AFEA NEWS: Séminaire transversal CREW – Séance binôme de chercheurs : David Lipson (MCF, Université de Strasbourg – membre associé de CREW) et Pauline Ziserman (docteure, Université Aix-Marseille Université – LERMA) 21 octobre 10h
Cher.e.s collègues,
Nous sommes heureux d’annoncer la prochaine séance du séminaire « Binôme de chercheurs de CREW » avec deux invité.e.s extérieur.e.s, David Lipson (Univ de Strasbourg) et Pauline Ziserman (Univ. d’Aix-Marseille). Cette séance aura lieu le 21 octobre de 10h à 12h à la Maison de la Recherche, 4 rue des Irlandais, Paris 5e, salle CREW, 1er étage ou bien en bimodal (https://meet.google.com/vce-ozrm-zcw).
Veuillez trouver ci-dessous un court descriptif de la séance.
Bien cordialement,
Christen Bryson, James Cohen et Yann Béliard
« Late night TV as an anti-depressant : how late-night TV keepsthe audience sane. »
The sub-genre late-nightentertainment show has been broadcast since the early experimental stage of TVin the late 40s and early 50s in theUSA. Pat Weaver, head of NBC, and one of the pioneers of late-night TVperfectly surmised the feeling at that time “…after ten or eleven at night, alot of people will still want to see something funny.”[1]Weaver launched The Tonight Show (NBC, 1954- present) as well as many other traditional late-nightentertainment shows who have come to amuse and entertain American audiences forthe last 70 years.
However, in the last seven years, thenews has been rocked by a series of major events that have reshaped the mediaenvironment: the rise of hyperpartisanship, the campaign and election of DonaldTrump in 2016 as well as a once in a century pandemic that is still wreaking havoc.
In this particular anxiety laden context, the following preliminary questionscan be asked :
Why do people gravitate towards shows that talk about news when it is a constantsource of stress/anguish? And more specifically why towards these specific satiricalnews segments (Colbert’s monologues / Meyers’ A Closer Look) that can be seenon YouTube? And finally who are the people that watch these shows?
To answer these questions, this seminar will seek to first look at theaudience relationship with two specific traditional late-night shows : The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and Late Night with Seth Meyers andthen finally contrast and compare the two using qualitative and quantitativeanalyses.
Sources
Nesteroff, Kliph. TheComedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels, and the History of American Comedy.First edition. New York: Grove Press,2015.
[1] Nesteroff, The Comedians, 128.