The Chris Moeller Archives

The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon

Jimmy Fallon is the man who took the innovative talk show franchise Late Night on NBC, fronted first by David Letterman and then by Conan O'Brien, and turned it into the type of show in which the host gives away free sponsor gifts to every member of the studio audience to earn cheap applause. He won't have to do that much to wreck Jay Leno's Tonight Show.

NBC has found the perfect "company man" to walk in the chin-prints of Leno. General Electric, one of NBC's parents and one of the world's largest air polluters and producers of toxic waste, has jumped on board with a heavy-tie-in advertising campaign for Tonight: "Great ideas come after dark," including a running bit on the show called "GE's Fallon-ventions." If you haven't seen it, it's a ripoff of Letterman's long-running "Kid Scientists" segment except that Jimmy wears a lab coat and it's sponsored by GE, the corporate boss Johnny Carson consistently ridiculed on his Tonight Show, sarcastically calling it "the company with a heart."

Fallon gleefully caters to that teen demographic so cherished by advertisers, acting starstruck around every single guest he has on the show. The kids are eating it up, too. At least the ones that are really into giggling. Every comedy bit has at its center some cultural touchstone for teenagers today and their sense of identity-- YouTube, Twitter, hashtags, video parodies, celebrities performing much-loved television theme songs. I'm sure that NBC affiliates are going ape these days over the young eyeballs Jimmy's irony-free show in an earlier time slot promises to share with their stale local nightly newscasts. I haven't seen an entertainment act suck up this much to one generation of young people since Sha Na Na.

Good thing we've still got Dave, and Jimmy Kimmel and Conan to continue on after he goes. Fallon is unwatchable.

posted by CM @ 7:05 PM