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

114

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

116

Press/Politics 11(3) Summer 2006

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

118

Press/Politics 11(3) Summer 2006

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.

120

Press/Politics 11(3) Summer 2006

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

122

Press/Politics 11(3) Summer 2006

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

124

Press/Politics 11(3) Summer 2006

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

126

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.

128

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.

130

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

References Baum, Matthew. A. 2003. “Soft News and Political Knowledge: Evidence of Absence or Absence of Evidence?” Political Communication 20(2):173–90. Baum, Matthew. A. 2005.Soft News Goes to War:Public Opinion and American Foreign Policy in the New Media Age. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Baym, Geoffrey. 2005. “The Daily Show: Discursive Integration and the Reinvention of Political Journalism.” Political Communication 22(3): 259-76. Bergson, Henri. 1956. “Laughter.” In Comedy, ed. George Meredith. New York: Doubleday Anchor Books. Bloom, Edward A., and Lilian D. Bloom. 1979. Satire’s Persuasive Voice. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Delli Carpini, Michael X., and Scott Keeter. 1996. What Americans Know about Politics and Why It Matters. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Delli Carpini, Michael X., and Bruce Williams. 2004. “And the Walls Came Tumbling Down: Media Regimes and the Blurring of News and Entertainment.” Unpublished manuscript. Downie, Leonard, and Robert G. Kaiser. 2002. The News about the News: American Journalism in Peril. New York: Knopf. Griffin,Dustin.1994.Satire:A Critical Reintroduction.Lexington:University Press of Kentucky. Koestler, Arthur. 1964. The Act of Creation. London: Hutchinson and Co. McLeod, Jack M., Zhongshi Guo, Katie Daily, Catherine A. Steele, Huiping Huang, Edward Horowitz, and Huailin Chen. 1996. “The Impact of Traditional and Nontraditional Media Forms in the 1992 Presidential Election.” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 73(2):401–16. Moy, Patricia, and Michael Pfau. 2000. With Malice toward All? The Media and Public Confidence in Democratic Institutions. Westport, CT: Praeger. Moy, Patricia, Michael A. Xenos, and Verena K. Hess. 2005. “Communication and Citizenship: Mapping the Political Effects of Infotainment.”Mass Communication and Society 8(2):111–31. Moy, Patricia, Michael A. Xenos, and Verena K. Hess. Forthcoming. “Priming Effects of LateNight Comedy.” International Journal of Public Opinion Research. National Annenberg Election Survey. 2004. “Daily Show Viewers Knowledgeable about Presidential Campaign.” September 21. . Niven, Daniel, S. Robert Lichter, and Dan Amundson. 2003. “The Political Content of Late Night Comedy.” Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 8(3):118–33. Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. 2000. “Audiences Fragmented and Skeptical: The Tough Job of Communicating with Voters.” February 5. . Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. 2004. “Cable and Internet Loom Large in Fragmented Political News Universe.” January 11. . Pfau, Michael, Jaeho Cho, and Kirsten Chong. 2001. “Communication Forms in U.S. Presidential Campaigns: Influences on Candidate Perceptions and the Democratic Process. Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 6(4):88–105. Prior, Marcus. 2003. “Any Good News in Soft News? The Impact of Soft News Preference on Political Knowledge.” Political Communication 20(2):149–71. Suls, Jerry. 1972. “A Two-Stage Model for the Appreciation of Jokes and Cartoons: An InformationProcessing Analysis.” In The Psychology of Humor, ed. Jeffrey H. Goldstein and Paul E. McGhee. New York: Academic Press.

134

Press/Politics 11(3) Summer 2006

Young, Dannagal G. 2004. “Late-Night Comedy in Election 2000: Its Influence on Candidate Trait Ratings and the Moderating Effects of Political Knowledge.” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 48(1):1–22. Young, Dannagal Goldthwaite, Russell M. Tisinger, Kate Kenski, and Dan Romer. Forthcoming. “The Power of Numbers: Examining Subpopulations with the NAES.” In Capturing Campaign Dynamics. The National Annenberg Election Survey: Design, Method, and Data, 2nd ed., ed. Dan Romer, Kate Kenski, Christopher Adasiewicz, and Kathleen Hall Jamieson. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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: [email protected]. 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: [email protected].