight it is my son John which I just say is a bit curious because all the big late-night programs are Union productions it's skeptical that Colbert's college-age son is a card-carrying member of Yahtzee and I doubt Fallon's kids who are again a bunch of screen time these days are up on their sag after a rules or that cop is okay with the amount of work they're putting into their productions but hey you know I could be wrong the point here is that god with the slick sets gone with the studio bands gone with the couches and desks and audiences required to laugh at every mundane tired Joe overnight late-night talk show hosts got turned into low-budget youtubers and as any homegrown youtuber will tell ya it means that they've been left with no safety nets to protect them against the biggest fear of them all the cringe [Music] has there been a lot of cringe so today as a homespun youtuber myself I'm analyzing their performance which late-night celebrity turned out to be the best youtuber what lessons do they need to learn while working out of their at home studios and what does all of this mean for the future of late-night programming outside of me never getting invited on to one of these shows ever because everyone's gonna be bitter at me about this episode sorry not sorry before we dive in a little housekeeping up front there are a whole lot of late night shows out there so I'm gonna have to limit today's conversation to the following list Jimmy Kimmel Stephen Colbert James Corden Jimmy Fallon Seth Meyers Conan O'Brien and Trevor Noah we're only gonna look at major US late-night shows that have transitioned to doing quarantine version episodes of their show from home multiple times per week so if a show isn't producing new episodes at the moment or only did one episode a week to begin with well then they're not part of today's discussion so with all that out of the way I've taken the liberty of pouring through hours and hours of these new low-budget quarantine version episodes here's where your friendly neighborhood YouTube coach Matt Pat is seen across the board first off I am seeing some really unflattering camera angles there people you are professionals you are adults you are trained in this industry we're trying to decrease the number of chins not increase them people so let's get that camera eye level or higher Kimmel Conan what are you doing we understand that you don't have wardrobe makeup or hair departments at the moment nobody is faulting you for that but you can absolutely get your camera up at eye level points off for both of you gentlemen next up let's talk delivery there's something to be said for sticking with what you do best but then again when you actually see some of these late night hosts delivering jokes the exact same way that they do to a live studio audience well that's when the cringe really starts to set in you're talking to a camera not a theater filled with live bodies who are forced to react to everything that you say Seth Meyers is especially guilty of holding four laughs when there's no studio audience president the Treasury Department has ordered that President Trump's name will be printed on relief checks which would be the first time he's ever put his name on something helpful man there are no laughs coming my friend everyone is always eager to make fun of how frenetic youtubers are with their smash cuts every few seconds there's a reason for that the internet runs at a mile a minute and pauses in this universe are used to show that something is awkward not that something is funny you let it sit and hang because it's uncomfortable memes graphics sound effects these are the things that punctuate jokes and service transitions filling the gaps in where a laugh track would normally be granted delivering a joke to an empty room as an ideal I know that as well as anybody but when you're delivering jokes out of your poorly lit living room the presentation of your jokes kind of needs to match your surroundings points to Jimmy Kimmel for actually recognizing this thing and adjusting accordingly back in mid-march Kimmel was doing many logs basically the exact kind of stand-up jokes that you'd see in a fully produced show in studio and he was doing it seated at his desk here's something I learned did you know that you can make coffee at home for yourself I even spelled my name right on the cup I'm not saying that it's a bad joke I'm saying that it's written and delivered in a way that doesn't match the medium it's being delivered through when you see someone face to the camera vlogging to a lens in an unlit youtube video there's a certain expectation that the audience has whether they can articulate it or not that you're about to do something wrong you're about to go off script something conversational and unpolished as opposed to fully scripted and crafted and it seems like Kimmel and his team did eventually get the memo because come April he was back to delivering his monologue on his feet on a homemade set with production values slightly more aligned with his more polished jokes TLDR when the cameras not angled up Kimmel's nostrils everyone wins the long and short of it is that the medium and the message have to align are you doing an up-close hand-held vlog style video well then you have to make it raw unpolished a bit more off-the-cuff you need to stay on script well in that case have it be a bit more polished and presentational stand up find a nice backdrop that serves as a sort of set you know who's crushing it right now someone who is never a late-night host John Krasinski and a show some good news which takes the homespun appeal infuse it with the polish of a more scripted format so I got to give the w of this episode wait some good news was bought by Viacom and John Krasinski is no longer hosting and it's going behind the CBS all access pay wall that is some bad news right there also real galaxy brain idea there Viacom let's buy this thing that was successful for being raw and organic and homespun and free and eliminate the host his family and I would guess all of the homemade elements that made it popular in the first place which it's worth noting was also less than ten episodes many of which had massive reunions of huge casts for celebrity cameos which you know would kind of artificially inflate those numbers but you know what whatever I'm sure that people will pay for a show that they were watching for free that they literally just learned about less than a few weeks ago all right so with that W very quickly turned into an L second place goes to Trevor Noah and the daily show unlike his late-night Piers Noah is embracing all sorts of classic battle-tested youtuber tactics that stave off the cringe unlike his in studio show Noah's the daily distancing show really has the feel of a YouTube video for one thing he freely uses JPEGs and sound effects to aid in his jokes while the rest of us are trying to figure out if we can grow tomatoes by planting some ketchup spoiler alert you can in fact the daily distancing show applies all sorts of YouTube style editing tricks to inject energy we're talking jump cuts pushing into tighter angles doing conversations with yourself as different characters people even do it with jokes oh my god Nigerians are funny Indians this is the kind of stuff that top youtubers pioneered on the platform over a decade ago I mean this is YouTube 101 stuff here people top youtubers were doing this in 2008 and in 2013 and you know we're still doing it in 2020 and finally traditional media is like huh this is an interesting idea but of course all of this is just my opinion right what I really want to know is whether the numbers agree with me if Trevor Noah's doing so great with his new at home show that riffs on a bunch of YouTube tropes while other hosts aren't then the numbers would presumably be able to confirm that so let's look at the Nielsen ratings and gospel stats for each of the little shows in our list what I'm curious about is how the TV ratings YouTube views and youtube subscriber numbers for each of the shows have fared during the pandemic to give us a baseline let's look at each shows numbers at the end of January immediately before the global health crisis was announced on January 30th this should give us a sense of how each late night show was doing on TV as well as on YouTube back in the good old days before we were all locked and our little prisons so with those January numbers at hand let's compare him against the first month of quarantine version late night shows March 20th through April 20th when we crunch the numbers the heat map looks a little something like this first takeaway from the data set none of the late night show YouTube channels gained more views during the quarantine in fact most experienced a significant decrease in total views that strikes me as super weird because YouTube hasn't been getting a ton of traffic during the quarantine so much so in fact that YouTube has had to lower video quality on the site in order to handle the surge of viewership perhaps the quarantine versions of late night shows were a bit too homemade for the subscribers tastes whatever the reason though it seems like the kings of late-night broadcasts are not yet the kings of new media broadcast second takeaway I got to give myself a big old Matt pat on the back for this one The Daily Show with Trevor Noah is killing it compared to his peers their YouTube views have stayed stagnant but look at that surge in subscribership during the first 30 days of quarantine he got four hundred and seventy thousand new subscribers that's more than any other late-night youtube channel accrued during that time and the Daily Show's YouTube channel is much much smaller than some of the other late-night channels out there what's more the Daily Show with Trevor Noah is gaining more subscribers per month in quarantine than they were in January so no matter how you slice it the YouTube viewers are subscribing to the daily show like they never have before most likely because it's the only one of these shows that's actually speaking in the language of YouTube but of course that's just YouTube surely a show like that wouldn't resonate with broadcast audiences on the TV right wrong believe it or not the daily distancing show saw such a spike in broadcast viewership that the show's total viewers season average jumped 28 percent in under three months that's right by shooting a low-budget version of the at home Trevor Noah and his team have actually improved their television ratings dramatically conversely take a look at the subscription column of our handy heat map falen Corden Colbert not only were these shows unable to maintain their subscribership rates they saw a drop in subscribers during a remarkably high traffic period of time in YouTube history on the television side their numbers either didn't fluctuate at all or they only saw incremental increases nothing compared to what The Trevor Noah show is doing so the question becomes what does all of this mean why is any of this important I mean if a late-night host like Trevor Noah can make the show out of his living room and actually gain ground on his late-night peers not only on YouTube but in broadcast as well maybe there are some lessons here that late-night shows can take to heart what might those lessons be well I got some theories theory one guests won't physically come into the studio as often when the late-night shows it away within studio celebrity guests for a month their broadcast ratings weren't hurt so maybe it's time to re-examine whether contemporary audiences need or expect their celebrity guests to actually be in studio other industries are figuring out that telecommuting can work why not late night theory number two late night shows will see their budgets start to shrink networks love saving money in fact a big reason why the Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon moved to New York after Jay Leno retired was because the show could save twenty million dollars annually on tax credits and the quarantine has helped highlight a couple of areas where costs could get trimmed but here's the biggest and most important takeaway theory number three digital is indeed the future we've talked about it for years now about how YouTube is paving the way for entertainment and I've made no small deal about how I'm pro team internet over here but here is your proof in the pudding right now traditional media the numbers don't lie one of the oldest television show formats in history start showing better numbers when they started producing like youtubers and not just on YouTube but also undrawn cast television popular opinion is changing what people want to watch is evolving audiences are looking for something different some good news is yet another example of that the times they are a-changin the question is traditional media are you willing to change with it at the very least are you just gonna give us youtubers some respect finally because you all seem to be failing pretty hard when it comes to do an hour job but hey that's just a theory a film theory and subscribe so that my numbers can actually trash the numbers of those late night shows that's it hit the subscribe button right now show traditional media that yes youtubers can't produce stuff that people want to watch people want to subscribe to and that is valuable to me as an audience regardless of what screen it's on your subscription on today's video is a big screw you to them so stick it to the man guys

Channel: The Film Theorists

Views: 2,412,954

Rating: 4.8974714 out of 5

Keywords: jimmy fallon, fallon, stephen colbert, jimmy kimmel, colbert, conan, trevor noah, the daily show, daily show, late night, tonight show, the tonight show, stephen colbert deomcratic debate, some good news, john krasinski, sgn, late night with, talk show, late night show, talk show host, late night host, fail, film theorists, film theory, matpat, james corden, seth meyers

Id: 4Omnex5tyfk

Length: 16min 36sec (996 seconds)

Published: Thu May 28 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/tryunite]

first off i absolutely despise the editing in this video! but that is beside the point.

but yes. Mr Colbert please adapt to the format.

also i'm befuddled they singled out Seth Meyers, his pace is quite rapid and he doesn't stop for laughs

[u/slickiss]

Aside from Mattpat doing what he do, and my usual issues aisde from his editing and videos he does make a few good points here. In perticular I agree with him on how Daily Show and Trevor Noah adapted a lot more to the youtube style and have done so much better than Colbert and company. I dont necessarily agree with his points otherwise, especially in thinking that late night will adapt more to that style beyond the quarantine. He tried to make a point about how do people really want to see celebrity guests live in studio to which I say, "Well yeah, duh!" Some of the best late night moments come from the fact that the guest is being interviewed live on the set. The interactions between them make for very compelling TV. If you switch it more to say, what 24 hour news networks do, and have some guests just livestream in wont have as much of a punch. At that point what would elevate them beyond the free youtube entertainment online aside from branding and network overlords?

[u/Jaketrix]

I was just about to post this here. I don't think it warrants any hate (you said you were murdered). I think it is interesting and discussion worthy. I think most things are going to return to normal when all this blows over.

Personally, I've probably watched less Colbert since all this started. I mostly watch A Closer Look (Seth Meyers) these days. That and I watch Colbert's guests if I'm interested in them.

[u/Hyperbowleeeeeeeeeee]

Completely agree. This is an editing/production problem. Colbert doesn't cut the tape himself.

Daily Show writing is really rough in the post-Jon Stewart era, but he's completely right that they're making up for it with proper editing.

[u/martianinahumansbody]

It's funny the YouTube numbers. I've honestly been watching a lot more Colbert and Meyers since they had to leave the studio. Though I really wish they stopped pushing the Tooning out the news videos on the Late Show channel.

[u/ruufti]

What I absolutely don’t get is why Fallon is doing so poorly. I literally prefer every other talk show host over him, but you’d assume he would have a huge advantage over the rest bc YT audience is the type of audience he’s been desperately trying hard to fit in and win.. right? I dunno just my personal take.

Regarding Stephen and Kimmel, I think they chose to stick to their TV format to stay true to the majority of their audience. They didn’t want to alienate their TV fans to adapt to the taste of passers-by YT fans. Having said that, I’m all for change, so I could be wrong. lol

Stay safe ppl🥂