|
|
on Jimmy Kimmel
Is late night ready for this toilet bowl humorist?
By Heidi Vogt
ABC drew heaps of scorn last March when it attempted to steal David Letterman from CBS in a bungled behind-the-scenes ploy that would have dumped Ted Koppel and his respected "Nightline" from its late-night lineup. News buffs went into a major snit.
In its latest ploy to beef up its late night, the network may be opening itself up to a different sort of scorn, and maybe far harsher scorn -- that from family viewing sorts.
Enter Jimmy Kimmel, bathroom humorist of Comedy Central hits “The Man Show” and “Crank Yankers.”
This comic is plain crude. His idea of great wit is to place a $10 bill in an unflushed toilet to see who will dare pick it out.
ABC is touting Kimmel as its hot new star of late night, choosing to premiere “Jimmy Kimmel Live” after the Super Bowl later this month before sliding the show into its regular midnight slot Monday through Friday.
Several questions loom. Is late night, traditionally a time for older viewers, ready for Jimmy Kimmel?
Is Jimmy Kimmel ready for late night?
Will the expected hullabaloo from blue noses work to ABC's advantage in drawing viewers to the show?
And most important, will Kimmel be strong enough to pull viewers from Letterman and Jay Leno?
ABC obviously thinks so, and one industry observer who thinks Kimmel stands a good chance is Robert Thompson, director of Syracuse University's Center for the Study of Popular Television.
“It’s a good bit of counter-programming,” says Thompson. “Jimmy Kimmel is going to throw a whole different color horse into this horse race.”
The show will feature the usual celebrity guests and trendy bands, but also will mix up the formula a bit, adding a different guest co-host every week. There will be no trampolines (as in “The Man Show”), but Kimmel does promise plenty of stunts performed in the parking lot outside of his Hollywood Studio.
While Kimmel would hope to pull viewers from Leno and Letterman, certainly part of ABC's plan is to bring new viewers to late night, the younger viewers who watched him on Comedy Central.
The median age of “The Tonight Show’s” viewers is 48.5. The median age for Letterman viewers is 45.9.
In contrast, most Kimmel fans are college age or younger.
The question: Will they be willing to watch their favorite at midnight in sufficient numbers?
“There are even a lot of 12- to 13-year-old boys that would gladly watch Jimmy Kimmel, but they have to be in bed by that time,” notes Thompson.
The post-Super Bowl debut will surely help introduce Kimmel to a young audience. It may be quite another to get them to come back on weeknights.
The crudeness factor will certainly be a big issue.
While Craig Kilborn successfully made the jump from cable to broadcast as host of CBS’s “Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn” -- he came to CBS from Comedy Central’s “Daily Show” -- his humor is far less outrageous than Kimmel's on “The Man Show.”
Thompson says now could be the time to introduce Kimmel’s style to broadcast.
“Kimmel can probably get away with a lot now. After all, Comedy Central is not a premium channel. They manage to sell advertising for it.”
But in order to succeed on ABC, Kimmel will also have to attract a much larger audience than he ever has on cable. That could be tough.
“I don’t really anticipate it doing that well,” says Brad Adgate, senior vice president and director of research at Horizon Media.
“I don’t know if the people ABC’s trying to attract are watching TV at all at that time. It’s a low-usage time period.”
If Kimmel does pull existing late-night viewers, Adgate says they will likely come from Letterman.
But Adgate doesn’t expect to see anything like a mass migration.
“Late-night movements are rather glacial in their shifts, with gradual continued erosion of broadcast viewing,” says Adgate.
NBC has dominated the late night talk shows for years, with CBS only really entering the race when David Letterman moved over from NBC.
Still, Letterman’s ratings hover well below Leno's. In the fourth quarter of 2002, Letterman averaged a household rating of 3.2. Leno had a 4.5 over the same time period.
Since the cancellation of ABC's “Politically Incorrect” last year and the “Nightline” public relations fiasco, ABC has been counter-programming against the Leno and Letterman with in-depth news.
“Nightline” airs at its traditional 11:30 time slot against the first half-hour of the talk shows, followed by “Nightline Up Close,” in which Ted Koppel interviews newsmakers.
While Kimmel’s show will undoubtedly be more attractive to the young demographic than an extended “Nightline,” ABC’s hard-news hour has been pretty competitive with the talk show barons.
“Nightline” averaged a 3.7 household rating in the fourth quarter and “Nightline Up Close” (the show created just to bide time until Kimmel’s start) averaged a 3.2.
“Jimmy Kimmel Live” will replace “Up Close” at midnight and run one hour, meaning that it will compete with the second half of Leno and Letterman and the first half of NBC’s “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” and CBS’s “Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn.”
January 15, 2003© 2003 Media Life
-Heidi Vogt is a staff writer for Media Life.
Printer-Friendly
Version | Send
to a Friend
Cover Page | Contact
Us