Loading
In Australia, late-night talk shows, though not as plentiful as in the US, were immensely popular in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Graham Kennedy kicked things off in the 50s, first with In Melbourne Tonight, and then The Graham Kennedy Show. In 1990, Network Seven’s Tonight Live with Steve Vizard gained an average viewer share of 42.6 per cent of viewers in all Australian households (viewer share is the audience for total TV at a particular time), according to Nielsen. Vizard won a Gold Logie for the show in 1991. Rove, which starred Rove McManus and ran between 1999 and 2009, won five Logies, and claimed more than a million viewers for certain episodes.
“These shows were massively successful for the networks,” says Vizard. “Our show made them a lot of money … And they were some of the most inexpensive shows to make. They were literally in a studio with some chairs and people chatting. They eventually had a band, but even they were super cheap.”
However, after Rove wrapped in 2009, Australian late-night talk shows all-but disappeared. Dr Liz Giuffre, a senior lecturer in communication, music and sound design at UTS, says some broadcasters have attempted to revive the genre, such as the ABC with Tonightly with Tom Ballard in 2017. However, this show didn’t even last a year on-air. Ballard was unavailable for comment.
“The issue here is population and money. These shows are the market for big international celebrities. Do we have enough people to come over and do that?” Giuffre says. “Repeats of the American shows are also usually being played in those night time-slots, so that real-estate is already being spent on an international product.”
The definition of a late-night talk show is more ambiguous in Australia, Giuffre notes. She argues shows like The Project offer the same entertainment as, say, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, only earlier. Some former Australian late-night shows, which mirrored the US versions more closely, did not air every night of the week (Rove only aired once a week, and eventually wasn’t even broadcast live).
Australian late-night shows were usually managed by the networks’ news and current affairs departments, Vizard says. This is why most attempted revivals are coupled with a news component.
“Late-night talk shows were never meant to be current affairs shows … The networks are preoccupied with news because they’ve got it in their heads that it’s only news that differentiates them from streaming services. But they’ve got it wrong. What distinguishes them is topicality and surprise.”
Dr Rodney Taveira, who researches US television at the United States Studies Centre, says Australians are increasingly turning to podcasts and live-streamed shows on YouTube instead of watching free-to-air to catch up on culture and entertainment news.
“Even radio is finding a second life fulfilling the previous functions of the late-night talk show, as it adds video of interviews, which then gets clipped and circulated online.”
Ultimately, the Australian experience means little for the future of late-night TV in the US, Taveira notes.
“Australia is just too small of a market to sustain a late-night talk show five times a week, let alone several … The popularity of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on HBO and Letterman’s show on Netflix show there is life yet in this kind of US television, so long as it’s adaptable,” he says. “So long as these shows are happy to be clipped, and can monetise being clipped, they will enjoy viewership beyond television.”