#27: Late Night Television

Let's face it, we can't escape from American content. Whether it's movies, literature or TV. And if we are learning English, why should we want to escape from it? Today we'll talk about one aspect of television that is ingrained in American culture: Late Night Shows. Hit play!

SHOW NOTES:

Transcription to this episode:

The United States of America is famous for a lot of different reasons. One of them: the media. The US is the producer of many of the big blockbuster movies,  it’s home to some of the most famous celebrities around the globe; american music bands experience great success worldwide. Its sport events, like the Super Bowl and the World Series of baseball have presence beyond the territory of America. And that’s also the case for many of the TV shows produced in this country. I guess it’s safe to say that even if you don’t happen to live in that country, you have been exposed, at least once in your life, to some of them. And that’s maybe one of the reasons why you are learning English. A lot of people say, “I want to understand my favorite TV series in English without having to read subtitles.” American television is famous. But there’s one other aspect of TV that, although is big in America, doesn’t have the same kind of exposure in other countries, and I’m talking about Late Night TV shows.

As the name suggests, this type of shows are aired late at night, usually between 11:00 PM and 2:00 AM. They’re usually aired after the late local news and because of the particular scheduling they usually follow a format that falls somewhere between a variety show and a talk show but, unlike other kind of talk shows, late nights are usually oriented towards comedy. Now, my coming across with this genre of television is actually very recent. As you probably know by now —because I talk about it very often— my life has been incidentally in contact with american content since I was very young. I have very clear recollections (that is, I remember very clearly) of such interactions. If I close my eyes I can see myself listening toAnd I love her, by the Beatles, when I was 7 or 8 years old. I remember reading the lyrics to Yellow Submarine, also by The Beatles, in one of my brother’s English textbooks. I used to read through some of my father’s English books and I would ask him, “Dad, what’s the meaning of table, what’s the meaning of teacher” and so on. When I was in middle school (I must have been 12 or 13) I used to watch TV shows, mainly on Warner Channel. Things like Friends, Third Watch and West Wing. Those things I can remember, but that was about it. We had cable television and we had an American Channel, but I was not very interested in watching that.

It was not until 3 or 4 years ago that I discovered this kind of TV shows and ever since I became a loyal follower. For me it was a new experience, but Late Night Shows go back as far as 1948, that’s almost 70 years. One of the early, the first variety shows was The Ed Sullivan Show. If you, like me, like The Beatles, you may be familiar, at least with this name, because The Ed Sullivan Show was the first TV show where the Beatles performed when they first visited the US in 1964. That show was a pioneer, (that is, one of the first shows of its kind) but it was not going to become the referent for future Late Night Television. The first version of The Tonight Show debuted in 1954 on NBC, an american television network, and this show created many modern talk show staples (staple, S-T-A-P-L-E, staple, in this context means a basic feature or element of something) so that is, the most defining characteristics of this kind of shows, and I will tell you more about them later on.

This firstTonight Show contained the majority of the elements that we can see on a Late Show today, but still, it wasn’t as popular as it could be. It was Johnny Carson who made the format popular. His show, called The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson aired for 30 years, from 1962 to 1992. When Johnny Carson retired, the show was taken over by Jay Leno and that is another basic, almost fundamental characteristic of these shows. When the host of one particular show retires or leaves the job (or is fired) another guy takes the show. They usually keep the format, but they make some changes to add their own personality, of course. So, in a way, Late Night Shows are treated as kingdoms where one host inherits the show to the next guy. Inherit, by the way, means to take or receive by succession. Think about it as a will. When a person dies, he or she states in his will who is going to receive the money, properties or possessions.

And well, this line of successors is long, but now let’s talk a little about the format of Late Night Shows. Each show is different and the format is not rigorous, but in the end, they share a lot of the same characteristics. And what are they?

—An opening monologue. The host of the show starts the show by doing a stand-up comedy segment. Here they usually talk about current events, the news, or anything that is relevant to discuss, and, since it’s comedy, they usually make jokes about all these things.

—Skits, sketches orcomedy bits. This is where the differences become really noticeable. Because of the strong competition, (right now there are more than 10 late shows in american TV) each showstrive (that is, S-T-R-I-V-E, strive, they try hard, they make efforts) to stand out, to be different, to be more creative than the others. And here I will tell you some of my favorite skits from the Late Night Shows that I watch.

The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon is particularly famous for the games he plays with his guests. They play Pictionary, Password, The Whisper Challenge, LipSync Battle, Phone Booth and my personal favorite, Box of Lies, and this is how it works. Jimmy and a guest sit across from each other. They can see each other’s face, but, only the face. They have to choose a box, from 9 available boxes and they take out whatever is inside the box. The person and the audience can see the object, but the other person, the opponent, cannot. What’s fun about that?, you wonder. Well, the objects are usually very strange things, like a rubbick cube inside jello, or a plastic giraffe wearing donuts on its neck. And then, they have to tell the other person what’s in the box. The other person has to guess if they are telling the truth or not. If the opponent gets it right, he gets a point; if it’s wrong, Jimmy gets a point, and so on. These games are funny usually because the objects are bizarre and sometimes the lies they say are even more bizarre. One of my favorites is the one where he plays with Adele. I will embed the video on the blog post for this episode in our website.

Jimmy Kimmel Live, another Late Night Show, has also some very funny skits and maybe you have seen some of them. Celebrities read Mean tweets, Youtube Challenge, Lie Witness News, Pedestrian Questions and my personal favorite, Unnecessary Censorship. Bleeping, B-L-E-E-P-I-N-G, is when you put a bleep sound, bleep, over someone’s speech, and it’s usually used on radio and television to cover bad words. Well, on this bit, they take scenes from TV shows and the news and they bleep out some parts. Why is this funny? Because the things they are bleeping are not bad words, but when they bleep them out, it makes them look like they are, so suddenly the meaning changes and you can see president Barack Obama or News anchors saying bad words, and it’s just hilarious.

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert is one of my all-time personal favorites, for many reasons. I admire Stephen Colbert since he was on the Daily Show, then The Colbert Report and now on the Late Show. He is a very funny and intelligent guy, he brings some really interesting guests and his comedy is a little bit more elaborated, more clever. He also has many skits, like Midnight Confessions, The Late Show Wheel of News, Friday Night Fights, The Road to the White House, The Furry Hat and my personal favorite, The Hungry for Power games. As the name hints, this is a parody of The Hunger Games, but political. As you know, 2016 is an election year in the US and their process begins with the primaries, where both the Republican and the democratic party have elections to choose who is going to be their final candidate. This means that, in the beginning, there are a lot of candidates, and there were more than 20. But, as time moves, some candidates decide to suspend their campaigns because they are not receiving enough votes and in this segment Colbert talks about it making references to the Hunger Games and talking about the candidates as fallen tributes, like in the movie. It is really funny because Stephen (and, of course, his team of writers) do an excellent job at making comedy out of something that, in other circumstances, would be completely boring. Even if you are not interested in politics, watching this is both funny and illustrative.

Conan O’Brien has a fantastic skit where he interacts with his Associate Producer, Jordan Schlansky. The skit does not have a structure, but it’s hilarious. Schlansky is a very peculiar man. Kind of weird, but funny weird. The way he talks, the things he says, it’s so funny. Conan is a great comic and he manages to turn every interaction with Jordan into comedy gold.

Well, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Every Late Show has their own sketches. Some of them are really good, some others not so much, but that’s at the same time understandable and good, because we have a lot of options to choose from. I will post some of my favorite sketches from other Late Shows as well, but I will not talk about them here because If I did so, this episode would be 3 hours long.

Now, the next characteristic in the Late Show typical format.

—Interviews. The host usually interviews one or two guests on every episode. There are no limitations here. They can have actors, directors, musician, writers, politicians, everyone. Sometimes they talk about their personal lives, the projects they are working on right now or, virtually anything. It’s very common that one celebrity visits a lot of different Late Shows during, for example, the same week. (I assume that’s because it’s more convenient for them.

—A musical guest or comedy act. Another feature of Late Shows is live music. They have bands or musicians who play live music. Sometimes it’s not music by live performances, such as dancing or demonstrations.

—House bands. Every Late Show has a band that plays the music during each episode. They can also be the musicians for the musical guests and play the music before and after commercial breaks. Some shows have and have had great house Bands. David Letterman’s band was led by Paul Schaffer, a very famous Canadian musician. Jimmy Fallon’s band is The Roots, a great hip-hop band from Philadelphia. The drummer on the Late Night with Seth Meyers is Patrick Carney from the Black Keys, and the list goes on.

—Announcers. Traditionally, Late Night shows begin with a guy announcing the guests of the show and introducing the host.

—Sidekicks. Well, let’s start by defining what a sidekick is. Think of Batman and Robin. Batman is the hero, right. Robin is the sidekick. The Simpsons. Krusty the Clown is the star, but Mel, that little fellow with a bone across his hair, he’s the sidekick. A sidekick is an assistant who is usually and assistant. In this case, sidekicks usually sit on the couch next to the host and they part in the jokes and the skits. Conan O’Brien has Andy. Jimmy Fallon has Higgings. Colbert has Jon Baptiste, his musician, and Jimmy Kimmel has Guillermo, his Mexican security guard, Craig Ferguson, from the Late Late Show, had a robotic skull named George.

As you can see, every Late Show host I mentioned today is a man. Call it tradition, gender inequality or sexism, but the Late Show format is dominated by men. However, on February this year, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee premiered on TBS network. Her show is quite different from the rest but she’s doing a hell of a job. Great great work. Her content is amazing. She usually addresses political issues and she does it very well. She was a correspondent for The Daily Show, another Late Show much more focused on politics and news, so, it’s obvious the tone of her show is like that. The Daily show was hosted by John Stewart and it was the platform for a lot of other comedians. Steve Carell worked there. Also Stephen Colbert, Samantha Bee and John Oliver, all of whom have now their own Late Show. John Oliver’s show is called Last Week Tonight and it airs every Sundays at 11 PM.

Late Night Shows are part of american Culture and there’s a show for everyone. If you want to take a bath of what americans are watching and talking about I really recommend you to check them out. If you don’t live in the US it’s going to be difficult to watch the entire episodes but you can always use Youtube to find some clips. I’m sure you will find one show that suits you, plus, they are a great way to practice your English listening skills.

And now, let’s have a quick word on Pronunciation, shall we?

Today we’ll talk about a very short but a very powerful thing when it comes to pronunciation, and that is, once again, liaisons. We said, in a past episode that liaison, in pronunciation, is the connection of sounds to avoid spaces. Today we’ll talk about the liaison of words that end in a vowel sound and are next to words beginning also with vowel sounds. Take for example the words to and avoid. The first word, to, T-O, ends in a vowel sound, uh, TO. The next word, avoid, A-V-O-I-D, begins with the sound ah, avoid. When this two words go together there is going to be a liaison, and it’s going to come in the form of a glide. G-L-I-D-E, glide, is a transitional sound that is either a slight (y) sound or a (w) sound, (w) (w). In our example, with the words to and avoid, a glide is going to connect these sounds, so we say, TO (w) AVOID, TO (w) AVOID, TO (w) AVOID. See? There’s this slight sound of (w) between the 2 words. Check this out. Without glide: TO-AVOID. With glide: TO(w) AVOID. The sound is more fluid, more natural, right?
But maybe you’re asking yourself, “How do I know which one to use? (y) sound or (w) sound? This will take care of itself, it’s going to be automatic —the position your lips are will dictate either (y) or (w).

Take this examples.

Go away. We say, Go(w)away. That is the natural glide, because saying Go(y)away is unnatural and we wouldn’t be able to say it like that.

Another example.

I also need the other one. What are the vowel-vowel combinations? I with also and the with other. So we say I(y)also need thee(y)other one. Try to say them with (w) glide. I(w)also need thee(w)other one. See? The decision to use (y) or (w) sounds is not yours, it’s automatic? Right? Perfect!

And now, to finish this section I will give you 4 examples more and I will leave you other 6 examples so you can play with the sounds and decide if they have a (y) or a (w) sound. Ready?

#1: Go anywhere.   We say: Go(w)anywhere. With (w) glide.
#2. You are.             We say: You(w)are.          With (w) glide
#3 He is                   We say: He(y)is                 With (y) glide
#4 I asked                We say: I(y)asked              With (y) glide.

The exercises for you are:

So - honest.
Through - our
Do - I?
To - open
She - always, and
Too - often.

PERFECT!

You will find the full transcription to this episode as well as these last examples and a place to leave your comments in our website www.freetalkingles.com/podcast/latenight

I will have the episode of Reduction of At ready, very soon, so stay tuned.

Thank you very much for listening, I hope you found this episode interesting and useful and we’ll meet again next Wednesday for a new episode. My name is Alan, and you should be keeping it simple.

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