Jimmy Fallon Spends The Least Time Talking To Guests: Analysis

It seems someone is forgetting the "talk" part of "talk show" (not that we mind).

Jimmy Fallon spends the least amount of time talking to guests out of other late night talk show hosts -- at least according to Stephen Winzenburg, a communications professor at Grand View University and author of the book TV’s Greatest Talk Shows.

In a content analysis posted to his website, Winzenburg found that "The Tonight Show" host has reduced the airtime spent talking to celebrity guests from Jay Leno's 51 percent to 37 percent, the lowest in late night. Fallon devotes a lot of his airtime to comedy sketches, music and monologues.

By comparison, Craig Ferguson spends 43 percent of airtime on celebrity interviews, and Jimmy Kimmel spends 48 percent. Seth Meyers and David Letterman keep a more traditional late-night talk show ratio, according to Winzenburg, with 51 percent of airtime devoted to guests. Meanwhile, Conan O’Brien comes in at 53 percent.

Here's how Winzenburg came up with the numbers:

Late night segments were times and rounded to half minutes for five airings during May of 2014. Those program segments were then categorized as either "talk," "monologue," "comedy/sketch," "music," or "in/out/clips" ...

While Winzenburg acknowledges that Fallon’s new format has been a huge ratings success and increased the show’s online following, he is noticeably unfavorable of Fallon’s break from the traditional late-night format.

“While the program might be able to be categorized as a variety show or a sketch comedy show, it certainly is not a talk show based on the genre’s historic definition,” he wrote in the study.