HW# 5: Television after 1990, Late Night with Conan O'Brien

Late Night with Conan O'Brien is a American late-night talk show involving stand up comedy with various popular comedians, musical performances, interviews with celebrities, and making simple humor out of comedy material. It was on NBC from 1993 till this recent February 20th 2009 as the host Conan O'Brien headed towards The Tonight Show for Jay Leno's position. The new host for his own themed Late Night series is Jimmy Fallon.

(The Broadway Open House famous picture)

Conan's show imitates and spins-off from 1950 to 1951's Broadway Open House which was the original idea of throwing out a variety of comedy at late night hours with tap dancing, vocalists, comedians but it did not succeed very well because people in the early 50's with few television sets were not convinced they should stay up at 11 pm to watch tv. Over time though, after viewers began to warm up to television, VP of NBC tried it again and developed The Tonight Show with host Steve Allen. Ever Since 1954, The Tonight Show and Late Night Shows which was each hosted with a new host whenever thier contract was up were devoloped and successful to this day.

(the set of Broadway Open House)

Late Night Show with Conan O'Brien was unique in its own ways and also innovates from the other Late Night shows based on the way his stage was set up, doing shows outside of the set in areas like Finland, Canada, New York, the U.S. etc making fun of events going on in time. Conan did some episodes based on "time traveling" in Ancient Greece, the 80's, The Civil War and the future, plus he also was the first on Late Night to use clay animation for an episode.

(animation, cartoon work)

He took the opportunity of new technology to make clay animation along with showing quick clips of other television and comedy to prove his humorous points. Back in the 50's they could only record the humor of dancing, human acts, and visuals of posterboards to make the show successful. Conan had limitations based on the theme of his set up with a stage, desk, and audience with vaudeville stage performances, but he could travel, record his show, and bring it back to enertain people with his experience somewhere else. He was also the first on Late Night to be able to Broadcast his show in 2005 through iTunes where he could make a profit from selling episodes on the iTunes website. Now over time it was broadcasted to hulu.com where it is free and the Late Night Show with Conan O'Brien's web pages gives ingternet users the opportunity to explore recaps, fan pages and more. This helps the audience get involved at a faster and more dedicated pace. There were the most fans and viewers tuned into Conan's farewell show this February than any other host has had before with 3.4 million viewers.

Society and culture forced and influenced the Late Night Show to make fun of what actually happens in society. But in a way, it is a resistance to what is going on in the world such as war, poverty, politics, economy, family life, etc. for the meir fact it makes fun of it all. It has the same affect to viewers such as the show "M*A*S*H" was a light comedy about war. The Comedy in the television show lightens the weight of the world on people to show that this is just life and this is the crazy stuff we have to live with everyday so we could laugh at ourselves every once and a while for the mess we got into. It is not as mind numbing as the Brady Bunch life for example, but it does draw the viewers away from the serious and emotional side of politics, economy, and more to relax it out. Conan's show went for 16 years and even put up with history such as 9/11, the Blackout, and presidential elections of Clinton, Bush, and Obama.