Late-night Programs Research Articles

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“Jokes Seth Can’t Tell” and the Regressive Visibility of the Diverse Late Night Writers’ Room

ABSTRACT After Jon Stewart and David Letterman announced their respective retirements in 2015, the absence of diverse voices in late-night programming re-emerged as an important representational issue. Despite Aisha Tyler and Amy Schumer being considered for hosting roles, women were once again denied the opportunity to take over an established late-night franchise. Late-night talk shows’ historical whiteness and maleness remained onscreen, but industrial pressure pushed these series to hire more black and/or queer women writers, and other writers of color, to diversify their content and counter the white male hosts and their assumed universal perspectives. Using textual analysis of Late Night with Seth Meyers’ segment “Jokes Seth Can’t Tell” and discourse analysis of late-night’s hiring practices, I argue that this celebration of diverse voices by late-night programs appears progressive, but the industrial decision to foreground these writers’ difference from the host’s more powerful position caters to primarily white audiences, and reinforces the patriarchal power dynamics and tokenism in place. Particularly when considering the industrial history of pushing women of color hosts to niche channels or syndication, a more inclusive understanding of late-night talk shows and their past and present representational and industrial politics is needed.

Using Critical Appraisal to Inform Program Improvement

ABSTRACTIn 2016, the education department at the National Building Museum offered a series of Late Night programs in conjunction with the Summer Block Party installation, ICEBERGS. The museum wanted to evaluate the programs but had limited resources to do so. In the following article, we describe the use of critical appraisal, an economic method applied by professional evaluators to provide observations and judgments about Late Nights for ICEBERGS. We also discuss the benefits and challenges of critical appraisal to highlight its potential utilization for other museum educators.

Classroom Instruments and Carpool Karaoke: Ritual and Collaboration in Late Night’s YouTube Era

This article uses two recurring late-night talk show segments, “Classroom Instruments” (NBC’s The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon) and “Carpool Karaoke” (CBS’s The Late Late Show with James Corden), to explore how programming strategies are changing in response to late night’s adoption of YouTube as a distribution platform. Through close analysis of these segments, the series’ YouTube presences, and industry perspective, the article explores how late night’s digital turn has embraced historical qualities of late-night programming that have proven compatible with YouTube as a platform, with these segments prioritizing collaboration common in the YouTube community at large. It goes on to analyze how this content is being “re-ritualized” for online audiences, disconnecting the segments from their linear broadcast context and reframing them for nonlinear audiences in light of this once secondary space of distribution increasingly becoming the primary space of consumption in late-night talk’s “YouTube era.”

Sex and the Spectacle of Music Videos: An Examination of the Portrayal of Race and Sexuality in Music Videos

This content analysis used two studies to examine sexual behaviors and sex role portrayals in music videos televised in the United States. The first study included 120 videos recorded from MTV, MTV2, VH-1, BET, and CMT and revealed African American videos were significantly more likely to portray sexual content and female characters in provocative clothing than White videos. The second study analyzed 20 videos from BET’s late-night program, Un:Cut. Results revealed Un:Cut videos depicted seven times as many sexual acts and featured significantly more discouraged sexual behaviors than videos from the five major music video channels. Findings from these studies clarify that race is an important factor when gender roles and sexual content are examined in music videos.

Late-Night Learning: Do Entertainment Programs Increase Political Campaign Knowledge for Young Viewers?

The fragmenting media landscape has led many, particularly younger citizens, to identify entertainment-based programs as key sources of political information. This research used national survey data to examine whether exposure to comedy and late-night programs actually informs viewers, focusing on two kinds of political knowledge thought to differ depending on the media used: recall and recognition. Some support was found for the prediction that the consumption of such programs is more associated with recognition of campaign information than with actual recall. Age, however, demonstrated modest interaction effects with viewing.

Midnight-to-Dawn Programs on Australian Commercial Radio

This article considers radio's claim to enjoy a personal, intimate relationship with listeners by examining late-night programming on Australian commercial radio from the 1930s to the 1980s. It explores radio's shift from exploiting the extraordinary to the ordinary through the prism of the midnight-to-dawn pro- gram that made its debut on Sydney's 2UW in 1935-possibly the first example of continuous broadcasting in the British empire. The article then looks at the spread of midnight-to-dawn shows to other Australian stations, and the role played by women broadcasters in this genre. Finally, the article discusses outlets for "romance" on Australian radio in the middle decades of the 20th century and examines the rise of late-night matchmaker programs-"a time," in the words of one journalist, "when the lonely get lonelier and inhibitions loosen."

Alcohol-Free Alternative Activities for University Students: Modeling Associated Drinking Behavior

An exploration of the linear relationships among alcohol use, participation in late-night alcohol-free entertainment options, perceived drinking norms, social identity, perception of university policy, and demographics was conducted. The sample was 1,074 college students enrolled in introductory psychology courses. Alcohol use was measured using self-report behavioral inventories. A total of 382 students participated in the study, 42% of whom attended one or more LateNight programs, and 52.7% of whom had binged within the past 2 weeks. Regression analysis results showed those who felt LateNight was a good example of having fun without using alcohol were 27% less likely to binge than those who did not believe this (p<.05). Likewise, those with high perceptions of peer drinking norms were 30% more likely to party heavily than those with low perceptions (p<.001). LateNight participants were significantly (p<.001) less likely to drink heavily, were 14% less likely to binge (p<.001), and were 20% less likely to party heavily (p<.001) than nonparticipants. Respondents identifying socially with LateNight participants were 14% less likely to binge (p<.05). Those more aware of university-based efforts involving policy enforcement and prevention programming were 19% more likely to binge (p<.01), and 23% more likely to party heavily (p<.01) than those less aware of university efforts. Implications for program planning and evaluation are presented.

The New News and the 1992 Presidential Campaign: Perceived vs. Actual Political Knowledge

Nontraditional news coverage, the so-called new news, emerged as a major factor in the 1992 presidential campaign. Little is known, however, about whether attention to the political content of such programs informs the public or simply provides the perception of being informed. Analysis of survey data reveals that attention to MTV and late-night programs is either unrelated to or negatively impacts campaign knowledge. Attention to talk shows is positively related to knowledge. While respondents perceive themselves as being informed by talk shows, for the less educated such attention is unrelated to campaign knowledge.

Dr. Ruth Westheimer:

For the most part, the late-night talk/variety television genre has been analyzed as little more than a promotional device for producers of popular culture products. Using concepts of dialogic discourse borrowed from M.M. Bakhtin and of star discourse theorized by Jimmie Reeves, this paper explores the ideological complexity available in the content of late-night programming. The various inflections of Dr. Ruth Westheimer within the broadcast context of the late-night talk/variety genre provide the focus of this analysis.