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Tuesday, July 19, 2022

Gutfeld Credits 'Cocktail Party Vibe' For Success


Gutfeld!, the newish late-night show on Fox News Channel, has emerged as a late-night player 15 months after it launched, reports NextTV.com.

. In June, Gutfeld! averaged 1,956,000 total viewers, according to Nielsen, ahead of ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! (1,690,000) and NBC’s The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon (1,327,000), and trailing CBS’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (2,187,000).

Hosted by Greg Gutfeld, Gutfeld! is on at 11 p.m. ET, when more viewers are awake, while the competition starts at 11:30. And Gutfeld! trails the other three in the 25-54 demo.

But the total viewers numbers get one’s attention.  Gutfeld, who hosted weekly program The Greg Gutfeld Show prior to launching Gutfeld! in April 2021,  said having the previous show gave Gutfeld! a giant advantage at launch. “We already had a running start,” he told B+C/Multichannel News. “We knew what we were doing.”

Late-night was ready for a shakeup, he believes. “There was space there,” he said. “Everybody else is so predictable and so unfunny, so an unpredictable and funny show would work.”

For his part, Gutfeld is not surprised to see his show win over substantial viewership in late night. “We knew it was going to be a hit,” he said.

Graphic courtesy of RoadMN

Cocktail Party Vibe

He likens the Gutfeld! setup to “a little cocktail party” — smart, likeable people with him on the set, having some fun and letting a few zingers fly. “The chemistry on Gutfeld! is just pure,” he said. “Everybody there can talk to everybody else. There’s a genuine affinity for each other.”

Sharing the set with Gutfeld are Kat Timpf, Tyrus, Tom Shillue, Joe DeVito and Joe Machi, among others. Tom O’Connor is the executive producer.

The zingers are a natural byproduct of people who genuinely get along, he noted. “The best part of the show is the constant roasting and insulting,” Gutfeld said. “It flows naturally. When someone gets a good burn on me, I love it, and the audience loves it.”

Not many shows, he added, see the host as the frequent target of roasts. Gutfeld, also co-host on The Five, added, “I don’t have anyone on the show I don’t like.”

Going from weekly to nightly helped the chemistry. Gutfeld said the show’s vibe “changes through frequency. If you see somebody once a week, it’s pretty good. But you see them once a night, and certain avenues open up, in terms of riffs and asides.”

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