Salon.com > Late Night

Seth Meyers pick: Why must late night be so white and male?

Mon, 13 May 2013 19:41:00 +0000

Let's just get this part out of the way first. It's not that Seth Meyers isn't fantastic. He is. He's charming and funny and personable. He's also, like his predecessor Conan O'Brien, a skilled writer whose boyish looks belie his dark, surreal sense of humor. (As "Saturday Night Live's" head writer, he's given the show some of its most memorably quotable moments of the past decade.)

And it's not that we like having these conversations every single goddamn time there's a vacancy anywhere on late-night television, one that is promptly filled by an affable white dude. Believe me, I'd love to write the "Hooray for this bold new era in television" story. But here we are again, America. With the official announcement Sunday that Meyers will be assuming the chair now occupied by Jimmy Fallon as host of "Late Night," our post-11 p.m. hours seem yet again to be largely safe, for the foreseeable future, from having any people of color or ovaries anywhere near them.

Seth Meyers named next host of NBC’s “Late Night”

Sun, 12 May 2013 18:46:00 +0000

With Jimmy Fallon set to take over "The Tonight Show," NBC has tapped "Saturday Night Live" head writer Seth Meyers to host "Late Night."

As reported by the New York Times:

NBC made the appointment, which had been widely expected, one day before Mr. Meyers was to be introduced to advertisers at NBC’s presentation of its new programming lineup at Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan.

The assignment will keep Mr. Meyers under the production leadership of Lorne Michaels, who will continue to serve as executive producer of “Late Night” as well as serving in the same position on Mr. Fallon’s “Tonight Show” as it moves to New York. (And of course, he will remain in charge of “SNL.”)

In an interview before taking the stage on Saturday’s edition of “SNL,” Mr. Meyers said, “Working at ‘SNL’ requires 100 percent of your mental capacity — on easy weeks. And so I had not really spent a lot of time thinking about what I was going to do next. Obviously I can’t quit Lorne. So this seems like a pretty good deal that I have an opportunity to keep working with him.”

While sentimental about leaving his home at "SNL," Meyers sees the move as a natural fit: “It always seemed like a logical next move,” he said. “It was just competing with the very emotional idea of leaving a place I have been for a very long time."

Jimmy vs. Jimmy: The late night battle to come

Sun, 31 Mar 2013 19:00:00 +0000

Late night television is like a pleasant backing track, inoffensively lulling you to sleep at night, until every so often it violently scratches and forces you to pay attention to it. Last week, it let out a shriek. Rumors began to fly that NBC was going to oust Jay Leno from “The Tonight Show” and replace him with “Late Night” host Jimmy Fallon, a move that will set up a whole new late night landscape. At some point in the not so distant future, the Jimmys Fallon and Kimmel, with their respective cadres of celebrity friends and knack for viral videos, will take over for Leno and Letterman as the dueling supernovas of the late night firmament.

The Leno-Letterman rivalry, which, unlike the incipient Fallon-Kimmel rivalry, has a lot of personal animosity behind it, has long since coalesced into a narrative: Leno is popular and a hack. Letterman is popular and not a hack. Leno is the choice of the masses. Letterman is the choice of the slightly more discerning viewer. Leno has a chin. Letterman has irony. Letterman may be on CBS, but Leno is the CBS-type property, hugely popular but no good, the late night equivalent of “Two and a Half Men.”

The state of late-night ratings: Leno still leads, but there are cracks in his armor

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 15:46:00 +0000

For a man who's reportedly about to be forced out of his job, Jay Leno's hardly bombing.

The host of NBC's "Tonight Show" continues to lead in the ratings: In the just-concluded February sweeps period, Leno led CBS's "Late Show" and ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live" among total viewers and viewers in the key 18-49 demographic.

The news for Leno isn't entirely good, though: The margin of victory in the most recent sweeps month (by which advertising rates are set) over longtime rival David Letterman in the key demographic was just 8 percent. And Leno's viewership, as is the case across the late-night dial, is disproportionately outside the young viewers advertisers court: With 1.003 million viewers out of 3.510 million under 50, only 29 percent or so of his viewers are actually in the age group to whom media buyers want to sell products. That's part of what BuzzFeed means when it describes Leno as not "cool" -- he's popular, but not among coastal elites, and also not among the sort of young viewers any network wants.

Is Jimmy Fallon NBC’s last best hope?

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 15:22:00 +0000

What a difference a few seasons makes. After a flurry of carefully placed leaks and scoops from inside sources, it appears NBC is preparing to anoint Jimmy Fallon the new host of "The Tonight Show" – and even move the show to its old home in the Big Apple.

It's been over three years now since NBC had its last very public and emotional meltdown over the throne of "The Tonight Show." Conan O'Brien had moved to Hollywood and assumed the helm for a brief, fateful seven months before a network-wide attack of tsuris that gave the world the gloating late night return of Jay Leno and the phrase "Team Coco." It was not the first time the Peacock had displayed its unwavering fixation on Leno as the One True successor to Carson – as anyone who's watched Letterman play the droll role of jilted lover over the past two decades knows. But the O'Brien affair seemed to solidify NBC's romance with Leno even further, planting him as firmly and permanently as host of "The Tonight Show" as a pope in the chair of St. Peter. And we all know how that turned out.

Jimmy Kimmel: Not everyone in Hollywood is a liberal

Sun, 04 Nov 2012 21:00:00 +0000

The presidential election will end one way or another on Tuesday. Most Americans will be relieved to be done with the uncertainty and the attack ads, but there are a number of professions that will find themselves at a loss: pundits, political writers, losing candidates and late-night hosts among them. For months and months, late-night TV has gotten to gorge itself on the intensity and inanity of the election cycle and its bottomless helpings of gaffe upon gaffe.

How have they feasted in a non-partisan manner? And what will they eat when it's over? As we approach the election's resolution, Jimmy Kimmel answered such questions. In the lobby of BAM's Harvey theater in Brooklyn, where he was taping a stand of shows the same week that Hurricane Sandy arrived, Kimmel spoke about covering the election, staying balanced -- and why political dog jokes are always funny.

I wanted to ask you some questions about the election …

About the election? Oh, I don’t want to do that. I just hate that stuff.

Not like who you’re going to vote for, but [what it's like] making the show in election season.

All right, ask me the questions.

Fred Willard’s awesome comeback

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 16:20:00 +0000

The glib yet contrite yet funny yet sincere late-night walk of shame after a public scandal is as familiar a pop culture trope as athletes thanking God for their success and dating competitions throwing in the most! shocking! twist! ever! Yet on Jimmy Fallon's show Thursday night, the unfailingly fantastic Fred Willard managed to set the bar just a little higher for every celebrity who will follow in his footsteps after allegedly getting caught doing something embarrassing with his penis.

The 72-year-old Willard, whose lengthy career has raised goofiness to its highest art form, was until quite recently best known for his roles in Christopher Guest's mockumentaries "Best in Show" and "A Mighty Wind," as Phil Dunphy's dad on "Modern Family," and for his scene-stealing cameos in every third comedy movie that gets released. Earlier his month, however, Willard earned a new claim to fame after being arrested for engaging in a lewd act at an adult movie theater in Hollywood. The news made national headlines for revealing the surprising habits of a beloved star, and for exposing the fact that adult theaters apparently still exist.