Channel 10 is reheating the talk show genre with Sam Pang as host
While the late-night talk show genre is still alive and well in the US, the format hasn't been very active in Australia in decades.
The Late Show, The Tonight Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live and others still grace US screens with timeslots as late as 11:35pm, and even later for Late Night with Seth Meyers, which starts at 12:35am. The US has more of a tradition of late news, which helps the shows attract audiences, a late-night culture Australia really doesn't have.
In 2020 the ABC said it wouldn't commission a show after 9:30pm.
In a modern context, day-after YouTube reheats also garner a lot of attention for late-night talk shows. A recent clip from Jon Stewart's Monday stint at The Daily Show reached 7.2 million people on YouTube alone, with the clip basically consisting of an entire 22 minute segment, the first half of the show. The second half, an interview, was also posted in full.
Gone are the days of fans posting clips taped off cable TV, replaced instead with networks basically giving the shows away for free.
Hopefully Channel 10 can see the importance of posting full clips to YouTube in terms of getting exposure, and more importantly, good guests.
The latter will be Pang's biggest challenge. A weekly monologue is fun and all, but US talk shows situated in Hollywood and New York City have a lot of access to big talent. With Australian celebs, it'll probably be more important to try and get access to interesting guests, or "celebs" who haven't already done the rounds on I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here!
Still, it feels like a gap in the market, and especially as terrestrial TV aims to cut TV budgets, maybe the talk show format could fill a gap in the schedule quite well.
Via TV Blackbox:
Premiering in mid March, the 8-episode initial season will reportedly be filmed at 10’s Melbourne studios in South Yarra under Pang’s own One World Productions. It’s understood the network has handed Pang significant creative freedom, with very few details available when the project was first announced.
“I’m thrilled to bring a tonight show to Australian screens in 2025. Especially since Channel 10 passed on my pitch to reboot The Golden Girls.”
Can Sam Pang get the early-night talk show genre going? I guess we'll see, Monday, 17 March at 8:40pm.