#ThankYouJimmy is a hash tag that deserve to be on the Twitter trend list. You can say what you will about the Saturday Night Live alum but he brings the funny. I had my reservations about him. However, that might have been due to sense of loyalty to Conan. I was team CoCo and because of that I did not watch the Tonight Show once Jay Leno stole it, I mean took it over again. When Jay finally left Conan had already signed on with TBS. Not very funny.
It was up to Jimmy Fallon to take over the show that Johnny Carson built and Jay Leno maintained. Would Jimmy be up for the challenge? Could he run a whole show and not just shot bits like he did in Saturday Night Live? The answer was yes and no. Jimmy change the way the Tonight Show ran. He basically turned it into Saturday Night Live every single night. The funny thing is that it works for him. Gone were the hard hitting interviews and serious questions. In were the party games and skits. When you go on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon you are going to a have a good time. This format has worked very well for NBC and Jimmy.
The Daily Show may be where the youth go to get their news but The Tonight Show is where they go get their laughs. With Jon Stewart’s leaving The Daily Show its open season on the late night landscape. Those younger viewers that watch The Daily Show are going to have to go somewhere else for their late night fix. Its going to be Jimmy or Jimmy. By that I mean Jimmy Fallon or Kimmel. Sorry David Letterman your time in the sun was over the moment they passed you up for the gig. Comedy Central will be without The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report with Stephen Colber. This is a bad time for a station to lose its major late night players since recent late night ratings trends are on downswing among 18 to 34-year-old viewers. Well, unless your NBC who has an upswing. They can say #ThankYouJimmy for that.
In 2014 Stewart averaged 522,000 viewers aged 18 to 34, down from 652,000 in 2013, according to Nielsen data provided by Horizon Media. Stephen Colbert, who left Comedy Central last year and will replace David Letterman on CBS later this year, dropped to 471,000 from 535,000. ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel and CBS’s David Letterman carried fewer viewers and were also in decline. But “The Tonight Show” on NBC boasted an average 656,000 18 to 34-year-old viewers last year, up from 348,000 the year prior.
Fallon sings, dances, raps, plays instruments and much more. He does pretty much whatever he can think of to entertain us. Along the way he started the Thank You skits and welcomed the world to the Roots. The Philadelphia rap group that is the furthest from commercial as a group can get without going underground is now his in-house band. Think about that for a moment. A rap group is the in-house band for a major network late night show. We are just getting a taste of the shenanigans that Jimmy has brought to the Tonight Show. I for one am a converted believer of his comedy genus. When it comes down to it, Jimmy is the champion.