10.1177/1081180X05286042
Press/Politics
Young,
Tisinger
11(3)/ Summer
Dispelling2006
Late-Night Myths
Dispelling Late-Night Myths
News Consumption among Late-Night
Comedy Viewers and the Predictors of
Exposure to Various Late-Night Shows
Dannagal G. Young and Russell M. Tisinger
This article explores two largely untested assumptions that dominate popular and
scholarly examinations of the “late-night comedy audience.” The first assumption is
that young people are tuning in to late-night comedy programs instead of the news.
The second assumption is that there is one monolithic “late-night audience.” Using
data from both the 2004 Pew Research Center Political Communications Study and
the 2004 National Annenberg Election Survey, this article provides evidence that
challenges these two assumptions, illustrating that young people are tuning in to latenight comedy in addition to—rather than in the place of—news and that the audiences of various late-night comedy programs have distinct sociodemographic and
political profiles.
Keywords: late-night; comedy; political humor; audience; news; political information
In a campaign season in which John Edwards announced his bid for the White
House on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart made the cover of Newsweek, and Leno and
Letterman jokes were rebroadcast on morning news programs, it seems that the
role of late-night comedy programming in the presidential election was indeed a
prominent one. While news outlets have begun to focus intently on this latenight political phenomenon, so too have political communication scholars. Yet
two largely untested assumptions regarding the “late-night audience” accompany much of the scholarly research. The first assumption is that young people
are tuning in to late-night comedy programs instead of the news. The second
assumption is that there is one monolithic “late-night audience.” Using data from
Press/Politics 11(3):113-134
DOI: 10.1177/1081180X05286042
© 2006 by the President and the Fellows of Harvard College
113
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Press/Politics 11(3) Summer 2006
both the 2004 Pew Research Center Political Communications Study and the
2004 National Annenberg Election Survey (NAES), this article provides an
empirical test of these two assumptions. With a better understanding of the
characteristics of the various late-night comedy audiences and of the relationship
between consumption of late-night comedy and news, we can better understand
the role of late-night comedy programs in the campaign information
environment.
Late-Night Comedy: Youth’s Substitute for News?
In February 2000, the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press published an important and widely cited report exploring various sources of Americans’ political information during the campaign (Pew Research Center 2000).
Among other findings, the results indicated that (1) young people reported
receiving campaign information from traditional news sources (newspapers and
national news) less than any other age group, (2) young people and people low in
political knowledge reported receiving campaign information from late-night
comedy programs at a much higher rate than older or more knowledgeable
Americans and (3) the rate of reported learning from late-night programs was
slightly higher than in previous years. The most recent Pew report on the subject
of the late-night audience suggested that the trend continued into the 2004 election season. The results indicated that 21 percent of young people (ages eighteen
to twenty-nine) reported learning something about the presidential campaign
regularly from comedy shows like The Daily Show or Saturday Night Live, and 13
percent reported regular learning from late-night shows like those hosted by
Leno and Letterman.
After the Pew Center’s report was issued in 2000, stories in the news and the
popular press began to describe late-night comedy as the new source of political
information for today’s youth. A lengthy piece in Business Week citing findings
from the Pew report described a young electorate turning to Letterman, Leno,
and Jon Stewart for their news:
In recent years,as broadcast-TV networks have reduced their coverage of politics,
voters are getting more and more information about would be presidents from
the perennially popular late-night talk shows. This means TV comics like Letterman, NBC’s Jay Leno, HBO’s Dennis Miller, and ABC’s Bill Maher have emerged
as politically influential voices—particularly among independent-minded younger voters.1
These kinds of descriptions of the privileged role held by late-night comedy
programs continued into the 2004 election, fueled in part by Pew’s most recent
report on trends in media consumption (Pew Research Center 2004). The
report indicated aggregate shifts in young people’s self-reported sources of
Young, Tisinger / Dispelling Late-Night Myths
115
campaign information—most notably decreases in their citing of network news
and newspapers and increases in their citing of comedy shows. The overview
concluded with the contention that
young people, by far the hardest to reach segment of the political news audience,
are abandoning mainstream sources of election news and increasingly citing alternative outlets, including comedy shows such as The Daily Show and Saturday
Night Live, as their source for election news.2
The assertion that young people are deserting traditional news and watching
comedy shows instead has begun to dominate the frame used by reporters covering the late-night phenomenon. “The punch line here is that voters—particularly young ones—get their political educations from TV comedians,” stated a
Los Angeles Times journalist.3 “What’s worrisome is the notion that comedy has
begun to replace the news as opposed to leavening it,”4 suggested Kluger in USA
Today. In an interview with Jon Stewart on ABC’s Nightline, host Ted Koppel
expressed his concern over the apparent trend, stating, “A lot of television viewers, more, quite frankly, than I’m comfortable with, get their news from the
comedy channel on a program called The Daily Show.” 5
To Daily Show host Jon Stewart, the idea that young people are tuning in to his
program to actually get the news is improbable. Stewart argues that it would be
impossible for viewers to learn the news from his program:
The truth is I know [most kids] are not [getting their news from us] because you
can’t—because we just don’t do it. There’s not enough news to get. . . . If [kids]
came to our show without knowledge, it wouldn’t make any sense to them.6
Ben Karlin, The Daily Show’s other executive producer, conceded, “In a small
way, yes, people do pick up a nugget of information—in the same way that I’ll
read four or five newspapers a day and have CNN on and I won’t necessarily
know where I got a certain piece of information from.”7
The obvious concern lurking in this debate is that if young people are indeed
deserting news in favor of late-night comedy shows, they will not be receiving
sufficient substantive information to make informed decisions about politics.
There is some evidence that if soft news programs—like talk shows, news magazines, or late-night comedy programs—enhance viewers’ knowledge at all, it
may be knowledge of the scandalous or “entertainment”-oriented plot points of
news stories (Prior 2003). If this is true, soft news programs’ usefulness in promoting an informed electorate is dubious. However, other research suggests that
soft news programs may foster political attention among people who do not routinely tune into traditional news programs. Baum (2003, 2005) argues that soft
news can “piggyback” political information on top of entertainment programming and benefit citizens by providing political information to those viewers
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who are least engaged in politics. For these viewers, exposure to soft news will
likely increase attentiveness to certain issues (such as foreign crises), contributing to an equalizing effect over time in which political engagement is no longer as
strongly correlated with attentiveness to high-profile political stories.
One of the mechanisms through which this equalizing effect will occur, posits
Baum (2005), is through soft news outlets serving as gateways to more traditional news use. His data support a model in which exposure to soft news programming leads to subsequent increases in exposure to hard news programming. In this model, entertainment-oriented soft news coverage of a political
issue provides a simplified context for the less politically engaged viewer to
understand the issue or topic. Obviously, Baum’s “gateway” hypothesis contradicts the assumption that young people are deserting traditional news programs
in favor of late-night comedy programs (one form of soft news). Assuming that
young people are less engaged in and knowledgeable about politics than older
people (Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996), Baum’s model would posit that exposure to late-night comedy programs and the subsequent information obtained
from these shows ought to positively affect news consumption among young
people.
Baum’s (2005) contention also contradicts Jon Stewart’s argument that people cannot learn about politics from his program but rather come to his show
already aware of political news of the day. We would argue that both processes
are at work. Late-night comedy viewing likely increases consumption of other
news forms among young unengaged viewers. On the other hand, in the context
of the more political-oriented comedy shows like The Daily Show with Jon Stewart or perhaps Real Time with Bill Maher,viewers of these shows are likely already
informed about the issues of the day. Recent research using time-series data has
illustrated that while viewers of The Daily Show are more politically knowledgeable than the average American or even than viewers of national network news,it
is unlikely that they are acquiring this political information from the show itself
(Young et al. forthcoming). Looking specifically at knowledge of which candidate supported allowing workers to invest some Social Security contributions in
the stock market,viewers of The Daily Show were far more likely to know that fact
earlier in the campaign than others, and viewing the program did not differentially increase knowledge of this piece of campaign information.
While it is certainly true that the Pew data suggest that young people in the
aggregate are (1) reporting receiving campaign information from network news
less than in the past, (2) reporting receiving campaign information from comedy
shows more than in the past, and (3) reporting learning from late-night comedy
more than older people, the aggregate data do not necessarily tell us that individual young people are tuning out news and tuning in late-night programs instead.
With regard to late-night comedy specifically,we suspect that viewing serves as a
gateway to increased news consumption, much as Baum (2005) suggests. But we
Young, Tisinger / Dispelling Late-Night Myths
117
also hypothesize that some news awareness is necessary to appreciate the jokes in
late-night comedy monologues. Therefore, there ought to be a positive association between consumption of late-night comedy programming and consumption of traditional news. If this hypothesis is confirmed in the data, then the
notion that individual young people are turning off the news in favor of late-night
comedy is a problematic one. The first section of this analysis tests the following
two hypotheses using two separate data sets: the 2004 NAES and the 2004 Pew
Research Center Political Communications Study.
Hypothesis 1a: Young people who watch late-night comedy programming are more
likely to consume traditional news programming than young people who do not
watch late-night comedy shows.
Hypothesis 1b: Young people who report learning from late-night comedy are more
likely to also report learning from more traditional news sources than young people who do not cite late-night comedy as an information source.
Late-Night Comedy: A Monolithic Audience?
Recent scholarship on the effects of late-night comedy includes assessing its
impact on viewers’ ratings of candidate traits (Young 2004), how it primes considerations when judging public officials (Moy et al. forthcoming), and how it
may impact political participation (Moy et al. 2005). Much of this recent work
on late-night comedy effects has either combined exposure to comedy talk
shows with more serious formats like Donahue when examining effects
(McLeod et al. 1996; Moy and Pfau 2000) or has examined the effects of exposure to late-night comedy in general (Moy et al. 2005, forthcoming; Pfau et al.
2001; Young 2004). While analyses that capture exposure to late-night comedy
in general are preferable to those that collapse late-night comedy with other
more serious talk shows when measuring exposure, there might be important
differences in audiences and content between specific late-night comedy
programs.
The late-night jokes made in the typical monologues of Jay Leno and David
Letterman employ the standard structure of incongruity (Koestler 1964; Suls
1972) to invite listeners to solve their punch lines. Rooted in information,
events, and perceptions with which the audience is assumed to be familiar, these
jokes require viewers to tap into this commonly held information to “get” the
joke.Most often,the political jokes that appear in Leno’s and Letterman’s monologues are based on simple caricatures of the candidates and are quite repetitive
in theme and consistent across the two programs (Niven et al. 2003; Young
2004).
The Daily Show, on the other hand, is rooted in parody and satire. It lampoons
the typical news program with headlines, interviews, and field correspondents.
In his headlines, Stewart highlights inconsistencies in political rhetoric and
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satirizes the norms governing the typical news media through ironic inversions
of the day’s news. Rather than simple punch line–oriented jokes like those of
Leno and Letterman, The Daily Show often employs the tool of irony to create its
humor, revealing the gap “between what is and ought to be” (Bergson 1956:
127). Take, for instance, this Daily Show clip from October 7, 2004:
The official CIA report has come out . . . with a definitive answer on the weapons
of mass destructions project in Iraq and it turns out . . . uhh not so much. Apparently there were no weapons of mass destructions in Iraq. Both the president and
vice president said that [the report] clearly justified the invasion of Iraq. So, some
people look at a glass and see it half full—and others people look at a glass and
say . . . it’s a dragon.8
This kind of segment structure is typical of The Daily Show’s format and provides a clear illustration of Bergson’s (1956) notion of ironic inversion, particularly with the contrast between the “definitive answer on weapons of mass
destruction” and the “not so much.” As literary scholar Griffin (1994: 36) argues,
“The business of the satirist is to insist on the sharp differences between vice and
virtue, between good and bad, between what man is, and what he ought to be.”
Rather than simply highlighting caricatured attributes of the candidates, The
Daily Show’s segments take aim at the dynamics of politics, political rhetoric, and
the institutions that govern (see Baym 2005). It follows that The Daily Show’s
audience should not only be more politically knowledgeable than Leno or Letterman viewers but also should be more interested in politics and more likely to
be tuned into other forms of news.
Viewers of The Daily Show have been found to be significantly more knowledgeable about the issue positions of political candidates than the viewers of
Leno or Letterman (NAES 2004), and knowledge of these facts appears to precede—not follow—exposure to The Daily Show (Young et al. forthcoming). But
what specific kinds of political information are Daily Show viewers using compared to other late-night viewers? Given the extent to which The Daily Show satirizes the sensationalist practices typically associated with local news programming (see Downie and Kayser 2002), one might assume that The Daily Show
viewers share this disdain and reject local news. But if The Daily Show viewers are
not becoming knowledgeable from the show, then where are these viewers
receiving a bulk of their information—network news, newspapers, cable news,
political talk radio, online news, or somewhere else?
In addition to differences in political sophistication and news use among their
audiences, there are clear ideological differences in the content of these programs that are likely reflected in their viewership as well. Stewart is not shy
about his lack of support for the Bush administration, or its policies on national
Young, Tisinger / Dispelling Late-Night Myths
119
security or the War in Iraq, and these criticisms appear in Daily Show headlines
(NAES 2004). Jay Leno was tied to the Schwarzenegger campaign, as the Republican actor-turned-governor announced his candidacy on the host’s couch and
Leno subsequently appeared with him at campaign events. Meanwhile, during
the summer months before the election, almost one-quarter of Letterman’s
jokes about John Kerry focused on his imminent loss in November, compared to
12 percent of Leno’s jokes and none of Stewart’s (NAES 2004). While it would
seem obvious that The Daily Show’s viewers ought to be more liberal and Democratic than viewers of Leno and Letterman,how do Leno’s and Letterman’s audiences compare to one another in terms of political ideology and partisanship?
The following question is examined in the context of data from the Pew
Research Center Political Communication Survey and the NAES. The goal here
is to help understand what meaningful differences exist between the audiences
of these programs that will help us better discuss individual late-night audience(s) rather than one late-night audience.
Research Question 1: To what extent do the audiences of Jay Leno, David Letterman,
and Jon Stewart differ in terms of their news use, following of politics, partisanship, and political ideology?
Data
These analyses were completed with two data sets. The first is the NAES,
which includes data from telephone interviews from individuals interviewed
from October 7, 2003, until after Election Day 2004. For these analyses, only
the period during the presidential primary season was used, including interviews conducted between December 1, 2003, and March 31, 2004 (N =
20,484). The NAES is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center. The
response rate for the period used in these analyses is 22 to 25 percent according
to the standards of the American Association for Public Opinion Research. The
second data set was the 2004 Pew Research Center Political Communications
Study conducted from December 19, 2003, through January 4, 2004 (N =
1,506).
Measures
Exposure to late-night programming (NAES). Respondents were asked, “How
many days in the past week did you watch late-night comedy programs like The
Late Show with David Letterman, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno or The Daily
Show with Jon Stewart?” (M = 0.85, SD = 1.68). Approximately 72 percent of all
respondents reported not having viewed any late-night comedy in the past week.
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Most viewed late-night program (NAES). Respondents who said they had watched
at least one day of late-night comedy programming in the past week were asked,
“Which of the following late-night comedy programs do you watch most often?”
The response options were The Late Show with David Letterman,The Tonight Show
with Jay Leno, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Respondents could also volunteer other programs that were recorded. Of the respondents, 10.8 percent
had watched late-night comedy in the past week and reported watching Letterman most often, 12.1 percent had watched late-night and watched Leno most
often, and 3.4 percent had watched late-night and watched The Daily Show most
often.
Self-reported learning from late-night and comedy programs (Pew). “How often, if
ever, do you learn something about the presidential campaign or the candidates
from (a) Late night TV shows such as David Letterman and Jay Leno (b) Comedy
shows such as Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show?” Response options are regularly (4), sometimes (3), hardly ever (2), or never (1). Fifty percent of respondents
reported never learning from late-night, while 59.7 percent reported never
learning from comedy shows. About 8 percent of respondents reported regularly learning from late-night shows and comedy shows.
Control variables in the models are included in the appendix.
Analytical Procedure and Results
To test Hypothesis 1a concerning the rates of traditional news use among
young consumers of late-night comedy programs, several sets of analyses were
run. First, to understand the general pattern of news consumption among young
late-night consumers, cross-tabulations of various forms of news exposure by
late-night comedy exposure were run using NAES data limited to respondents
eighteen to twenty-nine years old. Results are presented in Table 1.
Table 1 shows that young heavy late-night comedy watchers tend to be heavier
consumers of all types of news information—network news broadcasts, cable
news, local news, National Public Radio, and political talk radio. For example,
young people who watch late-night comedy often (defined here as at least four
days a week) are more likely to tune into national news compared to people who
never watch late-night comedy. More than half of young heavy late-night viewers
(62.1 percent) say they watch network news often (four or more days a week).
Compare that percentage to young people who do not watch late-night comedy.
Only 15.2 percent of those people say they tune to national news often. This pattern even holds when looking at nontelevision news like National Public Radio
and other political talk radio. Among those young people who do not watch latenight comedy at all, rates of consumption of radio news are lower than among
those who do.
Young, Tisinger / Dispelling Late-Night Myths
121
Table 1
Rates of traditional political information consumption among young people with different levels
of exposure to late-night comedy programming among eighteen- to twenty-nine-year-olds only
Late-Night Exposure in Past Week
One to
Three Days
Four or
More Days
53.2
31.2
15.2
1,936
15.4
32.4
52.0
823
16.5
21.4
62.1
425
46.7
32.6
20.7
1,936
33.8
34.5
31.7
823
25.2
34.8
40.0
425
34.9
39.5
25.6
1,936
27.7
40.6
31.7
823
24.2
30.6
45.2
425
30.6
30.9
38.3
1,936
15.4
32.4
52.0
823
16.5
21.4
62.1
425
77.3
11.0
11.3
1,936
75.1
11.7
13.0
823
70.8
14.8
14.1
425
71.1
15.3
13.4
1,936
65.1
19.8
14.9
823
61.6
18.1
20.2
425
None
National news (natnews)
None (%)
One to three days (%)
Four or more days (%)
N
Cable news (cabnews)
None (%)
One to three days (%)
Four or more days (%)
N
Newspaper reading (papnews)
None (%)
One to three days (%)
Four or more days (%)
N
Local news (locnews)
None (%)
One to three days (%)
Four or more days (%)
N
National Public Radio (nprnews)
None (%)
One to three days (%)
Four or more days (%)
N
Political talk radio (ptradio)
None (%)
One to three days (%)
Four or more days (%)
N
Source: National Annenberg Election Survey (2004), December through March.
Second, to test Hypothesis 1b, cross-tabulations of self-reported learning
from various news sources by learning from late-night and comedy programs
were run among young people (eighteen to thirty-four years old—the age range
has been expanded due to the smaller data set) using Pew data. Results are presented in Table 2.
Turning our attention to reported learning from various news sources by
reported learning from late-night programs like Leno and Letterman, we
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Table 2
Rates of self-reported learning from traditional news sources among those reporting receiving
information from late-night and comedy programs among eighteen- to thirty-four-year-olds
only
How Often Do You Learn Something about
the Presidential Campaign or Candidates from
Late-Night Programs
Like Leno or Letterman
Learn something from
Never or
Hardly Ever
Sometimes or
Regularly
Comedy Programs Like Saturday
Night Live or The Daily Show
Never or
Hardly Ever
Sometimes or
Regularly
National news
Never or hardly ever (%)
Sometimes or regularly (%)
N
Cable news
Never or hardly ever (%)
Sometimes or regularly (%)
N
Local news
Never or hardly ever (%)
Sometimes or regularly (%)
N
National Public Radio
Never or hardly ever (%)
Sometimes or regularly (%)
N
Political talk radio
Never or hardly ever (%)
Sometimes or regularly (%)
N
Internet
Never or hardly ever (%)
Sometimes or regularly (%)
N
44.4
55.6
216
23.6
76.4
165
39.6
60.4
202
30.9
69.1
175
27.5
72.5
218
15.8
84.2
165
28.9
71.1
204
15.3
84.7
176
30.9
69.1
123
24.7
75.3
85
24.5
75.5
110
34.4
65.6
90
63.9
36.1
216
59.3
40.7
162
62.1
37.9
203
60.9
39.1
174
57.9
42.1
95
43.9
56.1
82
57.3
42.7
96
44.7
55.3
85
49.8
50.2
217
48.2
51.8
166
52.2
47.8
205
44.3
55.7
174
Source: Pew Research Center for the People and the Press (2004).
witness a trend similar to that in Table 1. People who report learning from latenight comedy are more likely to report also learning from traditional news outlets. This relationship is most pronounced with national network news consumption. Only 55.6 percent of people who report “never” or “hardly ever”
learning from late-night report “sometimes” or “regularly” learning from
national news. This rate increases to 76.4 percent among those who report
“sometimes” or “regularly” learning from late-night shows. The weakest relationship exists with citing of the Internet as a source of campaign information.
Here about 50 percent of young people cite learning from the Internet regardless of learning from late-night.In the case of television and radio news,however,
Young, Tisinger / Dispelling Late-Night Myths
123
the same people who cite late-night shows as a source of information are also citing traditional news outlets. So not only does mere exposure to late-night programming positively correlate with exposure to traditional news, but even perceived learning from late-night and news are positively correlated.
The latter columns in Table 2 illustrate the correlates of perceived learning
from comedy shows like The Daily Show and Saturday Night Live. Most of the traditional forms of news do perform as expected.However,citing local news and as a
source of campaign information is slightly less common among those who “sometimes” or “regularly” learn from comedy shows than among those who “never” or
“hardly ever” learn from comedy shows (65.6 versus 75.5 percent). Among
those relationships that support Hypothesis 1b, we find the relationship is strongest with cable news. Among people who report “never” or “hardly ever” learning from comedy shows, 71.1 percent report “sometimes” or “regularly” learning from cable news.This rate increases to 84.7 percent among those who report
“sometimes” or “regularly” learning from comedy shows.
To control for third variables associated with both news consumption and
late-night comedy viewing, a multivariate ordinary least squares (OLS) linear
regression model was run with NAES data predicting late-night comedy exposure among young people (eighteen to twenty-nine) (N = 1,694). The model
included demographic and political characteristics as well as exposure to various
forms of traditional political information to predict the number of days in the
past week young people reported watching late-night comedy programming.
Results are shown in Table 3.
The coefficients in Table 3 indicate that late-night viewing was associated with
being younger, male, and liberal. The strongest predictor in the model is gender
such that men watch .25 days’ more late-night programming per week. In addition, late-night viewing was associated with exposure to several forms of more
traditional political information—most notably local news and cable news viewing but also significantly with national network news and newspaper reading.
Interpreting the cable news coefficient, for example, for each day of exposure to
cable news, exposure to late-night comedy shows increases .07 days. Given the
Bs of each of these predictors and the small R-squared of the model (.09), traditional news use is not a substantively strong determinant of late-night comedy
viewing. Yet in each case, traditional news use is a positive correlate of late-night
viewing, suggesting that all else being equal, people who are watching late-night
comedy are watching more—not less—news.
A second multivariate analysis was run with the Pew data predicting selfreported learning from both late-night talk shows and comedy programming.
These analyses are limited to young people eighteen to thirty-four years old (the
age range had to be expanded due to the smaller sample size in the data set). As
predictors, the models included demographic and political characteristics as
well as self-reported learning from various forms of traditional political
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Table 3
Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression model predicting exposure to late-night comedy programming among eighteen- to twenty-nine-year-olds
Predicting Late-Night
Comedy Exposure
B (SE)
Constant
Age
Male
Education
Republican
Democrat
Political ideology (1 = very conservative, 5 = very liberal)
Following politics (4-point scale)
Civics knowledge (number correct out of 5)
Media use in past week (number of days)
National news
Cable news
Newspaper reading
Local news
National Public Radio
Political talk radio
1.50****
(0.43)
–.07****
(.02)
.25***
(.10)
.00
(.03)
–.07
(.13)
–.17
(.11)
.10**
(.05)
.07
(.06)
.06
(.04)
.08***
(.03)
.07****
(.02)
.04**
(.02)
.09****
(.02)
.01
(.03)
.03
(.02)
Beta
–.13
.07
.00
–.02
–.04
.05
.04
.05
.09
.10
.06
.13
.01
.04
N = 1,488
R2 = .09
Source: National Annenberg Election Survey (2004).
**p < .05. ***p < .01. ****p < .001.
information. Obviously, the dependent variables in these models are not strictly
interval. Therefore, the coefficients should not be used as exact estimates of the
impact of each predictor on the learning from these sources but rather to understand general patterns of association. Results are shown in Table 4.
Young, Tisinger / Dispelling Late-Night Myths
125
Table 4
Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression model predicting self-reported learning from late-night
programming and comedy programming among eighteen- to thirty-four-year-olds
Predicting Self-Reported Learning from
Late-Night Programs
Like Leno and Letterman
Constant
Age
Male
Education
Republican
Democrat
Political ideology
(1 = very conservative,
5 = very liberal)
Following news about
Democratic nomination
(4-point scale)
Self-reported learning from
National news
Cable news
National Public Radio
Political talk radio
Internet
N
R-squared
Comedy Programs Like Saturday
Night Live and The Daily Show
B (SE)
Beta
B (SE)
2.82 (0.79)
–.05 (.02)
.09 (.17)
–.04 (.05)
–.09 (.20)
.11 (.21)
.06 (.08)
—****
–.23***
.04
–.07
–.04
–.05
.06
3.28 (0.86)
–.07 (.02)
.19 (.18)
–.08 (.05)
–.16 (.22)
–.12 (.23)
.11 (.09)
.05
–.08 (.11)
–.04
.14
.13
–.06
.22
.16
.09
.13
–.05
.23**
.16*
.06 (.10)
.25
.09
–.10
.13
–.06
(.08)
(.09)
(.08)
(.08)
(.08)
154
.13
.26***
.08
–.10
.13
–.07
Beta
(.09)
(.10)
(.09)
(.09)
(.08)
—****
–.27****
.09
–.17
–.11
–.04
.12
155
.17
Source: Pew Research Center for the People and the Press (2004).
Note:Because of survey splits, local news had to be excluded from these analyses to have enough
sample to run the models.
*p < .10. **p < .05. ***p < .01. ****p < .001.
The strongest predictor of self-reported learning from late-night shows like
Leno and Letterman is learning from national network news. Here, consistent
with Hypothesis 1b, learning from late-night is positively associated with learning from national news. The next strongest predictor is age such that young people are more likely to cite it as a source. This is a notable finding given that the
sample has already been restricted to only those people eighteen to thirty-four
years old. The strongest predictor of learning from comedy shows like The Daily
Show and Saturday Night Live is age, which appears to exert a slightly stronger
influence on learning from comedy shows than it does on learning from latenight (beta = –.27 versus –.23). Another positive predictor of learning from
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Press/Politics 11(3) Summer 2006
late-night is learning from political talk radio. Learning from the Internet is only
marginally significant. Unlike the late-night comedy model, national network
news is not a significant predictor. These results suggest that learning from
shows like Leno and Letterman and from comedy shows like The Daily Show and
Saturday Night Live is more common among young people who are also reporting
learning from other news sources. In the case of Leno and Letterman, this main
source is national news, and in the case of The Daily Show and Saturday Night Live,
these sources are political talk radio and the Internet.
Logistic regressions were then run with NAES data (filtered to include only
eighteen- to twenty-nine-year-olds) to examine Research Question 1 regarding
the nature of the various late-night comedy show audiences. The results in Table
4 already suggest that the Leno and Letterman audiences likely differ from the
The Daily Show and Saturday Night Live audiences in terms of what other news
sources they are using. The logistic regressions predict the probability of being a
late-night comedy viewer who prefers each individual late-night program
(nonviewers coded 0). By including the various constructs as simultaneous predictors, we can see the independent effects of each variable on program preference. Three logistic regressions were run predicting preference for Leno, Letterman, and Stewart. Results are shown in Table 5.
According to the models, there do appear to be three distinct audiences of
Leno, Letterman, and Stewart. The audience of The Daily Show is more likely to
be male, younger, liberal and to follow politics more than others. Specifically,
each year increase in age reduces the probability of preferring The Daily Show by
10 percent (recall these analyses are limited to only those eighteen to twentynine years old). In addition, men are twice as likely as women to report watching
late-night and preferring The Daily Show. Political ideology is also a strong component of Daily Show preference such that moving one step in the liberal direction on the 5-point scale increases Daily Show preference by 32 percent. Following politics is positively associated with a Daily Show preference such that people
who report following public affairs most of the time are 50 percent more likely
to prefer The Daily Show than those who say “some of the time” and twice as likely
as those reporting “only now and then.” Civics knowledge was a positive predictor of Daily Show preference such that each question answered correctly on the
five-item civics scale increased one’s likelihood of watching The Daily Show by 20
percent. In terms of other news sources, cable news use is significantly related to
Daily Show preference such that each day of cable news viewing increases the
odds of Daily Show preference by 10 percent.
The Leno and Letterman audiences appear to have quite similar predictors in
these models. Being younger and watching local news increased one’s odds of
watching both Leno and Letterman. With each year increase in age, one’s likelihood of watching late-night and preferring Leno decreases 7 percent and one’s
likelihood of citing Letterman decreases 6 percent. The only news source
Young, Tisinger / Dispelling Late-Night Myths
127
Table 5
Logistic regression results predicting preference for Leno,Letterman,and Stewart among young
people (eighteen to twenty-nine)
Watching Leno Watching Letterman
Most Often
Most Often
B (SE)
Constant
Age
Male
Education
Republican
Democrat
Political ideology
Following politics
Civics knowledge
National news
Cable news
Newspaper reading
Local news
National Public Radio
Political talk radio
Nagelkerke R2
N
–1.20*
(0.66)
–.07***
(.02)
–.01
(.15)
.04
(.04)
.07
(.19)
.04
(.18)
–.09
(.08)
.03
(.09)
.01
(.06)
–.03
(.04)
.00
(.03)
.04
(.03)
.19****
(.03)
–.05
(.04)
.02
(.04)
Exp(B)
B (SE)
Exp(B)
0.30 –2.56****
(0.73)
0.93 –.06**
(.03)
0.99
.23
(.17)
1.04
.09**
(.04)
1.08
.29
(.21)
1.04 –.01
(.20)
0.92 –.02
(.09)
1.03 –.11
(.10)
1.01
.05
(.06)
0.98
.07*
(.04)
1.00
.06*
(.03)
1.04
.01
(.03)
1.21
.11***
(.04)
0.95 –.01
(.04)
1.02 –.04
(.04)
.07
1,477
.05
1,477
Watching Stewart
Most Often
B (SE)
Exp(B)
0.08 –3.65****
(0.91)
0.94 –.10***
(.03)
1.26
.69****
(.22)
1.09
.06
(.06)
1.34 –.15
(.27)
0.99 –.21
(.24)
0.98
.28**
(.11)
0.89
.41***
(.13)
1.05
.17**
(.08)
1.07
.00
(.05)
1.07
.09**
(.04)
1.01
.06
(.04)
1.12 –.04
(.05)
0.99
.06
(.05)
0.97 –.01
(.05)
0.03
0.90
1.99
1.07
0.86
0.81
1.32
1.50
1.19
1.00
1.10
1.06
0.96
1.06
0.99
.14
1,477
Source: National Annenberg Election Survey (2004).
*p < .10. **p < .05. ***p < .01. ****p < .001.
significantly associated with either Leno or Letterman viewing is local news such
that each day of local news viewing increases Leno preference by 21 percent and
Letterman preference by 12 percent.
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Press/Politics 11(3) Summer 2006
Unlike viewing Leno, viewing Letterman was significantly associated with
education such that each year of education is followed by a 9 percent increase in
the likelihood of watching Letterman.
Perhaps the most telling details in Table 5 concern the model-fit statistics.
While the R-squareds in all three of the models are small, the R-squared for Daily
Show preference is somewhat larger (.14) than Leno or Letterman (.07 and .05,
respectively). This suggests that the constructs included in these models—most
notably political ideology, following politics, civics knowledge, and consumption of cable news—do a far better job predicting preference for The Daily Show
than they do predicting Leno or Letterman preference.
Discussion
The results from Hypotheses 1a and 1b suggest that, contrary to popular wisdom, young people are not watching late-night comedy as their exclusive source
of news or instead of traditional news. Rather, they are watching both. In fact,
watching late-night comedy is positively and significantly correlated with watching almost all forms of traditional news examined here, even when controlling
for other variables. In addition, young people who report learning from latenight comedy shows are significantly more likely to also report learning from
other news programs—not less. Given the small sample size available to test the
model for young people with the Pew data, it is surprising that there was enough
statistical power to locate any significant relationships, and yet the correlations
between learning from late-night and national news and between learning from
comedy shows and talk radio were strong enough to show up in the models.
So while Pew’s report is accurate in suggesting an aggregate level trend in
which young people are receiving less campaign information from network
news and more from comedy programs than they were in the past, individual
young people who are watching late-night comedy are still more likely than
nonviewers of late-night to consume other forms of traditional news. It must be
noted, however, that the percentage of young people who report frequently
watching or learning from traditional news is not huge, and the correlation
between comedy viewing and news viewing is certainly not one-to-one. For
example, in the NAES data, about 31 percent of people eighteen to twenty-nine
reported watching national news four or more days per week. Of those young
heavy national news consumers, 27 percent (about 8 percent of the entire eighteen to twenty-nine sample) also reported watching late-night comedy four or
more days per week.
These findings are consistent with the notion that soft news may serve as a
“gateway” to consumption of more traditional news outlets, as Baum (2005) has
suggested. At least in the case of late-night comedy, those who watch more of it
also tend to consume more news from traditional news outlets, including local
Young, Tisinger / Dispelling Late-Night Myths
129
news, cable news, national network news, and newspapers. This relationship
holds when controlling for other variables. It is important to note, however, that
our findings apply only to late-night comedy and not necessarily other types of
soft news program formats like Entertainment Tonight, for example.
One limitation of this finding is that there is no way to control for general
media use, which may explain the strong correlations between news consumption and late-night viewing. People who watch a lot of television in general are
going to report higher levels of exposure to all forms of television programs,
hence confounding the relationship between news viewing and late-night viewing. However, the consistently significant positive relationship between latenight viewing and consumption of public affairs information at least suggests that
that late-night viewers are not less likely to be watching news programs.
The forms of traditional news that late-night viewers are consuming vary
depending upon the late-night audience—which speaks to Research Question
1. While Letterman and Leno viewers are more likely to be watching local news
than other late-night viewers, Daily Show viewers are not. Instead, after controlling for political and demographic variables, Daily Show viewers are more likely
to be watching cable news and listening to National Public Radio. In sum,
whether they are watching network news,local news,cable news,or news radio,
Leno,Letterman, and Stewart viewers do not appear to be relying solely on their
preferred late-night program for their daily dose of news.
Moving to Research Question 1 regarding the characteristics of the various
late-night audiences, our results did indeed challenge the popular notion of the
“late-night audience” as one monolithic group of people. Viewers of all three
programs are younger than people not watching late-night, but there the similarities stop.People who prefer Jon Stewart are more likely to be male,following
politics,more politically knowledgeable,and tuning in to cable news than people
not watching the show. Leno and Letterman viewers are more likely to be tuning
in to local news than nonviewers but do not demonstrate the political sophistication, interest, or ideological leaning of The Daily Show’s audience. Meanwhile,
Letterman viewers appear to be slightly more educated than nonviewers.
Interestingly, it seems that The Daily Show performs slightly differently in
these models than do the other programs. Since these models were largely made
up of constructs historically associated with more traditional political behaviors,
it may be that the act of viewing The Daily Show follows a pattern more akin to traditional political information consumption than to consumption of purely
entertainment-oriented media. In other words, while Leno and Letterman may
be predominantly entertainment programs that include political elements, The
Daily Show should be considered—in the spirit of Monty Python—something
completely different: a program designed to entertain but that functions
predominantly as a political program.
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Press/Politics 11(3) Summer 2006
It is interesting to note that while journalists have focused attention on The
Daily Show, some of them display concern over such programming that is political but that does not conform to the norms of traditional news. ABC News’s
Nightline host Ted Koppel may have been speaking for all of his network news
colleagues when he voiced his “discomfort” with the possibility that young people were turning to The Daily Show for news, a finding that is challenged by the
data presented here. Bill O’Reilly said he considered it “really frightening” that
The Daily Show might play a role in the election campaign.9 When Stewart
appeared on CNN’s Crossfire,10 issuing a serious critique of the program and its
hosts, Tucker Carlson chided Stewart for not being funny and simultaneously
critiqued Stewart for not being more challenging in his August 24, 2004, interview with John Kerry on The Daily Show. It seems that mainstream news media
are continuing to struggle in their attempt to categorize Jon Stewart in keeping
with the strict divide between legitimate and illegitimate political information.
What we may be witnessing is evidence for a trend that Delli Carpini and Williams (2004) described in which individuals use diverse forms of content to create
political understanding, regardless of whether that content is on the NBC Nightly
News or a late-night comedy program. And while some news producers may be
uncomfortable with the notion that shows like The Daily Show might play an
important role,perhaps their growing relevance speaks to a larger trend in information environment.The Daily Show is a form of political discourse that contrasts
what “is” and what “ought to be” (Bergson 1956: 27). It “weeps, scolds, and ridicules, generally with one major end in view: to plead with man for a return to his
moral senses” (Bloom and Bloom 1979: 38). Perhaps this “weeping, scolding,
and ridiculing” is filling a void that news alone simply cannot—and this is where
we political communication scholars ought to turn our attention next.
Appendix
Other Variables Included in the Models
National Annenberg Election Survey (2004)
Exposure to more traditional news programs. Respondents were asked how many days in the
past week they had done each of the following:
• watched the national network news on TV—by national network news, I mean
Peter Jennings on ABC, Dan Rather on CBS, Tom Brokaw on NBC, and Jim
Lehrer NewsHour on PBS
• watched a 24-hour cable news channel, such as CNN, Fox News Channel or
MSNBC
• watched local TV news—for example, Eyewitness News or Action News
• read a daily newspaper
• listened to NPR also known as National Public Radio
Young, Tisinger / Dispelling Late-Night Myths
•
131
listened to radio shows that invite listeners to call in to discuss current events,
public issues, or politics (other than NPR)
Civics knowledge. Civics knowledge (based on Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996) was calculated as the total number correct of five items concerning politics and government. Subjects received a 1 for each correct answer and a 0 for each incorrect answer, don’t know,
or refusal. A scale was constructed using the total number correct of these five items
(Cronbach’s alpha = .68) Subjects were asked the following:
•
•
Do you happen to know what job or political office is now held by Dick Cheney?
Whose responsibility is it to determine if a law is constitutional or not? Is it the
president, the Congress, or the Supreme Court?
• How much of a majority is required for the U.S. Senate and House to override a
presidential veto?
• Do you happen to know which party has the most members in the House of Representatives in Washington?
• Which one of the parties would you say is more conservative on the national
level?
Party identification. Respondents were asked, “Generally speaking, do you usually think
of yourself as a Republican, a Democrat, an Independent, or something else?” If Republican or Democrat, respondent was asked, “Do you consider yourself a strong or not a
very strong [Republican/Democrat]?” Those who replied with something other than
Republican or Democrat were asked, “Do you think of yourself as closer to the Republican or Democratic Party?” These variables resulted in a scale ranging from 1 (strong
Republican) to 7 (strong Democrat) where 4 is nonleaning Independent.
Political ideology. Respondents were asked, “Generally speaking, would you describe
your political views as very conservative, conservative, moderate, liberal or very liberal?” (Responses ranged from 1 = very conservative to 5 = very liberal.)
Education. Respondents were asked, “What is the last grade or class you completed in
school?”
Follow politics.Respondents were asked,“Some people seem to follow what is going on in
government and public affairs most of the time,whether there is an election or not.Others are not that interested, or are interested in other things. Would you say you follow
what is going on in government and public affairs most of the time [coded 3], some of the
time [2], only now and then [1] or hardly at all [0]?”
Pew Research Center Political Communications Survey (2004)
Exposure to more traditional news programs. “How often, if ever, do you learn something
about the presidential campaign or the candidates from ________ Response options
are regularly (4), sometimes (3), hardly ever (2), or never (1)?”
• the Internet
• the local TV news about your viewing area
• the national nightly network news on CBS, ABC, and NBC
132
•
•
•
Press/Politics 11(3) Summer 2006
cable news networks such as CNN, MSNBC, and the FOX cable news channel
talk radio shows
National Public Radio (NPR)
Education. What is the last grade or class that you completed in school?
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
None, or grade 1-8 (coded 8)
High school incomplete (Grades 9-11) (coded 11)
High school graduate (Grade 12 or GED certificate) (coded 12)
Business, technical, or vocational school AFTER high school (coded 14)
Some college, no 4-year degree (coded 14)
College graduate (B.S., B.A., or other 4-year degree) (coded 16)
Postgraduate training or professional schooling after college (e.g., toward a master’s Degree or Ph.D.; law or medical school) (coded 18)
• Don’t know/refused (volunteered)
Party identification. In politics today, do you consider yourself a Republican, Democrat,
or Independent?
Political ideology. In general,would you describe your political views as very conservative
(1), conservative (2), moderate (3), liberal (4), very liberal (5)?
Following politics. How closely have you been following news about the race for the Democratic presidential nomination: very closely (3), fairly closely (2), not too closely (1),
or not at all closely (0)?
Notes
1. R. S. Dunham, “Where Bush Is Beating Gore: As the Butt of Late-Night Zingers,” Business
Week, Sep. 11, 2000.
2. http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=200/.
3. J. Rainey, “Just How Powerful Is a Comic’s Punch? Late-Night Hosts Weave Politicians into a
Lot of Laugh Lines—Humor That Can Hinder or Help,”Los Angeles Times,May 19,2004:E1.
4. B. Kluger, “Politics 2004: Laugh and Learn,” USA Today, Feb. 4:15A.
5. ABC news. 2004, 28 July. Nightline [Television broadcast]. New York: ABC News.
6. C-Span Newhouse School Forum with Ken Auletta from the New Yorker , Oct. 14, 2004.
7. B. Karlin, interview, Mar. 22, 2004.
8. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart [Television broadcast], Comedy Central, Oct. 7, 2004.
9. The O’Reilly Factor [Television broadcast], Fox News, Sep. 17, 2004.
10. Crossfire [Television broadcast], CNN, Oct. 15, 2004. Transcript available from http://
transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0410/15/cf.01.html.
Young, Tisinger / Dispelling Late-Night Myths
133
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Biographical Notes
Dannagal G. Young is a PhD candidate at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, where she studies political communication and public opinion. In September 2006, she will join the faculty of the University of Delaware’s Department of Communication. Her specific area of research concerns the psychology of political satire and the role of
late-night comedy programs in American political life.
Address: Annenberg School for Communication, 3620 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104;
phone: 856-854-0878; e-mail: dyoung@asc.upenn.edu.
Russell M. Tisinger is a PhD candidate at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is studying political persuasion and public opinion. His dissertation investigates how entertainment programming on television influences political attitudes
about the real world.
Address: Annenberg School for Communication, 3620 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104;
e-mail: rtisinger@asc.upenn.edu.