"The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon"??? Well, that's one way to murder a franchise, drive a franchise to the middle of nowhere, dig a shallow grave, and bury a franchise, never to be seen or heard from ever again.
There are days I give humanity credit and days I don't, but as stupid as people are at any given moment, they generally don't care how old a comic is if he makes them laugh. Teaching middle school, I showed clips of Buddy Hackett, Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Steve Martin, Johnny Carson, George Burns, The Marx Brothers, and countless others who were both older and way before the time of my students. And they laughed. The jaded teens laughed. The prissy teens laughed. The sardonic teens laughed. The brainy teens laughed. The stoner teens laughed. The same teens will watch a 45-year-old James Bond. The same teens will listen to Snoop Dog/Lion and LL Cool J and Tupac (and The Beatles and Sinatra and Johnny Cash). Network executives who get hung-up on age are as bad as politicians who get hung-up on sexual orientation, as if a single characteristic defines an entire person. Jimmy Fallon is a month older than I am, almost to the day. Ask any of my former middle school students, and they would loudly tell you (with a gleam in their eye) that I'm old. They will not watch Jimmy Fallon because he's younger than Jay Leno. They will watch him if he is a good host. I don't happen to think Fallon can host his way out of a paper bag, but regardless of my own opinion, I don't think enough people in the desired demographic disagree with my opinion to justify moving him to 11:35. The numbers aren't there. And so we're clear: Jimmy Kimmel was moved to 11:35 because ABC made conscious choices to kill what Nightline used to mean to late-night viewers. "Andy Dick Live" would fare better at 11:35 on ABC than Nightline in its present form. Kimmel doesn't get better ratings because he's younger than the people at Nightline. Oh, by the way, Conan didn't fare better than Leno at 11:35 on NBC simply because he was younger than Leno (thanks to Pgage whose records constantly reminded us that NBC would love to have Jay's current ratings match what Conan's were). Jon Stewart is over 50-years-old, but his show goes over very well on college campuses. Now, if NBC wanted to issue a statement stating they had made a mistake putting Leno back at 11:35, and now they are making changes to try to contain the damage, I'd welcome such a statement. But Fallen getting the show because he's younger or brings a younger crowd is bullsh*t. The young crowd left The Tonight Show when Conan left, not because of age, but because Leno isn't cool to them. Look at the pathetic number of followers on Leno's Twitter feed compared to Conan's or Kimmel's or Fallon's or Colbert's. The others are in the millions while Jay has just over half a million. I was a geeky kid (big shock) who used to stay up way past his bedtime and sneak back to the family room (because back then it was the only TV in the house) and watch Johnny and Dave, two guys who were way older than me, but were masters of the craft. No geeky kid risks getting grounded by staying awake to watch Jay and Fallon. No geeky kid is watching clips of either of them on YouTube. Fallon at 11:35 doesn't fix the problem for NBC. Their decision to fire Conan made 11:35 on NBC an uncool place for teens to hang out. Period. And there aren't enough years left in conventional broadcast television to fix that. -- Kevin M. (RPCV) -- -- 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 --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
