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The Death of "Late Night"

Hutch Carpenter, VP for Insights as Spigit, dug up this gem from Rashmi Sinha, CEO of SlideShare. In Rashmi's post "Is it time to reimagine your product/service?" she notes:

The problem with being the vintage of your launch year is that the domain gets reimagined. You get left behind even if you are doing everything right. This is the classic problem that so many companies face – they are innovative when they launch. They continue on the path they launch with, which they get traction with initially. At a certain point, they are executing so well, that they get left behind. Their success contains the seeds of their becoming obsolete

This is a great insight I've seen on display in many products throughout my career. Products, that once addressed a glaring value denial gradually fell out of touch with the direction their market was moving. By the time they realized the ground had moved beneath them, it was often too late. With this in mind, I found Jimmy Fallon's comments to NY Mag about the brouhaha surrounding the late night lineup at NBC to be particularly insightful:

The late-shifting at NBC may send Jay Leno back to 11:35 and push Conan to midnight (or another network) but at least Jimmy Fallon isn't [upset] about doing his show a half hour later. "I'll do my show at 3 in the morning," Fallon told New York Times reporter Bill Carter during a talk at the Times' Arts & Leisure Weekend last night. "I'm just happy I have a job." Fallon pointed out that his younger, DVR-loving audience doesn't watch him play beer pong with Betty White in real time anyway. "Time doesn't really matter to me," he said. "We're in a different age. Time is like... I don't even know what time 'Jersey Shore' is on. It doesn't matter - I'll see it."

I love that comment about Jersey Shore, btw. In any case, as this drama unfolds, NBC, Conan and Jay are the incumbents with years of labor and accomplishments on the line. Fallon's a startup playing with house money. He's like a kid with a dream job he fully expects to lose at any moment but is thrilled to have it while it lasts. He's the guy who has nothing to lose. I love that mentality.

More importantly, he represents a younger generation and carries with him a different perspective on media consumption that is native to that generation. Not that Conan and Jay aren't acutely aware of DVR's impact on their viewership, but they and NBC and their affiliates remain fixated on a time-based structure that is in the process of being disrupted. From a near-term business standpoint, it makes perfect sense and I would be loathe to suggest a different tactic to preseve their revenue stream.

However, this is exactly the point that Rashmi is making: it's hard to innovate when you have such a reason for stasis baked into your business model. NBC's concerns feel more like "but that's the way it works best". What they aren't paying enough attention to is the fact that the need to conform to some artificial time structure is disappearing. Already, "prime time" and "late night" are radically decoupled from their monikers. With Hulu, DVR, and any number of other technologies, "late night" is whenever consumers want it to be. Hence Fallon's point. The key to their success is content.If the content isn't good, it won't be on consumers' screens . . . at any time of the day. And that's where NBC should be focusing its time and efforts. Content.

Maybe Jay's show isn't all that great and maybe it is killing the affiliate lead-in. But affiliates need to consider that in a few years the concept of a "lead-in" will be utterly archaic. When consumers everywhere are making their own TV playlist, there won't ever be a lead-in. Ever. If you don't have compelling content, you won't be seen by anyone. Affiliates take careful note of this point. Jay's weak show isn't the cause of your struggles. It's a canary in the mine.

Updated (1/12/2009)
After posting this, the NY Times had a great writeup on the topic. Some remarks that speak to the Rashmi's point and my additional commentary (juicy stuff in bold):

Not since New Coke has a storied brand been so thoroughly maimed. “The Tonight Show,” once a gilded entertainment franchise, is now just one more broken toy in the mistake pile. “You have the combination of expired content, in terms of current public taste, appearing at the wrong time on a medium that has lost its salience, by whatever standards you use,” said Paul Levinson, professor of communication at Fordham University.

The message to the younger talent is one thing — wait for a turn that may never come or may be taken back at any second — but the message to younger audiences is even clearer: a legacy industry will default to legacy assets and ride them down to the bitter end.The network model explains why Ted Koppel is favored over younger talent to serve as interlocutor on “This Week” and why, when networks make what they see as a risky move — hey, let’s put a woman in the anchor chair — it will be someone like Katie Couric or Diane Sawyer, both of whom have been on television for decades.

That's it exactly.

Filed under // Conan O'Brian DVR Hulu Jay Leno Jimmy Fallon Late Night NBC innovation media strategy

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The Death of "Late Night"