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Late-night hosts Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien plan to return with fresh episodes on Jan. 2, ending two months of reruns care of the Hollywood writers' strike. That's good news: Democracy needs them.
According to a 2000 survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 47% of the under-30 set get information about campaigns from late-night talk shows like CBS'
"It won't be a real campaign without late-night jokes," says Darrell West, a Brown University professor and author of Air Wars, a study of television's effect on politics.
But exactly what Leno and O'Brien will be able to do or say when they return to the airwaves is unclear, as the Writers Guild has not yet weighed in on the rules. Both hosts are members of the union.
Prior to the strike, this year's White House hopefuls were collectively the butt of 695 jokes, according to a study of late-night hosts' monologues by the Center for Media and Public Affairs conducted between Jan.1 and Oct. 10. Scoring the most was Hillary Clinton, thanks to her wardrobe, demeanor and marital history. The former first lady was the subject of 186 jokes by NBC's Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien, CBS' David Letterman, and Comedy Central's Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, nearly as many as all of her Democratic opponents combined.
In his book, Lights, Camera, Campaign!, David Schultz, professor of political science at St. Paul, Minn.'s Hamline University, analyzed polls before and after candidates appeared on late-night talk shows. One telling example: Jan. 12, 2000, when Hillary Clinton, then a New York Senatorial candidate, appeared on Letterman. Prior to her appearance, she was trailing Rudy Giuliani by nine points in the polls. Following her late-night interview, which was viewed by some 11 million viewers, more than double the show's average audience, she shot up to tie her opponent.
“These shows have a profound impact because they soften politicians,” says Barbara O'Connor, director of the Institute for the Study of Politics and Media at Cal State, Sacramento, of the informal and often humanizing late-night experience. She argues one of the public’s biggest criticisms of politicians is that they don’t seem real. So when you can approach them on a humorous level, she says it personalizes them in a way that traditional news does not, without pandering.
Schultz agrees: "Appearing on late-night talk shows give us a slice of who they are," he says. "And for a lot of people, they're making decisions about candidates not purely on issues, but on credibility, on demeanor and on likability."
