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COMPANY TOWN; Fallon speaks geek on ‘Late Night’; He embraces tech with Web guests and gadget showcases, which may help draw people who don’t watch much TV.
Mark Milian — Los Angeles Times , March 16, 2009 Monday Home Edition
If the half-dozen Twitter messages Jimmy Fallon sends most days aren’t enough, the talk show host cemented his geek credibility last week by interviewing a gadget blogger and the creators of a Web-only show most Americans have never heard of.
On Wednesday, Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht, hosts of the techie favorite “Diggnation,” bantered with Fallon on the same love seat previously graced by such celebrities as Robert De Niro, Van Morrison and Cameron Diaz.
Two days earlier, Engadget Editor Joshua Topolsky talked operating systems and accelerometers while he showed off an early version of the hotly anticipated Palm Pre smartphone.
“Geek out, man,” Fallon told him after Topolsky looked sheepish for mentioning the term “user interface.”
That’s what “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” is doing. As he tries to build a loyal audience for his 2-week-old NBC show, Fallon, 34, is embracing gadgets and digital media more than any of his peers.
Before he debuted on March 2 as Conan O’Brien’s successor, Fallon practiced his delivery by posting video clips on his website.
“Late Night” gags involve fake Facebook status updates for audience members. He exchanges tweets — as Twitter messages are known — daily with the more than 300,000 people following him on the Web service, and he enlisted their help in compiling questions to ask Diaz on the air.
“You can’t do a show nowadays that doesn’t mention the Internet,” said “Late Night” producer Gavin Purcell, who formerly worked for the G4 cable network, which focuses on video game culture. “It’s where people spend so much time every day.”
But the geek love also may help “Late Night” attract a demographic that advertisers lust after: hip, plugged-in consumers who otherwise don’t watch much television.
“It would make sense to use Fallon as the guinea pig,” said Ken Wilbur, a marketing professor at USC. “Experimenting with a new show is always less risky than messing with an established formula. Any strategies that work on Fallon’s audience could then be ported to Leno and Conan.”
Fallon and Purcell say they’re merely trying to reflect the growing importance of tech gear and digital communications in society.
The show host often keeps an Apple laptop open on his desk. He says he’s a regular reader of Engadget, one of the most popular tech blogs, and Topolsky said he had noticed Fallon commenting on posts.
Fallon had R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe record the incoming-calls message for his iPhone and told New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to “meet me in front of the Sharp 108″ — a massive high-definition TV — to pose for photos.
“I love technology and gadgets,” Fallon said in an e-mail, adding that he doesn’t “see it represented enough on television.”
The well-placed products have created rumblings about whether “Late Night” was getting paid to show them off.
Purcell says it’s not, though Fallon does eventually plan to demonstrate advertisers’ products on the air — the old-fashioned “now a word from our sponsors” approach that happens to be resistant to commercial-skipping by users of digital video recorders.
“We will be very clear if we’re being sponsored,” Purcell said. “We’re in a time now when products can be content.”
Though Fallon’s ratings have been decent, outperforming “Late Show With Craig Ferguson” during the same time slot so far, critics have panned his hosting skills as awkward.
But his unpolished, slightly nerdy approach and embrace of technology may give younger audiences something to grab onto, UCLA marketing professor Ely Dahan said. That could appeal to advertisers.
“If you can convince someone at 18 to get a certain kind of credit card or laptop . . . you might be able to hold on to them for a very long time,” he said.
In the meantime, Fallon has started returning some favors. Rose and Albrecht had him on their Los Angeles set in January to appear on “Diggnation.” Fallon drank beer, cracked jokes and discussed recent submissions to Digg, the social-news site Rose founded.
He also promised to have the pair on “Late Night,” saying he wanted to “embrace tech and gaming as much as celebrity.” They just didn’t expect the invitation to happen during the show’s crucial first few weeks. “We sort of assumed it was going to be months before we got onto the show,” Albrecht said.
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mark.milian@latimes.com
by Chris Denson
I first met Kerry when I was the Marketing Director at the New York Film Academy. At the time, I booked her as a guest speaker along with writer/director, Brian Herzlinger to talk to our students about real life in Hollywood and screened one of their recent projects, “My Date With Drew.” A few lunches, phone calls and now years later, Kerry (and Brian for that matter) has become one of my absolute favorite people in the enertainment industry. She’s smart, dynamic, has an incredible energy, and is great at what she does. With that said, we are proud to have Kerry David as part of the Genius Effect Advisory Board.
About Kerry David:
KERRY DAVID (Producer) has produced such hits as Agent Cody Banks and Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London. She most recently produced the award winning Like Dandelion Dust, starring Mira Sorvino, Barry Pepper and Cole Hauser for 20th Century Fox. Dandelion was adapted from a New York Times best-selling novelist by Oscar nominated screenwriter Stephen J Rivele (Ali, Nixon). Dandelion was named Best of the Fest at the Palm Springs International Film Festival in January 2009.
Her multiple award winning documentary; My Date with Drew was made with a budget of only $1,100 and had a worldwide, theatrical release, selling domestically for $650,000, and grossing over $8,000,000 worldwide. Drew won the Audience Award for Best Feature at the HBO Comedy Arts Festival, against such films as Napoleon Dynamite, Garden State and Supersize Me. Drew also won the Best Feature Award at the New York Gen Art Film Festival, Best Documentary at the Vail Film Festival, the Audience Award for Best Feature, the Gellar/Devonport Award for Best Feature and the Grand Jury Award for Best Feature at the Sonoma Valley Film Festival. Drew also received a “Special Mention” at the famed Locarno Film Festival; arguably the most prestigious documentary film festival today and was named the fourth most profitable movie of all time based on a budget to revenue comparison by an independent study.
In 2006 David produced Perfect Romance for Lifetime Television Network, written by Allison Burnett (Untraceable, Fame). Her next project partnered her with two of the top ten golfers in the world to produce Expert Insight: Short Game Golf with Jim Furyk & Fred Funk which won the 2007 Telly Award for Outstanding Instructional Content and Cinematic Excellence.
Before starting her own production company she spent three years working for, and traveling with, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman on such films as Portrait of a Lady, Peacemaker, Practical Magic, The Blue Room, Without Limits, Mission Impossible: 2 and as she refers to it her “13 months in film school with Stanley Kubrick” on Eyes Wide Shut. David also Co-produced the award winning, special edition DVD of The Usual Suspects: Roundup: Deposing the Usual Suspects.
Kerry David's social network for filmmakers
In 2001 David founded www.IndieProducer.net (iP), a social networking community that helps educate and support new and emerging filmmakers. With a current member base that reaches 60,000 filmmakers worldwide, iP provides information, resources, entertainment news, interviews, education, and offers an annual screenwriting and short film contest to its members. iP promotes networking opportunities that connect new & emerging filmmakers with established working professionals and rewards them at an Annual iP Awards Gala at the Writer s Guild Theatre in Beverly Hills, so far iP has honored such notable filmmakers as Jon Favreau, Bill Paxton, Andy Garcia and Michael Rapaport.
David has been a guest speaker, panelist, and moderator at film festivals and film summits all over the world. She speaks at colleges, schools and writing groups to encourage and support new and emerging filmmakers. She is a voting member of BAFTA (British Academy of Film & Television) and the PGA (Producers Guild of America) and a mentor for Step Up, a national network dedicated to strengthening community resources for women and girls.
