Empirical Studies of Late-Night Audiences

Between 1991 and 2014 the total number of late-night programs rose drastically. There was a total of 4 late night comedy programs in 1991. This number increased to 12 by 2014 (Nielsen, 2015). Despite the apparent increase in interest in late night content, Young and Tisinger (2006), found that late night content had not usurped traditional news sources as the sole source for young viewers. The viewing of both satirical late-night content and traditional news sources are correlated, and consumption of traditional forms of news media increases the likelihood that young viewers will watch late night content (Young & Tisinger, p. 128). The data collected by Young and Tisinger corroborates the hypothesis that late night content, or “soft news,” is a supplement to traditional news, not a replacement (Young & Tisinger, p. 128), “…whether they are watching network news, local news, cable news, or news radio, Leno, Letterman, and Stewart viewers do not appear to be relying solely on their preferred late-night program for their daily dose of news” (Young & Tisinger, p. 129). Another study conducted by Pew Research in 2007 may further support these findings. A survey of roughly 1500 adults showed 54% of The Daily Show and Colbert Report audience fall into the “high knowledge group” of the study, surpassing other programs such as the O’Reilly Factor and National Public Radio who each held 51% (Pew Research, 2007). This average far outpaces the national average of high-level knowledge at only 35%. One of the major contributing factors for this is the multisource taste of the audiences of these programs. Audiences for the O’Reilly factor, NPR, and late-night comedy news show an average of greater than 7 sources compared to the national average of 4.6 sources (Pew Research, 2007). “News parody like The Daily Show transports an explicit, rather than an implicit, message. By contrast, political parody always involves an implicit message that audiences need to understand” (Matthes & Rauchfleisch, p. 603-604). Put in more plain terms, news parody is explanatory by nature because it mimics the nightly news which functions not only as an interpreter of the day’s events, but as a source. Political parody on the other hand seldom provides the background needed to understand a punchline.

Young (2013) asked an important question about why we view this type of satirical late-night content at all, and why some of us choose not to. Young (2013) used the top-rated programs according to Nielsen, and asked students to rate programs from most to least watched (Young, p. 158). The respondents in the study who placed The Daily Show and The Colbert Report in their top or bottom three were then asked follow up questions about why they do or do not watch the show. The results suggested that for a portion of non-watchers a key factor was a failure to understand the jokes. Late night satirical news programs rely on an expected amount of knowledge in order for their jokes to work (Young, p. 165). This lends more credence to the notion that viewers of late-night satirical news won’t stop viewing traditional forms of news and media, because of its potential for limiting their overall enjoyment of this new form of late-night news content. This is important for conventional news professionals to understand. Satirical news is not the enemy of traditional news outlets, the two benefit mutually. This particular notion was a key factor for Laderville, Holbert, & LaMarre (2010), and introduces the idea that our understanding of the landscape of public news is changing. These findings all suggest a very different point of view from those expressed by Teten (2012) who posits that “a new, and significant trend in media consumption is the rise of a growing number of people who turn their backs on the “big three” networks in order to find information and news reporting that they feel is more relevant to them” (Teten, 2012, p. 68).