Comments (2)

By Richard Hamilton, May 21, 2009 12:18 am

I have a confession to make (actually a few overlapping confessions). I occasionally stay up too late of nights. Way too late. And occasionally, I find myself up late enough to watch Last Call with Carson Daly on NBC. (I am among the growing population of those who don’t have cable, and at that time of night it’s Carson or infomercials. I really only miss cable during a few sporting events and when I get a hankering to watch Food Network, but that’s a subject for another post.) To be honest, I have never been particularly enamored with Carson Daly. My first introduction to him was during his underwhelming MTV days. A few years later, I stumbled upon Last Call. The music drew me back. Occasionally. The Roots. Amos Lee. Citizen Cope. The show was still fairly typical late night fare. Recently however, the show has changed it’s format. Now apparently this this change happened over a month ago, but I didn’t notice until last week (see repetition of the word “occasionally” in the opening sentences).

I love the new format! The biggest change is that Carson has left the studio and ventured out into LA.

I don’t know if this format change will help Last Call. The audience potential is still pretty low. Their web presence is pretty weak too, which makes no sense to me. It seems the web would be the perfect second space for a show like Last Call. In fact, a show like Last Call would potentially have much more web traffic than TV viewership. Nevertheless, this format shift is significant.

Here are a few takeaways:

A format change can be good stewardship. I’m sure they would never advertise it, but Last Call’s new format is considerably cheaper. There’s no studio to maintain. No house band to pay. No light bills. I’m sure they would say the change was driven by creativity, but the bottom line benefited. So much of the modern church experience is a production. And that can be expensive. But what if there were no expectations. Could all of the resources (time, money, space, people) be used in more beneficial (dare I say, “efficient”) ways? What shape might church take?

A format change can shape identity. What are you all about? It’s a hard sell for churches to convince people they care about children if all their resources go toward seniors. In the same way, if you claim to care about the world around you, but burn through all of your resources taking care of “your” people, you probably don’t care that much about the world around you. A fresh format gives you a chance to shape what you do around who you are.

A format change will not change everything. Last Call still comes on really late and falls way short on internet distribution. Likewise, revamping church is also not a cure all.