Madison Avenue Responding to Late-Night Buzz

Home , Craig Ferguson, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel

08.18.2015

Late-night TV is a buzzy place to be and Madison Avenue has taken notice, reports the LA Times' Stephen Battaglio.

"Late night is where the action is right now," Billie Gold, vice president and director of programming research for ad agency Dentsu, told Battaglio. "There are very few new shows in prime time that are creating buzz among advertisers. Late night is being reinvigorated."

The numbers prove that out. According to Kantar Media, total 2014 spend on late-night was nearly $600 million, a 14% improvement 2013, with late-night leader The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon accounting for a significant portion of that total.

NBC Entertainment Chairman Robert Greenblatt says the Tonight franchise is "exceedingly profitable" again after having become a break-even operation for the network not so long ago, reports the Times.

Late-night has been in a state of constant change since NBC tried Jay Leno at 10 p.m. in 2009, and it's getting ready for two more tectonic shifts.

On Sept. 8, CBS will premiere the next iteration of The Late Show, starring Stephen Colbert. And on Sept. 28, Comedy Central will debut Trevor Noah taking over Jon Stewart's chair on The Daily Show.

Those are two huge transitions. Both David Letterman and Stewart are late-night legends. Colbert's already made a huge impact himself, having played a conservative commentator (and self-described "tool") on Comedy Central's The Colbert Report from 2005 to 2014. But South African comic Noah is essentially a no-name stateside, so he'll have some work to do to keep up with the more established players.

Those two shows follow a raft of other changes that have taken place in late-night in just the past two years. In February 2014, during the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, Fallon took over The Tonight Show, and his contract has just been extended through 2021. In December 2014, Craig Ferguson stepped down from CBS' The Late Late Show and was replaced in March with British star James Corden, who immediately began making a viral video impact.

In fact, it's increasingly demanding to host a late-night show, with Fallon, Colbert and Corden all adept at singing, dancing, interviewing guests and creating videos that go viral. Two of late-night's vets - ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live and TBS' Conan - go light on the singing and dancing, but both hold their own when it comes to YouTube.

Meanwhile, Tribune is taking a step back to the past, launching The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson on its digi-net, Antenna TV.