How much of Kimmel's Web presence helps his show, and how much takes it away?
There's an attached graphic showing how the late night crowd is doing year-over-year. Only Kimmel is up. Leno: 3.7 -4.2% Letterman: 3.2 -9.0% Kimmel: 1.8 +2.8% Fallon: 1.7 -0.3% Stewart: 1.5 -1.6% Ferguson: 1.5 -14.0% Colbert: 1.1 -1.1% O'Brien: 0.8 -42.3% Handler: 0.7 -18.2% Posted below to free it from the pay wall. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203315804577209342302440810.html MEDIA & MARKETING | FEBRUARY 13, 2012 Jimmy Kimmel Walks Web Tightrope Comedian Finds Younger Viewers via YouTube, Helping His TV Show—So Far By CHRISTOPHER S. STEWART Before celebrities agree to go on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" one question regularly pops up—can the ABC late-night host please include them in a viral Web video? "I get sort of annoyed," Mr. Kimmel said with a laugh. Yet the frequent requests are a testament to what may be a new trick in television today. By cultivating a popular presence on YouTube, Mr. Kimmel has managed to assemble an audience online while at the same time increasing his viewership on traditional TV, when most other late-night hosts are losing viewers. The comic may be an ideal candidate for straddling the worlds of online video and traditional TV. With a raucous mix of goofiness and frat-boy pranks, Mr. Kimmel's ABC show, which is filmed in Los Angeles, fits the fleeting attention of the pop-culture consumed Web. His clips on YouTube include skits with racy titles and premises, playing up a quirky cast of characters and fake feuds with celebrities like Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Even so, his success raises a question that resonates across the TV world: Can success on the Web bite back? It is a delicate balance for TV executives, as they gingerly put content online while worrying about the tipping point where viewers can cut their cable cords and rely on the Web for their video consumption. While Mr. Kimmel is proving there is an audience for his programming online, it isn't clear yet there is a business model. "Online video as TV has arrived," said Brian Hughes, senior vice president of audience analysis at Magnaglobal, part of Interpublic Group of Cos. "The way now is figuring out how to bundle digital into your offerings and make some money off it." So far, Mr. Kimmel's YouTube channel, which includes clips from the broadcast and some material from the cutting-room floor, has produced annual revenue between $1 million and $2 million, said a person close to the show. According to ad-tracking firm Kantar Media, advertisers spent some $72 million on ads for the broadcast in the first nine months of 2011, up 14% from a year earlier. His TV audience from the start of the season on Sept. 19 through Feb. 5 was nearly 1.8 million, up 2.8% from the same period a year earlier, Nielsen estimates. During this same period, other late-night hosts including NBC's Jay Leno, CBS's David Letterman and Comedy Central's Jon Stewart saw their average viewerships decline. "If you are reaching people [online] who don't watch the show, then you're actually monetizing people who don't watch the show," said Jackie Kulesza, investment director of Starcom USA, Publicis Groupe SA. "On top of that you have the added value of getting people interested." Still, as Jon Swallen, senior vice president of research for Kantar Media notes, "the key financial question is whether online access cannibalizes the TV viewing audience." About this, Mr. Kimmel said, jokingly, "What would be ideal is if we could take the Internet away from people." A peripatetic radio-show host from Brooklyn, the 44-year-old Mr. Kimmel made his name on Comedy Central's "The Man Show," with acts like "Juggy Dance Squad," featuring buxom women, and a skit involving a little boy selling beer at a lemonade stand. He took the ABC spot following long-running news show "Nightline" in 2003, edging out Jon Stewart. The YouTube notion came in 2008, as Mr. Kimmel noticed that posted clips from his made-up battle with Matt Damon were getting millions of views across the Web. As the core age of late-night TV hovered in the 50s, Mr. Kimmel saw an opportunity to grab a younger audience. "We saw people putting it up [online] and thought, 'We should do this ourselves,'" he said. At the time, networks were grappling with how much material to put online and where to house it—a tense discussion that persists today. About the talks with ABC about posting TV content Mr. Kimmel said, "It took a while." The Kimmel show uploads to YouTube between eight and 12 new clips of varying length a day, including skits with Guillermo Rodriguez, a former parking lot security guard who now acts as the show's celebrity correspondent. Among the big hits so far are "Handsome Men's Club" and "Jimmy Surprises Bieber Fan," which earned an excess of 40 million views. The YouTube channel now has 314,840 subscribers. The 173 videos Mr. Kimmel posted in November have since drawn 40 million views, according to the show. While that sort of audience falls well short of YouTube stars like the comedian Ray William Johnson, it is much better than other late night TV hosts. Late shows at CBS and NBC are less YouTube-focused, with many of their videos appearing on network sites, branded social media feeds like Facebook, and or Hulu, owned by Walt Disney Co., NBCUniversal, and News Corp. (which owns The Wall Street Journal). NBC's "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon," for instance, was watched by 2.3 million online viewers across NBCU websites in November, according to Nielsen, which doesn't include YouTube. The momentum online has prompted Mr. Kimmel to develop a new act building off the YouTube audience—"Jimmy's YouTube Challenge." In one segment, Mr. Kimmel asked viewers to unplug the TV at a crucial moment during the Super Bowl and see how friends and family reacted. The resulting 3:50 minute compilation, punctuated by plenty of screams and bleep outs, received more than two million views. Mr. Kimmel said he is considering a Web series but would also love to one day have his own website. "As long as people are watching," he said, "I don't care where they watch us." -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
