Jimmy Fallon has done great work incorporating Twitter into his Late Night show. It’s probably the first television show to get viewers to participate in the broadcast in almost real time.
Fallon calls the segment #latenighthashtags. He creates a topic, announces the hashtag on his show and then the following night reads off some of the best responses on Twitter. For example, he launched #myparentsareweird. And a day or two later he read off this response: “My dad buried my hamster in the bckyrd after it died. He tells me 3 yrs later it was “just about dead” when he buried him #myparentsareweird”
Or how about this one: “Our staff mtg comes to an end, we stand up. Then u ask a loaded question which extends the meeting by 15 minutes. #slapyourself”
To check out his viewers’ new years’ resolution, Fallon announced #itsthe011son the first week of January. And while he was in rehearsal for his show the following day he noticed a great tweet. So he handed it to his writers and had them get it ready to display on screen. The result?
“Gotta lose some lbs. this year. First step? Droppin the 185 layin next to me. Wake up and be gone, Rita! #itsthe011son”
Hilarious laughter broke out among the audience.
Fallon lets you inside the process with a video you can see here: [UPDATED to embed the video]
Fallon’s team recorded this video in response to an interview request from Hill Holliday EVP Baba Shetty, who was working on the program for the TVnext event.
