twitterversy

Did Jimmy Fallon Rip Off an Idea From Current TV?

Hell hath no fury like a Twitterer scorned. As you will no doubt recall, Monday night’s debut of Late Night With Jimmy Fallon included a pre-filmed bit called “Target Demographics,” which is essentially a comedic take on the customer-segmentation research tool known as PRIZM. However, when Current TV’s Sarah Haskins saw the execution, she immediately accused Fallon of idea-thievery via the ubiquitous social media time-waster Twitter. Just how accurate is her accusation? We’ve got video and, as you’ve come to expect, probing analysis.

Here’s an example of Sarah’s “Target Women” bit that she thinks Jimmy Fallon ripped off:



More evidence! Here, once again, is Fallon’s “Target Demographics” bit:


In short, we think that Sarah Haskins might have played the “rip-off” card too quickly. Her central concept revolves around her first-person reactions to the way that women are marketed to, whereas the Fallon bit focuses more on imaginary demographic clusters that will appeal to his potential advertisers and sponsors (though, if you have a marketing background and have ever seen a PRIZM report, you’ll recognize that this clip was amazingly realistic). Furthermore, it seems to us to be little more than coincidence that the Fallon show focused on “Blonde Mothers From Connecticut” for its first outing, as it will presumably roll out a series of these things that profile narrow imaginary demos like “Unemployed Beer Drinking Ex-Auto-Workers” or “Wily Network Wunderkinds” in future segments. But then again, what do we know?

Copycat! [Jezebel]

Did Jimmy Fallon Rip Off an Idea From Current TV?

Things you buy through our links may earn Vox Media a commission.