The Tonight Show has been televised since 1954. The American broadcast is filmed at 30 Rockefeller Center in New York City. The Tonight Show has had six official hosts. Listed in order; beginning with Steve Allen, Jack Paar, Johnny Carson, Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien, and presently Jimmy Fallon. The show is currently announced as The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon. For a brief time The Tonight Show tried news based approach, but eventually returned to a talk show format with comedic stylings. {https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tonight_Show}
The Tonight Show, a part of the media industry, has in the past relied on commercial advertisements, celebrity (star) power, and political comedy to boost their ratings. The program touches on a wide range of topics, from celebrity stories to current events and political news. The Tonight Show hosts many different guests based on popular topics such as the presidential election or the newest Hollywood blockbuster. The Tonight Show also has a musical guest that performs live each week. The Tonight Show’s producers strike the perfect balance between popular mainstream bands, and up and coming artists.
Historically, social media has played zero part in the promotion of The Tonight Show. In hiring Jimmy Fallon the show brought a younger, fresher perspective to a program that was beginning to become outdated and mostly popular amongst the older demographic. Hiring the neoteric Jimmy Fallon was a brilliant choice. Jimmy Fallon is young, up to speed with social media, and yet still a familiar face due to his successful career on Saturday Night Live. In the developed world social media has become the prevailing marketing medium. Social media use is critical to reach consumers all over the world, in every age range, and any economic class. Utilizing social media has quite literally become a requirement for successful marketing.
With Jimmy Fallon hosting the show, the style and technique with which the show interacts with its fans has changed drastically. Prior to the new format, The Tonight Show relied on television commercials, articles in newspapers and magazines, and word of mouth to attract fans. The Tonight show now takes advantage of several social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and Snapchat. The objective is to reach as many people as possible, make them laugh, and hook them on the show. Twitter seems to be the most used of the platforms. Part of The Tonight Show’s strategy is not just to post clips and GIFs, but to have fans and followers actively participate in the show. A particular fan favorite is The Tonight Show “Hashtags” segment, which can be found here: http://fallontonight.tumblr.com/post/77206559518/tonight-show-hashtag-time-tweet-us-your-best
https://twitter.com/FallonTonight?lang=en
https://www.facebook.com/FallonTonight/
The Tonight Show uses the most basic form of social commerce strategy; share tools. The incentive that The Tonight Show uses is the chance to have your tweet, letter, or suggestion read on live television. This incentive feeds into our desire as a society to be popular and noticed. Most of The Tonight Show followers are actively pursuing their “fifteen minutes of fame”. The Tonight Show also utilizes recommendation indicators. Host Jimmy Fallon will often reveal the amount of likes he has received and the positive news that his Hashtag segment was trending worldwide, and how long it took to become a worldwide trending topic. Jimmy Fallon’s enthusiasm and promotion of these numbers are a positive reinforcement to his viewers that he appreciates them and that they are personally involved in his show.
The increase in ratings, viewers, and revenue from host Jay Leno to host Jimmy Fallon shows the immense power of social media marketing.
“During the last year with Leno as host, The Tonight Show cost about $1.7 million a week to produce. With 45 weeks of annual production, that amounted to about $76.5 million, excluding the salaries for Leno and the show's top producers. In that same period, the show had been generating an estimated $30–$40 million a year in profit." {Block, Alex Ben. "Tonight Shows' NYC Move To Save NBC $20 Million in Tax Credits". The Hollywood Reporter}.
During Jay Leno’s career, The Tonight Show held an average rating of 5.7 million viewers nightly. {Hirschberg, Lynn. "Heeeeere's ... Conan". The New York Times Magazine}.
These numbers, in comparison with those of host Jimmy Fallon, prove The Tonight Show’s frenzied approach to utilize social media, mainly Twitter, as their prime marketing platform, has resulted in victory.
“Others in the late-night arena make ratings noise now and then, but no one has been able to match the consistency and dominance of Jimmy Fallon, who has completed two triumphant years as host of NBC’s “The Tonight Show.””{
http://variety.com/2016/tv/news/ratings-jimmy-fallon-two-years-nbc-tonight-show-host-1201702314/}
Having only hosted the show since 2014, The Tonight Show, Starring Jimmy Fallon is already matching and often exceeding the viewing numbers than that of his predecessor. {http://www.nbcuniversal.com/press-release/jimmy-fallon-seth-meyers-rule-late-night-ratings-week-oct-3-7-winning-every-key} However, these numbers can be misleading due to the ever growing number of fans who use platforms other than cable to view the show. Fans can watch clips and segments on Twitter, where Jimmy Fallon has amassed 45.8 million followers. {https://twitter.com/jimmyfallon} Facebook (12.2 million followers) and YouTube (13 million subscribers) award fans the same option. Entire episodes are available to watch at http://www.nbc.com/the-tonight-show, and Hulu.
As demonstrated, social media has played a key role in the success of The Tonight Show. The marketing strategy has worked so well that the internet has dubbed it “The Fallon Effect”, and many companies are studying it to improve their social media following.