Late Night with Jimmy Fallon Intern Contest

When Jimmy Fallon took over the Late Night show from Conan O'Brien, it was expected that he would bring a youthful approach catering to the “Digital Native” demographic. Leading up to his premiere episode Fallon worked an aggressive internet campaign, most notably appearing on Diggnation - a popular video podcast hosted by Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg and poster child for the hip new internet entrepreneur.

The Late Night Show's Intern Contest asks college students to create shorts chronicling their daily life. These videos will be featured on the television broadcasts of the Late Night Show and the show's website. The intern will receive no compensation other than a trip to New York, a camera, and a Macbook. The format of this contest smartly appropriates the viral video aesthetic for monetary gain. Not only will the winner generate a season's worth of free content for the show, but the numerous audition videos submitted by hopeful contestants provide hours of content for the website. Inserted before each audition video is an advertisement, generating profit solely for NBC. The contest guidelines ask each “college kid” to “[tell] us why there's no one better than you for this internship. Be awesome, be yourself...” reflecting Tuckle's theory that online space is used by teens to construct and play with personal identity. Each video submission, consciously crafted by each contestant, are essentially avatars. The guidelines assume that these videos accurately reflect each contestant's identity and stress the importance of creating a unique entity, contributing to the current new media discourse which legitimize and naturalize Donna Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto – our online selves merge with our physical selves until our identities become “immaterial” presences straddling the divide.

I received this video through the UCSB film studies listserv since an alum works for the show. In this way, a tenuous “personal” connection to which I would've lacked access without technology has been used/exploited by a corporation. Because the video came to me through a fairly exclusive channel, it increases my desire to follow through. However, this listserv was probably just one entry on a long list of advertising channels that some staff member had to spam. The message also asks me to spread the word about the contest through Facebook and Twitter which shows their “ingroup” knowledge of commonly used social networking channels. I would be likely to spread this ad campaign along because reality television programming has conditioned my generation to desire fame and believe that any regular person can become a “celebrity” through such contests. It is oddly appropriate that as our course is beginning to explore how companies can exploit viral videos to make money, the Late Night Show provides a perfect example.

- Se Young Kang