If you are a traditional linear TV show (perhaps one of the most traditional), how do you maintain relevance in a world where the cool, new things are increasingly watched in short bites on iPhones?
It turns out, even in a popular culture dominated by TikTok and Instagram, nostalgia still clicks.
When Lindsay Lohan appeared on The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon back in March, she reprised her characters “Hallie” and “Annie” from the 1998 film The Parent Trap, in a sketch with Fallon. The sketch wasn’t part of the show, but was instead distributed on the program’s social channels, including TikTok and Instagram. It has since been viewed 43 million times.
It was so successful that when Lohan returned just a few weeks ago, she participated in another digital-only sketch, one that references the infamous “Jingle Bell Rock” scene in her 2004 film Mean Girls. It has already garnered more than 15 million views.
They were both digital-only sketches that connect to nostalgia, and they underscore the degree to which the 70-year-old NBC late night show is trying to adapt to what has become a rapidly changing media environment, particularly for comedy.
“We’re always trying to tap into fandoms, that’s a huge part of our strategy, whether it’s Marvel, Game of Thrones, K-pop, Taylor Swift, we love a good Easter egg. We’re also always trying to pay homage to our guest’s projects in a way that feels fresh and new,” says Nick Dyer, supervising producer and head of digital for The Tonight Show, calling out the success of the Lohan sketches. “It’s kind of combining the old with the new, playing up on the reasons why everyone loves these guests that come on our show for their past, current and future projects.”
For late night shows in general, and NBC’s Tonight Show in particular, social distribution has become the new cultural currency. TV viewing habits have changed, and consumers — particularly the younger viewers that used to dominate late night viewing — are not getting their comedy delivered in the same ways.
“We’ve got this one hour show that used to just be, here’s our linear viewer, and here’s our demographic. It’s 18 to 49. It was so clear, and it was clear for the advertisers,” says Tonight Show showrunner Chris Miller, noted that he has been an avid viewer of the show “since [Johnny] Carson.”
“We’ve got that covered, then we think ‘how are we going to clip that out? How’s this going to play on YouTube?’ … Then, of course, you’ve got the generation that’s like, ‘what have you got for me? I’ve got 15 seconds.’ What from here can clip out into that sort of 15 second, 30 second, one minute type of thing.”
“Obviously viewing habits has changed. But one thing that Jimmy’s always been really great with is trying to reach our audience wherever they’re consuming content,” Dyer adds.
Of course, as any veteran TV executive will tell you, social and digital platforms remain far less lucrative than linear TV or major streaming platforms, though it is possible to close that gap somewhat through sheer scale across its 100 million-plus followers across platforms. The Tonight Show, NBC notes, is the most-followed late night program, most-followed entertainment program, and most-followed talk show on social video platforms, and has drawn 8.3 billion views across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and X over the last 12 months.
“I remember back in the Late Night days being excited that we had 100 followers on Twitter,” Fallon recalls. “I was like ‘that means 100 more people will be talking about our show!’ 100 million almost doesn’t make sense to me.”
Miller notes that the Tonight Show is typically sold as part of a larger buys across all of NBCUniversal, and “that is a full time job for dozens of people to work on that monetization.”
Still, he notes, “when people want to buy into us, knowing that we have over 100 million followers, it’s helpful for them.”
Ariana Grande and Jimmy Fallon behind the scenes at The Tonight Show.
It’s an approach that the show has been able to apply to guests as well, as Lohan’s experience demonstrated. A digital sketch involving Sylvester Stallone and his daughters that references Rocky has racked up more than 102 million views, while a bit with Ariana Grande that plays off a TikTok trend involving Wicked has been viewed more than 60 million times.
“The reach and impact of our social media is unique and always at the forefront of conversations we have when booking talent,” says Lori Blackman-Master, supervising producer/head of talent for the show. “Not only do our guests get to have the traditional sit-down interview with Jimmy, but while here they are able to shoot original content curated by our incredible digital team. Once posted on our social channels, it takes on a life of its own, reaching new audiences and garnering millions and millions of views.”
In fact, Miller says that the show has enough scale that he believes that the show can actually influence the trends themselves.
“With the amount of viewers that we have, if there’s something that we think is really funny and it’s not super caught on but the concept of it is really great, all of a sudden we’re going to do it with [for example] Dwayne Johnson, and now we have become part of elevating that trend to this other level,” Miller says. “So we don’t always have to be like, ‘oh, this is big, let’s do it.’ We can see something, we’re like, this is fun, there’s something to this and we’ll be part of making it the next big thing.”
“Our North Star here is, how is this idea — whether it be a TikTok trend, whether it’s an original scripted bit or sketch that we’re doing with Jimmy — how does it fit in with the larger Tonight Show universe and the Tonight Show’s voice? How does that fit in with Jimmy’s voice? Is it something that we can subvert expectations or play with in a new or creative way?”
Both Dyer and Miller note that Fallon is intimately involved in everything the show does on social video platforms, with Miller noting that “he’s pretty deep into it because his personal socials are also massive. So he’s a very big viewer of TikTok and Instagram and the trends.”
But as anyone who has viewed TikTok, or Instagram or YouTube knows, there are also trends and videos that just don’t make sense for a show as venerable as The Tonight Show, or for someone with as distinct a public persona as Fallon.
And in that respect, there are limitations on what the show — and what Fallon — can and will do.
“I think there are things that we just sort of don’t do at the Tonight Show. We don’t know do it because it’s not Jimmy. We don’t lean heavily into certain type of political issues. We don’t have a handbook. We don’t have anything like that. We don’t say, stay away from this,” Miller says. “There really is just a sensibility from working here that you know what the guidelines are.”
The end results tend to be lighthearted, of the moment, frequently nostalgic, and likely to garner millions of views.
“We always took social media and the internet seriously and worked hard to grow with our audience. I can’t thank Nick and the whole team enough,” Fallon says. “And of course — every guest that comes on our show that is willing to play with us and trust us. I’m a lucky guy.”
This story first appeared in the Dec. 13 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
