The Ellen Show started with a smaller audience than they needed to. Indeed Ellen used to do things with the Riff Raff Room which collected some of the excess people who wanted to see her show. I kind of wondered over the years why the Ellen Show didn’t bother moving to a place where they could accommodate a larger audience.
Sensing weakness in Ellen’s stranglehold, The Drew Barrymore Show and the Kelly Clarkson Show stepped into the daytime talk show waters a couple years ago. Still they weren’t risking too much against Ellen. As such, both have smaller audiences. My guess is they have about 1/3 of the audience of the Ellen Show.
Finally, after seeing these even smaller audiences, I finally saw the pattern. These smaller-than-they-need-to-be audiences were a feature and not the slightest bit of a liability. Firstly the talk shows didn’t have to struggle to fill seats all the time.
Secondly they could ask sponsors to do full audience giveaways if they wanted to be featured on these shows. Included would be the genuine audience appreciation clapping and shouting which would give the product more clout with the audience at home. A smaller audience means a cheaper buy for the products they are selling.
It remains to be seen if Kelly and Drew will have giveaway shows like Ellen’s 12 days of Christmas or from even earlier on, Oprah with her Favourite Things episodes.
Will upstarts begin against Kelly and Drew? Perhaps it will get to the point where they will pick one deserving person to be the audience member who will receive mega gifts every day. Is that so much different than Ellen’s recent alliance with ‘Tis Best? Vetting this one person might take a team to find them deserving.
But will that one audience member be able to hoot and holler and stomp and clap and show enough emotion on their face to be an appropriately appreciative receiver? Remember, the companies have got to sell the goods this one person gets for free.
I’m not sure about the former, but this smaller audience thing might go one further step. How about making the audience a third of the Kelly and Drew audiences? Surely a sufficiently invested audience could make as much noise as the current Drew and Kelly audiences. Let’s say they were practically guaranteed a $100 gift card from some company. This might go over well but also detractors of such a show might just say they are buying their audience’s love.
This post Kelly or post Drew host might get away with saying they are just trying to spread love. While collecting a paycheque of course.
