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Hi everyone, and welcome back to America Under the Microscope. 欢迎回来【 闲话美国】.

Hi James.

Hi Lulu, hi everyone.

So what's our topic today?

Well, I've been noticing on Chinese social media a lot right now, clips from comedians like Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert seem to be really popular here.

Are we going to about talk shows?

We're going to talk about talk shows, specifically kind of like the American style of talk shows.

First of all, what is the idea of talk show? In Chinese, we translated it directly into脱口秀, but is it just like a one host and then guest speakers so… like what we're doing now?

A little bit like what we're doing now, so talk show, you have the host.

Uh.

And usually, the host is a comedian because they’re also gonna, you know, spend part of the time just talking by themselves and tell jokes, but then they interview usually celebrities, but it could be things like musicians, comedians, actors, famous authors, and even sometimes politicians, too.

But the whole undertone of it is comic?

Yes. The undertone of these shows is comic and entertaining. So the interviews usually are not serious, it 's not a news interview or anything like that.

So they are no serious talk shows? Like a serious dialogue asking, for example, politicians about the policies they want to make?

In those kind of things, we would consider that more of a news talk show, and those do exist. But usually that's not going to be hosted by a comedian that's going to be hosted by a journalist.

Oh, so when people about talk shows in America, most people would think it's more like a comic.

More light hearted. We do have kind of like daytime talk shows which tend to be more… not serious but not quite comedic.

That's another thing. When it comes to脱口秀, you have the idea of daytime就是日间的脱口秀and late night深夜脱口秀.

It sounds really saucy, but it's not.

OK. The daytime talk shows are usually aimed towards women who are at home during the middle of the afternoon. And they also have a host and the interview celebrities. But the shows and the people they interview tend to be geared towards women.

So emotions, like relationships, it's like parenting that sort of thing.

The late-night talk shows are much closer to comedy and target young people like young adults. They have a much more humorous, sometimes even a bit more…

Satirical?

Satirical. They can use a bit more adult language because it's on later at night.

I see. 所以, 日间的脱口秀可能更多是女性观众, 然后就, 还是比较温情派的; 深夜的脱口秀开的玩笑会更加过火一点.

When did the traditional talk show, especially like late-night talk show start?

Late 40s, early 50s.

Oh, wow.

So it's been around for a while. So it's kind of an evolution of variety shows.

Variety show就是综艺节目with singing dancing.

Right. So China still has quite a lot of variety shows on TV, but the talk show kind of evolved from that format of into one where you have a host who is going to start off the show with a monologue.

Monologue就是独白, he is speaking or she is speaking themselves to the audience, but speaking himself on his own.

And if it's a late-night talk show, this usually going to be kind of a more comedic monologue.

Uh.

And then from there, there's usually after the monologue, they might do some medic skits which can vary quite a lot.

就是小品了. Like this reminds me of Saturday Night Live.

Saturday Night Live is a variety show and not a talk show. Because they don't interview people in Saturday Night Live. They have hosts.

But it's more focused on singing, dancing and the skits.

The skits and the music, not really so much on the singing and dancing.

But these comedy skits so if you watch like Jimmy Fallon or Jimmy Kimmel, they do games sometimes with their bands and stuff. That's what we mean by comedy.

They're actually very popular in China, and then they have been given like quite silly names of Fallon, Chinese audience call him 肥伦; and Kimmel they call him鸡毛秀; and Stephen Colbert was actually being called 扣扣熊. I think it's really cute.

Make sense. But beyond that, they have the celebrity interviews. There'll be a house band.

Yes, absolutely love that. So the band is actually right there and they play sometimes improv music as well, right?

So the band is kind of there to play during the commercial breaks, to play before the show starts for the audience, help to balance jokes off between the host and usually the band leader, they usually are partnership.

And then the talk shows, many of them either have a musical performance by a famous or up and coming music group. Or they might have a standup comic perform a short 5,10 minutes set.

I can see why you said evolved from variety show, because this is basically the setup of综艺节目variety show, but then it probably focused more on a host sitting there, interviewing people.

So the interviews take up a good portion of the show, but there still has those elements of comedy, music in it to get…you can see where the variety is.

And right at the moment, what are some of the popular talk shows? Especially late-night talk shows?

The big three are The Late Show, The Tonight Show, and Jimmy Kimmel Live. And these three are on the big American networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC.

I noticed something; these type of talk shows they are either named after the famous host. Like you have Jimmy Kimmel Show or Live. You have The Ellen Show, or they are a brand themselves like The Late Show and then with and then they can change the host.

Yes. Because like The Late Show and The Tonight Show are older and they've had multiple hosts. The hosts have changed over time. Jimmy Kimmel’s show is his show. So when he retires…

No one is going to…

No one's going to replace and they'll get a new comedian to do a new show.

It's pretty cool to have your own show, I guess I do have my own show, but it's just that sort of idea of having your name there and then calling it your show.

You can actually see how like the three comics now that do these shows where they started from long ago, like Jimmy Fallon was on Saturday Night Live, and now it's in one of the talk shows in America. Stephen Colbert started as a writer and work his way up so..

It's sort of in that world the way to get to start them to become big, is more like you start working for those shows either as an act or as a writer.

That's usually how it comes in it. As if you look at these three men who do the shows are in their 40s or 50s, it took him a while to get there. But now having these shows is kind of the pinnacle of their career.

OK. I think that is the gist of it. We've covered some of the basics about the talk shows, especially late-night talk shows in America.

In the advanced episode, we're going to go more into it. Me and James are going to share with you some of the shows that we like, and also talk about some controversies.

Yeah.

Alright, thank you, James for coming to the show.

Thank you for having me Lulu, thank you for listening everyone.

See you next time.

Bye.

Bye.