Will Lilly Singh's massive YouTube following deliver viewers to NBC's 1:35 timeslot?
-
NBC's announcement that Singh will succeed Carson Daly with A Little Late With Lilly Singh, making her the first female host of a network late-night show since Joan Rivers in the 1980s, was met with applause. Singh has a massive audience on YouTube with 14.5 million subscribers to her channel. But as Hazel Cills points out, young people don't watch late-night TV these days. Cills says it's "unclear how Singh’s audience will translate not just to traditional TV but late night specifically. When YouTuber Grace Helbig got a nightly talk show with E! back in 2015, nobody watched it and it was quickly canceled after just eight episodes. Singh’s demographic is also young women, mainly teenagers and women in their early twenties, which is partly the audience that doesn’t even watch late night TV or traditional TV anymore. It’s clear in hiring Singh that NBC is trying to revamp stale, white ideas about what late night TV can be by hiring someone arguably nobody over 25 knows, for a medium that nobody under 25 watches anymore. But will the youths make their way to an ancient TV set to watch Singh? Only time will tell."
ALSO:
TOPICS: Lilly Singh, YouTube, A Little Late with Lilly Singh
