Lilly Singh’s Late Night Show Is an Uneasy Compromise for Everyone
While there are some sops made to Singh’s digital success, A Little Late is still firmly traditional TV—but digital-first
The first five of 96 planned episodes of A Little Late with Lilly Singh, the highly-trailed late night show from giant Canadian YouTuber Lilly Singh, have been broadcast.
As part of a canny deal the YouTuber brokered with the television network, plenty more episodes are already in the can (Singh asked to block tape the episodes for minimal disruption to her YouTube channel). But does A Little Late work for either party, or the viewers?
The show seems to sit at an uneasy middle point between a traditional late night TV show and one of Singh’s vlogs — and doesn’t really happily fulfil either.
“If YouTubers have a show on TV that is noticeably different from their original content it will be spotted and subsequently spurned immediately,” says Steven Buckley, associate lecturer at the University of West of England. “The reason why young people want to be streamers these days rather than TV stars is that on YouTube and Twitch they can do pretty much do what they want, whereas they see TV as being far too restrictive.”
