Carson Daly is a rarity among late-night hosts. The Santa Monica native broke into the afterhours landscape following a successful career in music, not comedy, and has spent the past eight years peacefully hosting NBC's late-night (or early morning) program Last Call with Carson Daly. When ConanGate threatened the 1:30 A.M. time slot that Daly had civilly occupied since 2002, the host stayed respectfully quiet about his network's late-night war (even as his peers took swings at him) and focused on transforming his program. After stripping away his desk, his tie and his live audience, Daly has finally found a documentary style that suits him. And even better, he can still spotlight the bands he loves and covers on his KAMP-FM morning radio show.
Daly recently phoned Movieline to explain why he holds no ill will toward NBC, how he embraces his early-morning time slot and what bands he was most excited to fight for during his days at MTV.
Hey, Carson.
Hi, Julie. How are you?
I'm well. I'm glad that your show is still on the air.
[Laughs] You and my mother.
Did you have a back-up plan when you heard that NBC was switching up its late night line-up? For a second there, Conan was going to keep the Tonight Show at 12:05.
No, actually we knew we were OK much sooner than everyone else heard. I didn't really have any time to panic, but I am just glad it worked out.
So, you didn't have any plans to start a microbrewery or just change career directions entirely if the late night gig ended?
Julie, [the microbrewery] is a plan regardless of the late night show.
I've been following your Twitter feed for awhile and noticed that when ConanGate was happening, you seemed to be channeling a lot of your energy into making beef jerky. Have you perfected a jerky recipe yet?
No, actually my girlfriend bought me a jerky dehydrator for Christmas. I was so excited to get it because I do love jerky in all of its many, delicious forms. So I made that batch, and I haven't made any since. I need to figure out how to make it less salty, but I am very mad scientist about it. It was actually great. I had no idea what I was doing.
As a late-night fan, it's great to see Last Call taking a leap away from the standard talk-show format.
Thanks. We just sort of just stumbled upon it and we all feel really good about it. I don't know what else to say. I think it's been really exciting.
Are you still in the experimental phase? Will you be trying out new segment ideas?
It's crazy. It's so much fun now because the pressure is off. We've committed to this -- we are not ever going to be the traditional late-night show. I've been on the air now for I don't know how many years now, and I have done the desk thing and there has been an evolution to my show. You can literally see, if you look back, you can sort of see my comfort level shifting as I experimented with desk versus no desk, tie versus no tie, monologue versus no monologue. I have always loved Bob Costas, who does great sit-down interviews. I love Charlie Rose's in-depth interviews, but I am also a fan of the Tonight Show and all of the sorts of traditional late- night shows, so I am really just sort of struggling. It's about finding where I really fit in. When Jimmy Fallon signed on, that is when we really made the commitment to ditch the studio, ditch the audience, ditch the desk and the tie and really just go for it.
We have a very young staff and everyone is really progressive and we just looked at the show and went, "Well, the one thing that we really do well is offer a great discovery of new music. So let's do more of that, shining a spotlight onto up-and-coming acts. Let's tap into what we are best at and let's package that in a documentary-style format. In the last two weeks, I have been having these discussions about my show and the way that we produce the show and it's just been interesting. We do it out of the fact that we don't have much money. And we do it more fully driven on passion. It's like a DIY world right now, I think, in film and that's kind of what we're doing in late night.
Why did you decide to ditch the studio audience completely?
That was born out of the idea that as soon as I would finish an episode of Last Call (before the change in format) -- a traditional show with a desk where I would say, "Hey Julie, how's it working at Movieline? How's your summer?" -- whenever I would get off the air, my discussion backstage with the guests, to me, seemed more interesting than the forced discussion that happened on the air. So now, the show has that casual feel, where now, I just go have a beer with Matthew McConaughey and he tells me a great story about his dad dying while having sex with his mother. Things that just don't happen in a studio audience with strangers.
Wow. Do you miss the audience's energy ever though?
No. There was a great energy to that, but no. I just think our show is so much better served shot in the real world and produced the way that we do it now. We are just really excited about the new format. It's a lot more organic for me, and it's much more comfortable.
You have been at NBC for over eight years. What do you know now about late night that you didn't when you first started?
Oh my God. Wow, well I can't believe it's been this long. Everyone knows that talk shows are not easy to keep going. I am really fortunate that I have been on the air this long, and I am really fortunate and thankful to NBC for sticking with me because I have sort of grown up over the past 10 years. I'm trying to find my life after MTV, find a profession for myself at a major network, and they have allowed me that. The show airs late, but they allowed me to make mistakes, and where else in television or film or music or the arts can you just be on a major network and change so much and evolve and finally stumble upon a product that feels right and that everyone reacts well to and then just keep doing it? It doesn't happen very often. People get canceled every day.
Well, what does longevity mean to you? Do you still want to be hosting a television show 10 years from now?
I don't know. I never would have thought... I just can't believe it's been 10 years. If I am doing what I am doing now in 10 years, I will be thrilled. The New Year's Eve show is a ton of fun to do at NBC. We have done really well with that. It's a growing franchise. The world has changed so much in the last few years in the way that content is created and the things are watched so that being on at 1:30 in the morning doesn't bother me as much as it once did. Everybody tapes TV shows anyway. I follow Friday Night Lights wherever it goes. To [the 101 Network on] Direct TV -- I didn't even know what that network was, but I just set my TiVo for that. I watch AMC. If the programming is good, people find it no matter what time it's scheduled. So I hope I am just making a good product that people can find.
Do you think that the confluence of television and the Internet is a threat to the future of television? Do you think that personalities like yourself will be able to emerge from the Internet to establish themselves and gain the trust of an audience like you have?
Well, you know, time will tell. In music, we're seeing it. We are beginning to see people break off the Internet like the young Justin Bieber, whereas, for me 10 years ago, when I was at MTV, big pop acts like 'N Sync had to break in Europe and travel to earn their chops in a different way than this kid, who broke from YouTube, did. Another young girl who broke off of YouTube is an artist from the Philippines named Charice [Pempengco], who I play on my morning radio show. Again, that's sort of the do-it-yourself mentality. As far as television hosts go, the Internet is still a big place, and a trusted source that helps to filter out a lot of the crap. The Internet is only getting bigger and better, and it's more of a trusted place every day, so I am glad.
I am happy that I came up through radio and traditional media, but do I think late-show hosts can break from the Internet? Absolutely.
What do you think of MTV rebranding itself and officially distancing itself from music?
It doesn't really surprise me. I don't think it surprises anybody. They have been distancing themselves from music since, really, I left. I left right when Laguna Beach was developed and it did really well. They have always wanted to be in the programming scripted world and they do it with great success for their audience. I don't really know since I am not there anymore. But I miss music videos in general. MTV used to be the only place for music videos and now you can get music videos with the click of a button from different sites and sources. They are a big company, and they were forced to do what they did. I will always wish the MTV well. They were great to me.
You have broken so many bands and cultural figures. Is there one you are especially proud of?
I can't really take credit. That would be very egocentric of me to say I had anything to do with a band's success. I was there at the time when Eminem broke. You know, Eminem and Kid Rock in particular were two artists that I personally sat in on meetings and said, "I am all for this. He's white, he raps but I really believe in him. I think he's the real deal." Kid Rock, the same thing on the rock side. Then they both ended up being tremendous artists.
But that was an exciting time to be around and be in the programming department at MTV and fight for what artists you believed in. You know, I fought for them to play the Eminem "My Name Is" video. The radio wasn't playing it -- they thought he was just a novelty. A few of us really believed he was going to be a great rapper and lo and behold, he was. There were a couple musical things like that that I look back on and think, "You know man, that's really cool." It was like high school. There was Britney and Christina and the Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync and Eminem and Kid Rock and Limp Bizkit -- the bad boys and the pop queens. It was a really fun time to be around.
Do you watch anything on MTV now?
I don't. I really don't. I don't watch Jersey Shore. I am busy. I am a father now. I have a year-old son. I do a radio show in Los Angeles every morning from six to 10 and then
Last Call after that. I stay pretty busy. I am on the Internet quite a bit looking for interesting things to highlight on my show, but I don't catch up on TV quite as much as I used to.
Thanks, Carson. I'm enjoying the new format.
I appreciate that very much, I really do. Tell all your friends. We need all the people we can get to watch.