My thoughts on "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon"

Ok I've been formulating my thoughts about this for a couple days now, and, well, I watch a lot of late night television.

So let me start off by saying that Craig Ferguson is up there with Joel McHale and Adam Carolla.

(that probably made no sense to anybody)

ANYWAYS here's how it is.

Jimmy Fallon is trying to hit the younger demographics, and he's pushing it too hard. I mean like too softly.

I'll explain.

One night last week he was doing some sort of skit where he would pan around the audience with a camera and tell them their "facebook status"

I know.

But his problem is the problem with most major markets.  They're hitting the target audience, but they're not hitting them right.

I mean, ok so they have The Roots as the house band, obvious smart move.  They talk about about facebook, ok well sort of.  Frat boys don't tend to watch late night talk shows, and (ok now I KNOW this is a broad generalization, but stick with me here) those are the kind of people who tend to mentally say "Oh! I know that thing he/she is talking about! That makes it funny!"

And the obvious thing to say here is: well maybe they're trying to LURE the "frat boy" demographic into this tube trap.

Ok sure, but when the "frat boy" demographic is up at 12:30 on a Tuesday they're either:

a. Systematically lowering some poor girls self-esteem.

b. Drinking

c. A combination of the 2 as well as looking for something on TV that is MUCH more vulgar.

and Jimmy doesn't deliver with that.  So it comes off as a sort-of g-rated college show that is talking about Twitter (which I still don't get)

So this is where The Roots and "talking about Facebook" diverge.  You are trying to simultaneously hit both the, I guess what you could call... hipster, self-aware humor types AND the "frat boy" types.

NOW: The Solution.

Pick one or the other.

If you go for the frat type: Hire Dane Cook, make the set all "urban alternative" looking.  usually like a back alley environment or something.  Talk more about penises.  Use more physical comedy. No house band, just outro and intro shit with popular songs.  Boom, 12:30-1:30 gold.

If you go for the hipster etc etc type: Hire someone obscure; possibly Mike Rowe or Patton Oswalt.  Keep The Roots, or hire a house type band, but BE SURE that the band leader is not the keyboardist, drummer, guitarist, or saxophonist.  IT'S BEEN DONE, and the piss-ants (myself included) will latch onto it and write nasty blogs online about it. 

You're welcome, NBC