When I first had the chance to do work for Sony I was quietly asked by top management to weigh in on the progress of an ongoing project they were in the midst of fielding that was attempting to answer a simple question: what do people think is funny? Apparently, there was frustration that their comedy development was not in tune with the evolving tastes of audiences, both in the U.S. and abroad, and there was a desire to try and identify some common grounds that could be messaged to creatives attempting to discern “what’s Sony looking for”? (The answer, as was usually the case. was high ratings-/and in an era where THE RULES OF ENGAGEMENT was defined as their best effort to that effect the general consensus was there was a disconnect.)
At this point, they had devoted a few months and a sizable chunk of their discrentionary research budget to conduct surveys and focus groups with enough different age/sex/SES variables to get what they thought were enough different constituencies’ POVs. Part of the process was to show clips of shows that made it to air but weren’t all that popular as well as share log line pitches for new shows being considered for pilots. The results were as disparate and fragmented as the current slate of perceived candidates for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination. What resonated with urban women under 35 was toward the bottom of the heap with suburban men over 45.
Are you shocked by that reality check? A few of the mid-level staffers who had sold their bosses on their naive belief that a study like this would find a smoking gun or two were. I guess they hadn’t even done an internal group amongst themselves to figure out that what they find “funny” is usually not what their colleague does. And as is always the case with qualitative results, there is no right or wrong answer. Management ultimately aborted the rest of the study, BTW.
That lesson became top of mind this past week in the wake of FOX NEWS’ Greg Gutfeld making a guest appearance on THE TONIGHT SHOW which reignited the huers and criers still bemoaning the imminent cancellation of Stephen Colbert as practically an act of treason on the part of Jimmy Fallon. No less of an expert on what’s left of late night television that the gentleman who literally wrote the book LATE NIGHT WARS, Bill Carter (now the lifeblood of LATENIGHTER.COM), weighed in:
The news in late night is that a would-be usurper has been invited into the once impregnable throne room. Or so some would have it.
More mundanely, Jimmy Fallon, the host of The Tonight Show, has invited Greg Gutfeld, a determinedly different sort of late-night talk show host, to be a guest on his couch tonight. It ranks as worthy of attention because Gutfeld, while carving out a booming niche as a comic voice from the right, has proclaimed to his sizeable Fox News following that he is the rightful “king” of late night, because he gets better ratings than any of the hosts of network late-night programs.
Now I’m not a regular viewer of Fallon these days, and I’m not alone apparently. TV INSIDER’s Martin Holmes spelled out the disparity in stark updated numbers last week:
For the second quarter of 2025, the Fox News show averaged 3.289 million viewers, compared to The Late Show with 2.417 million, Jimmy Kimmel Live! with 1.772 million, and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon with 1.188 million.
Carter, who has seen decades of battles that once involved substantial larger numbers, weighed it with needed caveat and context:
(Y)es, his regular audience of 3+ million viewers is strong, and tops everyone in that Trump-slashing late-night frat house. But the math, like certain things that come out of the leader’s mouth, (e.g. drug prices being cut by 1,500 percent,) needs a little clarification. “Gutfeld!” is on at 10 p.m. in New York, which is not actually “late night.” Obviously more people are awake at that hour than 11:30 p,m.-12:30 a.m., or 12:30 a.m.-1:30 a.m.. And if that seems like a lame technicality, how about Gutfeld’s show airing at 9 p.m. in Chicago? And 8 p.m. in Denver and 7 p.m. in LA? Kinda, sorta an advantage? More to the point, it means that Gutfeld isn’t routinely competing head-to-head with those other shows.
Gutfeld has been giving Fallon big props for “taking a risk” with the move. “While Colbert invited a loser (Harris), Jimmy Fallon invites a winner,” he said on his show. The risk for Fallon, as Gutfeld sees it, is alienating hard-core Trump-hating Hollywood stars and viewers by bringing on someone with passionately opposite political opinions from the Stewart-Colbert-Kimmel-Meyers-Oliver-Maher cadre of hosts.
And Holmes added how someone with even fewer viewers–who also airs at disparate times in different time zones–feels:
The Daily Show host Jon Stewart has explained why he thinks Greg Gutfeld is having such success on Fox News, while also saying conservatives are shooting themselves in the foot by targeting left-leaning media. Stewart told Weekly Show producer Brittany Mehmedovic that this celebration about the death of liberal media from Carr and others is illogical, noting how the success of conservative voices on TV shows and social media is due to their opposition to left-wing figures.
“That’s how Fox is popular,” Stewart stated. “That’s how any of these people, you know, they all talk about, [Greg] Gutfeld’s the most popular. Yeah. He’s not popular because he’s a both-sides guy. He’s not a fair use, like, the fairness doctrine says, like, he’s relentless. And, you know, after a day of watching Fox News and being bathed in their very purposeful propaganda, it’s a great way to top off the night.”
But leave it to Carter for the mic drop observation that, contrary to the fears of the most partisan, a Gutfeld-Fallon summit wasn’t quite on the same level as, say, Trump and Putin in Alaska:
It doesn’t really qualify as a total breakthrough. Bill O’Reilly, who was the dominant Fox News host of his time, was a frequent guest of David Letterman’s. While she was a Fox host, Megyn Kelly visited both Fallon and Seth Meyers. The chief Fox anchor, Bret Baier, has been a guest with Colbert (of all people) at least three times.
And that’s the point that resonated most with moi. We’ve historically been exposed to what other people find significant–funny or otherwise–when we were more open to allowing ourselves to see and hear it. I live with someone who has FOX NEWS on an awful lot, and our common room TV is often set to it when I seek out a ballgame. I’ve therefore seen Gutfeld a lot, and I’ll confess he’s even less my cup of tea than Fallon is. Yet I was still willing to actually watch their tete-a-tete play out, if for no other reason than morbid curiosity.
And surprise, surprise, it was a lovefest. Turns out Fallon and Gutfeld have a history via mutual friends. And Gutfeld wasn’t even there to talk about his eponymous FOX NEWS show or its not quite head-to-head success. Apparently–and I’m ashamed to admit this–he’s been hosting a game/reality show mash-up called WHAT DID I MISS? whose first season dropped several months ago on the afterthought but-about-to-amplify streaming service FOX NATION. It’s a pretty silly premise, as even FOX NEWS’ log line can’t hide:
“We put people in a house upstate… They have no idea what’s going on… When they come out, we quiz them on the news — fake or false. Fake or false…And with Trump, you can’t tell.”
For the record, Fallon’s got his own kinda-silly reality competition starting next month on NBC, per the network’s spiel:
“On Brand with Jimmy Fallon” is a new unscripted reality series where Fallon leads a marketing agency, mentoring contestants to create innovative campaigns for major brands.
Call me a radical, but given the disparity in audience size between his show and Gutfeld’s, it would not shock me to see Jimmy pay a visit to Gutfeld’s show to hype that. I know enough about what appeals to viewers of competitive reality to assert that anyone familiar with WHAT DID I MISS? might be low-hanging fruit for potential viewership of ON BRAND.
And yes, when Gutfeld further explained that his contestants are sequestered for 90 days for a top prize of $25,000 and compared that figure to the fact that Pyramid was giving away the same amount four decades ago, I actually smirked at his humor for a change.
See? That’s what I find funny. Go figure.
Until next time…