Late-night television is struggling. We see it with Stephen Colbert’s Late Show, where CBS’ latest financial disclosures lead me to believe that someone on staff is setting money on fire every day as a pre-taping ritual. Whether Colbert is actually losing $40 million a year is really besides the point, in general late night is suffering a viewership crisis. The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart admitted as much earlier this week, calling the format the equivalent of a “Blockbuster kiosk inside of a Tower Records.”
But ironically, The Daily Show might be the first late-night program that actually hacked something that feels miraculous in a time when TikTok and short-form video content is frying Gen Z brain cells like electric mosquito traps in Florida. In fact, The Daily Show brought in new viewers this week in the 18-49 demographic.
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How? They brought in a host under 40 years old who has a large internet following. Josh Johnson, 35, started as a correspondent on The Daily Show on Tuesday, and hosted for the remainder of the week. Prior to Tuesday, Johnson has been a writer for the show since 2017, but he’d never helmed the desk as host before. In addition to his writing, Johnson is a popular stand-up comedian with 1.4 million Instagram followers. His weekly videos from Tuesday stand-up sets regularly bring in thousands and thousands of views and interactions. He’s everything late-night TV isn’t: young, relevant and fluent in the internet. To anyone who’s not eligible for senior-dining discounts, this seems like an obvious way to remedy the viewership crisis.
According to reporting by Late Nighter, Johnson’s first night hosting brought in 590,000 total viewers, more than any other non-Stewart night this year. That means he out-performed Ronny Chieng, Jordan Klepper, Michael Kosta and Desi Lydic. But even more noteworthy? Johnson brought in more viewers in the 18-49 demographic than even Stewart has. Nielsen data shows that 226,000 viewers aged 18 to 49 tuned in to watch. These stats aren’t just beating Stewart; Johnson outranked every other late-night host this week in that demographic.
“Thank you for showing up in such a big way this week. Every view, share, comment and kind word meant so much to me,” Johnson wrote on Instagram. “I didn’t know how many people were rooting for me and hosting The Daily Show has been one of the wildest, most meaningful experiences of my career so far, and knowing that so many of you tuned in means more than I can explain.”
“Thanks to the entire staff, every crew member that gave me a fist bump on the way to the desk, every member of the team with an encouraging word lifted me up and made this happen,” Johnson continued.
Late Nighter reports the final numbers aren’t even in yet; we can expect that Johnson’s stats will be even higher when that happens. What does this mean? It means that late night might not be dead, it’s just old.
Content shared from www.cracked.com.